“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark forest.”
— Dante Alighieri
The first line of the Divine Comedy. Dante wrote it in exile, stripped of home, property, and citizenship. The dark forest was not a metaphor but a description of his life: political exile, poverty, dependence on patrons. From that forest he created the greatest work of world literature.
In January 1302 I was sentenced to exile from Florence. I was thirty-six. I had been a Prior, one of the six rulers of the city. Then the Black Guelphs came, and it was over. They charged me with bribery on fabricated evidence. I did not return, because returning meant the stake. For twenty years I wandered through the courts of others, ate at their tables, and wrote a poem nobody had commissioned. If you have been thrown out of the place you thought was yours, do not try to go back to the old life. Build one that makes the old one look small.