Joanne Granata is a Writing Instructor in the University of St. Michael’s College Writing Centre and a University of St. Michael’s College graduate.
A Flicker of Hope in the Darkness
September 14 of this year marked the 700th anniversary of the death of Italy’s “sommo poeta”— Dante Alighieri. As an Italian Studies instructor, and with this week being the International Week of Italian Language and Culture, I would be remiss not to mention or reflect upon this important anniversary. When I was a St. Michael’s student, I studied Dante in many of my undergraduate Italian Studies courses, and, later, he became the topic of some of my own articles and presentations as a graduate student. Now, many years later, Dante’s seminal text on the journey from Hell to Heaven takes on a new meaning for me as a Writing Instructor in the USMC Writing Centre.
Although the central motif in Dante’s Commedia is man’s pilgrimage to God, allow me some poetic license as I reflect on my experiences as a Writing Instructor through the lens of Dante’s Commedia. Dante begins by expressing a sentiment of being lost in a “shadowed forest” (Inf.1.2), a “savage forest, dense and difficult” (Inf.1.5). Often, as a writer, we too can be just like Dante, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of an assignment, lost in the dense forest of our thoughts. While writing this piece, I found myself reminiscing about my own undergraduate days, spending many late nights with my peers in the Kelly Library, lost, so to speak, in the mountain of books and notes and papers strewn across my favourite table, writing research papers, trying to find my way back to the “path that does not stray” (Inf. 1.3). Now, as a Writing Instructor in this same building, I assist students with some of these same difficulties, some of whom are taking the same courses I took as an undergrad. The irony is not lost on me. I can’t help but smile and think, ‘funny how life works sometimes’.
As a Writing Instructor, I have the privilege of meeting many exceptional students with great minds, who, like all of us, have different approaches to research and writing, to their education, and to life in general. Many come to the Writing Centre and are often unsure of what to do, fearful to make a mistake or to do “poorly”. They are, in a sense, like Dante: faced with a long and difficult journey, and afraid, “hindered in [their] path along that lonely hillside” (Inf. 2.63), but still eager and willing to make that journey up the mountain to reach their desired destination.
Like Dante, the students I see slowly begin to find a way out of the “savage forest, dense and difficult” (Inf.1.5); they begin to recognize the “error of their ways”, so to speak, and, with a little gentle nudge here and there by their Virgilian guides, begin to see a path through to the light. Many receive the reassurance they were seeking or are gently prompted into a successful brainstorming session that leaves them filled with satisfaction. After an appointment perhaps their understanding of an assignment isn’t as black-and-white as they had liked; perhaps it is more grey than when they arrived, but, much like Dante, they “[grow] to be as one who, while he wants what is not his, is satisfied with hope” (Par. 23.13). That hope, that “certain expectation/of future glory […] the result/of God’s grace and of merit we have earned” (Par. 25.67–69) often instills a sense of confidence within our students. They leave their appointment having learned a new skill or having worked out a major problem in their writing. More importantly, they leave with the knowledge that they can succeed, that they can exit that dark forest and reach the top of Dante’s sunlit mountain.
What is so interesting is that of course the sense of satisfaction or hope does not remain solely with the student, but spreads throughout the community; our students impart it onto their colleagues, and onto us, their Writing Instructors. I am often amazed and inspired by the perseverance and dedication of many of our students; although they come to me for help, it is often they who help me. They share their newfound hope and energy with me, and then I am able to take that hope and that sense of having helped and guided someone along the “right path” into my next appointment and into the next. After such a long struggle with our global pandemic, this flicker of hope, in the most unexpected of places, becomes a reminder that, just like Dante’s journey, there is always light in the darkness.
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