Ancient poets’ tips for braving COVID-19
Epic heroes Dante and Homer are timely guides for coping with unprecedented circumstances of today
Last January, in a fit of self-improvement, I resolved that 2020 would be the year I once and for all read works more timeless than timely. The two classics I first chose turned out to be – courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic – both: “The Divine Comedy,” by the 14th century Italian poet Dante Alighieri, and “The Odyssey,” by the ancient Greek poet Homer.
Dante starts his epic allegory in the “Inferno,” better known as hell. The ancient Roman poet Virgil guides him on a tour down through nine concentric circles of torment. There, he witnesses spectacles unspeakably grotesque, the sinners – the greedy, the gluttonous, the lascivious, and worse – condemned to suffer agonies through all eternity.
And so life often seemed to us all soon after COVID-19 started to spread: Hell on earth. Suddenly, a new microbe
came wafting through the very air we breathe to attack our respiratory systems. Unsuspecting victims wound up ill, hospitalized and, in some cases, dead. Dying patients and families quarantined from each other said last words by smart phone. Makeshift morgues materialized to refrigerate accumulated corpses. The parallels to the Inferno struck me as unmistakable.
Homer, who crafted his tale orally in the seventh or eighth century B.C., chronicles the adventures of Odysseus, King of Ithaca. The warrior has long since ventured off to wage the Trojan War far away and vanquished the people of Troy. But the heroic husband and father confronts all manner of obstacles, from a cannibalistic cyclops to beckoning sirens. For 20 years he’s prevented from returning home to his wife Penelope, son Telemachus and the kingdom he once ruled.
Again, the plight depicted here bears an all-but-prophetic resemblance to our current public health crisis. Many of us feel, at least metaphorically, out to sea. The virus has imprisoned or re-imprisoned us in our houses and apartments, all but exiling us from almost everything we know and love.
Because of my own personal predicament, “The Odyssey” struck me with particular force. I live in New York City, while my wife, daughter, son-in-law and two-year-old granddaughter live in Italy, both locations former pandemic epicenters. I’ve visited Italy six times over the last three years and planned this month, finally, to move there.
But right now international travel feels too dangerous for me to risk, and so I’ve postponed my pilgrimage. I’m 68 years old and, though generally robust, have borderline high cholesterol and high blood pressure requiring medication. I neither want to be sickened nor to sicken anyone else, least of all my own family. Like Odysseus, I’m just trying, at least in a sense, to get home.
Eventually, Dante reaches purgatory and, finally, ascends through “Paradiso,” or heaven. It’s a destination perhaps analogous to our growing successes against the pandemic and the recent arrival of promising vaccines. Dante emerges from his ordeal as a witness to humanity at both its best and its worst (just as we have over the last 10 months). As for Odysseus, he persists against all odds in his crusade to reunite with the family he so desperately misses and arrives home at last. In short, they both hung in there. And, other than taking the usual precautions, that’s just about all any of us can really do right now as this virus surges anew: hang in there. Reading these two masterpieces – and discovering such fresh relevance – drove home a lesson I only suspected before but now see vividly come to life. We must play the long game. As in staying in it for the long haul or thinking long-term. As in going the distance and practicing the prized virtue known as patience. Perseverance never hurts either.
Yes, it’s hard to do. We Americans are notoriously impatient. We want what we want, usually sooner rather than later, and preferably right now. But our impulses for instant gratification – such as traveling long distances to celebrate holidays with our families – should be held in check, at least for the moment, to serve the greater good.
Eventually, if we do as we’re all supposed to do, our rewards will come. We’ll be inoculated. Someday we’ll once again watch the Super Bowl in person from the 50-yard line. But patient we must be. Only then can we get where need to go. As happened with Odysseus and Dante, it may be our best shot at survival.