Misleading Simplicity: 'The Great Divorce' and the 'Divine Comedy'

Abstract

Dante’s Comedy is famous, or should we say notorious, for being ‘difficult’, so thoroughly medieval as to be irrelevant for current readers. Most of this is a misapprehension based on the first canticle, Inferno, which few have actually read. Purgatorio and Paradiso are almost never mentioned. With The Great Divorce CS Lewis has taken the Divine Comedy and reworked it, yet still retaining the gravitas and much of the colour. This is a deceptively simple, easy to read work, but it carries a significant punch if carefully studied. For Lewis, the common human sin is not exciting – say, murder or hatred - but ‘accidia’; hell is a featureless grey expanse, and heaven is not easily gained, though we are all invited. All of this is modelled on the Comedy: as in the Comedy, what is easy is not what is valuable, and the struggle of a soul to rise above itself (and the many more who do not even try) is a memorable re-positioning of Dante’s great fable. In the Great Divorce CS Lewis is a master story-teller: we underestimate him at our peril.