Divine Love in the Divine Comedy and the Conference of the Birds

     Some religion has a purpose of reaching God. In Christianity, for example, priests and priestesses live in seclusion. There is the sufism in Islam. Sufis’ main aim is reaching Allah. They pray because they think worship transmits them to Allah. Divine love means reaching God because God cannot be reached without divine love. This idea inspires many writers to reflect their opinion which is related to this topic such as Attar of Nishapur in the East and Dante Alighieri in the West. Both of them wrote his ideas about how to reach God with similar approach. Attar of Nishapur transfers his ideas to readers in terms of a journey of birds. Dante Alighieri writes his opinions with his imaginary journey anew. In spite of both writers’ differences in terms of religion, era and region, their ways of narration journeys about reaching God and divine love are similar.

     Attar of Nishapur shows how to reach Allah with the aid of a journey of birds. This story is like tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism). The story has a lot of birds and they try to find a padishah (leader) for themselves and padishah represents Allah here. They find a guide (hoopoe) and hoopoe bird represents sheikh (the leader) in tasawwuf. A sheikh guides his followers about reaching Allah through attaining divine love. Disciples cannot alone do that. The beginning of the journey, some birds did not want to join journey apologetically. This event shows us not all individuals are eligible to reach God. During the journey, most of birds were eliminated because of various causes. That shows all disciples cannot reach end even they started journey. In the end, they find a bird called simurgh. However, they see themselves in mirror as god. That reflects Attar’s pantheism point of view. Also, Dante Alighieri reflects his ideas about reaching God with aid of journey, an his imaginary journey this time. He sets out on a journey which looks like human love. However, this journey starts for divine love in the Divine Comedy.    

     On the other hand, guidance point is also similar between the Conference of the Birds and the Divine Comedy. In the journeys of both writers, characters travel with a guide (birds-simurgh and Dante-Virgil) and both journeys have levels. Here is why characters cannot travel alone; because an individual or a follower does not know how to reach God in terms of way and method. Therefore, Dante gets help from Virgil who was a Roman poet and the birds get help from simurgh. Furthermore, two journeys have level concept. Concept of the Conference of the Birds is valley. The birds have to pass these impracticable valley: demand, love, knowledge, oneness, astonishment,  fakr and fena. Dante’s journey has three levels: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. 

    When everything is taken into account, the Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur and the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri use similar methods to reflect their approaches about divine love in their works in terms of concepts of journey, guidance and level although they were in different region and era and they had different beliefs. Attar of Nishapur tells his ideas about divine love with birds journey and Dante Alighieri reflects his opinions about divine love with aid of an imaginary soul journey. Both of writers target to tell how to reach God and how to gain divine love with using similar ways such as journey and guidance concepts.