The Commedia is not just an aesthetic, but an existential, work. As such, it demands an interpretation which relates it not merely to art and art-history but to our own human concerns, to our situation and existence in life, to life and life-history. That is the note which I wish to strike in this essay, and with this emphasis: the Comedy demands such interpretations; its demand is an integral part of its art.

Of course, though the point is often ignored or forgotten, it is not strictly an original one. Already in the Letter to Can Grande the note is struck, either by Dante or on his behalf, when, having affirmed that the poem has to do with ethics, the Letter goes on to say that its aim is not merely instruction but inculcation. In the previous paragraph it is struck more forcibly still: the work is intended to be nothing less than a means of grace, to produce nothing less than ‘conversion’: ‘Finis totius et partis est removere viventes in hac vita de statu miserie et perducere ad statum felicitatis’ (§ 15). The words are ambitious indeed, and it is hard, at first, to take them more seriously than we are generally wont to take the high-minded professions of moral purpose which conventionally preface a great part of the Renaissance’s literary output. But we should, I think, make the attempt, and test them, to see if, at least in a part—since the whole cannot be studied in an article—the Comedy will substantiate them. We shall try to see how, in spite of the fact that its narrative is compounded of events and phenomena which are miraculous, or fantastic, the Commedia is a communication paradoxically spoken from and to ‘existence’ much as we know it, by an art which, at times, comes close to defining itself as something perhaps quite unique: the art of converting through art, ‘de statu miserie ... ad statum felicitatis.’

If I dare to imagine that these letters may have some significance for both of us, it is because I believe that Christianity is concerned with human crises, since Christians are called to manifest the mercy and truth of God in history.

Christianity is the victory of Christ in the world, that is to say in history. It is the salvation of man in and through history, through temporal decisions made for love of Christ the Redeemer and Lord of History. The mystery of Christ is at work in all human events, and our comprehension of secular events works itself out and expresses itself in that sacred history, the history of salvation, which the Holy Spirit teaches us to read between the lines. We have to admit that this meaning is often provisional and sometimes beyond our grasp. Yet as Christians we are committed to the attempt to see some meaning in temporal events that flow from human choices. To be specific, we are bound to search ‘history’, that is to say the intelligible actions of men, for some indications of their significance, and some relevance to our present choice as Christians.

‘History’, then, is for us that complex of meanings which we read into the interplay of civilization. And we are also (this is more urgent still) at a turning point in the history of that European and American society which has been shaped and dominated by Christian concepts, even where it has at times been unfaithful to its basically Christian vocation. We live in a culture which seems to have reached the point of extreme hazard at which it may plunge to its own ruin, unless there is some renewal of life, some new direction, some providential reorganization of its forces for survival.

Professor Zaehner is one of the few Catholics in England to-day who is seriously concerned with the relation of Christianity to other religions. Though his special subject is Zoroastrianism, he has an intimate knowledge of the religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, and has worked out a definite theory of their relation to Christianity. This was made clear in an earlier work, At Sundry Times, where he tried to show how all these traditions ‘converge’ on Christ and find their fulfilment in him. In his most recent work he develops this idea further, particularly in the light of Teilhard de Chardin’s conception of the convergence of the whole creation on Christ, and tries to show how in the evolution of human consciousness the different religious traditions are stages in the progress of mankind under the guidance of the Holy Spirit towards the consummation of both man and the universe in Christ.

What is perhaps most original in his vision of human history is that he regards Marxism as an important stage in the development of religion. Marxism, particularly in its most authentic exponents like Marx himself and Engels, is concerned with the ultimate nature of man and the universe and with their ultimate destiny, and in this sense it may be called a religion. In Professor Zaehner’s view the Indian religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, are concerned almost exclusively with the salvation of the individual soul through its escape from this world of time and space. Marxism on the contrary, rejecting both the concept of the individual soul and any world beyond seeks the collective salvation of mankind in this present world through the working out of the ‘inner laws’ of nature, by which the ‘essence of man’ (in Marx’s phrase) will be realised.