The Dante Alighieri of the Divine Comedy is lost. He needs help and is afraid. He doubts himself and often weeps at the human suffering or folly he will see on his journey. Will he be able to reach the end? He doesn’t know. It’s this kind of frail humanity of Dante’s poetry that still speaks to us across hundreds of years. Dante writes in the first person, and that’s part of his magic. We see the world through his eyes, as if we ourselves were sharing the journey. Indeed Dante says we are. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, the poem begins: In the middle of the journey…