Day 2 - Virgil and the The Hero's companion

Every soul needs some help along the way.  Once you break out of the mundane and decide to enter the dark forest of transformation, a mentor or guide is essential to aide the wanderer.  Joseph Cambpell speaks of the guide as essential to the Hero's journey. 
"For those who have note refused the call, the first encounter of the hero's journey is with a protective figure...What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny."

While only you can take that first step, the second and third, maybe even the 103rd, require some external hand.  Ulysses (or Odysseus) had Athena and Hermes,  Luke had Obi-wan, and Aeneas had Sybill to guide him through the underwold in the Aeneid.  The Aeneid is the work that Dante was mot influenced by when composing his own epic through the underworld, so naturally he would choose its author, a like minded poet who strived to create a work of art that would serve as a formative document of the then burgeoning community we have since named Rome and Romans. Dante had similarly lofty ambitions, wanting his comedy to be an addition to the Holy Scriptures.  So when Dante says in lines 7 though 10 "o muses, oh high genius, help me now. o memory that set down what i saw, here shal your excellence reveal itself'", i really think he is working on a textual and meta-textual level.  On one hand, Dante the pilgrim recognizes that the path through the underworld is unknown to mortals and the way is fraught with pitfalls.  Without a guide, it is a fools journey.  This echoes the many Hero's journeys that came before La Divina comedia, as well as the countless adventure tales and blockbuster movies that have made use of this narrative device. 

But the other level, the one in which Dante the poet reveals himself, is one in which he reaches out of the text into the realm of creative inspiration.  He is, after all, trying to add his work to the pantheon of eternal epic poetry.  Just like Homer and Virgil before him, he offers a prayer to the muses, the ancient unknowable forces fo the universe that have inspires the artist of this world to create their masterworks.  They are his guide, and Virgil is the physical manifestation of the muses.  He is Dante's most obvious source of inspiration and influence. By recruiting the muses, and therefore the guide Virgil as chosen by the muses (i.e. God the prime mover), this essential validates the journey and informs the reader that the protagonist, as either Dante the poet or Dante the pilgrim, is destined to succeed. After all how many myths, action movies, or adventure novels end with the Hero failing?  It simply doesn't happen outside of current postmodern sensibilities, and even then it is rare. 

It is a feat of chutzpah and some might say hubris that Dante begins this work, already placing it amongst the epics that had been written centuries (or even millenia) before him.  It is a purposeful act.  Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim were fated to succeed.  What so amazing is that Dante did succeed, and many folks (myself included) believe that he surpassed his poetic guide.  Dante surpassed Virgil.  The poet becomes the muse, ready to inspire the next soul venturing into the dark forest.