"Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost."
- The Inferno, Canto I
The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, was my writing inspiration for Saint John of Las Vegas. My friend and Dante scholar Robert Hollander urged me to capture the poem's spirit, rather than to try a literal adaptation.
The Inferno is about a man who gets a brief guided tour through hell. At each level he stops and talks to the damned. He gives them his sincere attention, and in exchange he gets information. At the start of the poem he is confused about how he should live. By the end he is clear.
In the beginning of Saint John of Las Vegas, our hero John is in denial. He meets characters who would rather live in a hell of their own making than conform to society's "heaven." Instead of judging them, he empathizes with them, and in exchange he gets information. At the end of the movie he is content with who he has been, all along.
The poem's influence extends deeper into the film. The individual characters, Virgil's race, and the abruptness of John's "love" interest come from Dante. But mapping that out seems academic. If there is any value in highlighting The Inferno's influence on Saint John of Las Vegas, it is to draw attention to the beautiful, lyric and surreal nature of the poem itself.
