Audiobook10 hours
How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem
Written by Rod Dreher
Narrated by Sean Runnette
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Following the death of his little sister and the publication of his New York Times bestselling memoir The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Dreher found himself living in the small community of Starhill, Louisiana where he grew up. But instead of the fellowship he hoped to find, he discovered that fault lines within his family had deepened. Dreher spiraled into depression and a stress-related autoimmune disease. Doctors told Dreher that if he didn't find inner peace, he would destroy his health. Soon after, he came across The Divine Comedy in a bookstore and was enchanted by its first lines, which seemed to describe his own condition.
In the months that followed Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life. Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dante's great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition.
Inspiring, revelatory, and packed with penetrating spiritual, moral, and psychological insights How Dante Can Save Your Life is a book for people, both religious and secular, who find themselves searching for meaning and healing. Dante told his patron that he wrote his poem to bring readers from misery to happiness. It worked for Rod Dreher. Dante saved Rod Dreher's life-and in this book, Dreher shows you how Dante can save yours.
In the months that followed Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life. Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dante's great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition.
Inspiring, revelatory, and packed with penetrating spiritual, moral, and psychological insights How Dante Can Save Your Life is a book for people, both religious and secular, who find themselves searching for meaning and healing. Dante told his patron that he wrote his poem to bring readers from misery to happiness. It worked for Rod Dreher. Dante saved Rod Dreher's life-and in this book, Dreher shows you how Dante can save yours.
Author
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is a writer and journalist who has written three New York Times bestsellers, including ‘The Benedict Option’ (2017) and ‘Live Not By Lies’ (2020). He is a columnist for The European Conservative and a senior fellow at the Danube Institute in Hungary. He lives in Budapest.
Related to How Dante Can Save Your Life
Related audiobooks
The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England's Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: Translated by Edith Grossman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Paradise: A Study on Part III of The Divine Comedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Orthodoxy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age With C. S. Lewis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Purgatory: A Study on Part II of The Divine Comedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Imitation of Christ Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Roots of Western Civilization: The Ancient World: From Gilgamesh to Augustine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Subversive Gospel: Flannery O'Connor and the Reimagining of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Preface to Paradise Lost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heretics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Incarnation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Augustine to Chesterton and Beyond: Great Spiritual Autobiographies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Book of the Dun Cow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Atheism on Trial: Refuting the Modern Arguments Against God Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Everlasting Man Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diary of a Country Priest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In A Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Literary Biographies For You
Lit: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marriage Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angela's Ashes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dad on Pills: Fatherhood and Mental Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil and Harper Lee Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Papillon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5These Precious Days: Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chronicles: Volume One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for How Dante Can Save Your Life
Rating: 4.144736863157895 out of 5 stars
4/5
38 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An interesting read for Christians and anyone who loves great literature.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was fantastic! If you've ever felt that most "self-help" books miss the mark or only deal with issues by avoidance then I highly recommend this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonderful read during the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. Read while reading the Comedia as part of the Baylor program. The writer shows great insight into the human condition and the insight Dante gives into confronting and accepting it. I was less than patient with the suffering of the writer as his issues with his family seemed to pale in comparison to the life struggles of many. However, he convincingly details the hurt he experienced and I’ll take him at his word. I’ve never suffered in this way and accept the pain felt by the writer. This is a good book even if it reading Dante. This would be helpful with anyone suffering with depression and life’s disappointments and tragedies. I’ll suggest it from many!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A "travelogue" of sorts of the author's recent travails, challenges, and pursuit of health and reconciliation through Dante's Commedia.The author provides a sketch of his life growing up in Louisiana and then leaving for an extended amount of time. He moved back "home" to Louisiana to try to find peace and reconcile with his family; it did not go as he planned and he came down with a terrible illness.He happened upon Dante's Commedia and he chronicles how he was able to internalize Dante's journey toward wholeness, peace with God, self, family, his sins and difficulties, and to move toward true love.The book certainly displays "How Dante Saved Rod Dreher's Life"; the book is very raw, visceral, and personal in its experiences, almost painfully so. If the reader cannot relate, is in a different stage of life, etc., the personal association would be easily lost. Dreher's willingness to fully immerse himself in the text and its context allows him to "experience" the text in a way that seems foreign to modern readers who tend to maintain a "respectable distance" from the subject at hand. Such does not make an experiential reading wrong, but it can seem foreign to those not used to that type of paradigm.Dreher admits that the role Dante served for him could be served by other authors and texts for others; he makes a good appeal for us to prove willing to internalize good literature and learn from its wisdom and experience. Nevertheless many of the lessons he obtained from Dante could have easily been obtained from the Bible or other sources; as a Christian I would hope that believers would first find their inspiration from the Biblical text, appreciate the later works of others, but rely principally on the words of God to effect personal transformation. As an ex-Methodist ex-Catholic convert to Orthodoxy Dreher provides an interesting perspective on faith and liturgy; that background explains why he is more sympathetic to Dante and his doctrines than many others would. A good if overly personal exploration into Dante's Commedia and the power of literature and stories for personal transformation.**--book received as part of early review program