Ars vitae: Ulysses, Dante and Comenius

Abstract

Using three crucial works of world literature, the paper maps out cardinal parameters of journeys through life and accentuates their spiritual and/or ethical context. In the first part we follow Ulysses returning home. We think of stops on his devious journey as an opportunity for personal maturing during which the forming of the cardinal virtues and eliminating of the vices are accomplished. The journey of Dante, the main personage of “Divine Comedy”, shows exceptional range of man as a multicomponent being: from the bodily anchorage through the struggle between virtues and sins up to spiritual ascents at the Paradise. We consider the word “labyrinth” to be one of keywords for the life pilgrim – Comenius. We analyse his well-known The Labyrinth of the World and The Paradise of the Heart as well as less known work Unum Necessarium, where Comenius presents the different approach to a labyrinth. He internalized “the labyrinth of the world” into “the labyrinth of the mind”. At the conclusion we try to find simultaneous traits of all analysed sources and to concentrate them to some keynotes.