There doesn’t seem to be a moment in Lewis’s adult life in which Dante was not close at hand and vividly present in his thoughts. The Florentine was a constant interlocutor. Just as when Augustine wanted to talk about love or loss, and would reach into his mind to try to find language adequate to capture the power of the experience, and would inadvertently begin quoting passages from Virgil, Lewis would open his mouth to say something moving and personal and find himself quoting Dante.13
