1001 Nights the Arabian Nights

1001 Nights The Arabian Nights and the Divine Comedy The greatest works of literature of all times are loaded with profound ethical and religious meanings. This is the case with the Arabian Nights, one of the greatest and most spectacular folkloric works of all times as well as with Dante's Divine Comedy. Although the two works pertain to very different cultures and are nurtured by different religious beliefs, the essence of the moral lesson they teach is similar.

Interestingly, both of these majestic and extremely ambitious works of art end with a similar conclusion: the supremacy of love as the main virtue which can unite man with God. The Arabian Nights are one of the most significant and majestic works of the Islamic culture. Its unforgettable stories and its exotic, fantastic scenery form one of the most enduring literary monuments. Moreover, the work is replete with moral lessons and important spiritual illumination.

In the fabulous universe of the Arabian Nights everything seems possible and the great creator of the world fills the world with his bounty. The richness of the text and its extremely symbolic structure offer a wealth of interpretations. Storytelling itself is one of the ways in which virtue and moral truth are taught in the book. It is not therefore accidental that the narrative has a symbolic form and that it is divided according to the number of nights in which Scheherazade tells her stories to the king.

If the number of nights or the temporal duration of the story is relatively well-defined (one thousand nights and one night), the number of stories is infinite. Notably, the text is not divided according to the number of stories. Scheherazade begins a story one night and finishes it in another, becoming demurely silent every time the dawn shines through the window. Thus, the thread of the stories is cut and then knotted again. Moreover, the stories are interrupted by other stories that erupt in their middle, projecting the meanings infinitely.

The story within story form is extremely significant as it points to the belief in the healing or purging power of storytelling and of the imagination in general. In the Arabian Nights thus the moral lessons are told through storytelling. Moreover, the bigger frame of the story is also very significant: Scheherazade uses her storytelling almost like a magical power to trick the king into postponing her doom.

Betrayed by his first wife, king Shahryar has lost his faith in love and his trust in people and determines to wed every night a new young woman and to kill her before the dawn comes, thus taking revenge on women in general. These gruesome killing are stopped by the wise and shrewd Scheherazade who fascinated the king with the addictive power of her stories. It is thus obvious that the stories the king hears during the one thousand and one nights have a healing spiritual power.

At the end of the one thousand and one nights, Scheherazade shows the king his three very young children she has borne to him during this time, and entreats him for her life for the sake of the children.

The miracle and force of this revelation works its effect on the king who not only grants Scheherazade her life but also determines to forget his anger and revert to true understanding and to the divinity: "Then she ceased to speak, and when King Shahryar heard her speech and profited by that which she said, he summoned up his reasoning powers and cleansed his heart and caused his understanding revert and turned to Allah Almighty and said to himself: 'Since there befell the Kings of the Chosroes more than that which hath befallen me, never whilst I live shall I cease to blame myself for the past.'"("Arabian Nights Entertainments," 891) Thus, the spiritual renewal and the moral lesson of forgiveness are accomplished by the miracle of love.

The larger frame of the story thus comprises as major lesson on love as a magical and healing power. Dante's Divine Comedy is an extremely ambitious and impressive work, and one of the greatest writings inspired by the Christian religion. Needless to say, love is essential to Christianity and it is preached in all its different forms.

Dante's poem with its effusion of imagination and symbols, as well as through its morally compelling content is similar to the Arabian Nights in that it can be classified as a monument of ingenuity. The structure of Dante's Divine Comedy with its three main divisions and its one hundred cantos is very symbolic. Thus, not accidentally, Dante and his guide Virgil travel progressively from the outward circles to the lowest circles of the Inferno.

Dante's journey is a pilgrimage that initiates him into the greatest mysteries of creation and of God and reveals to him the eternal moral truth. In his journey through Hell, Dante is first confronted with the greatest sins and transgressions of humanity against moral law. As such, he first Dante's encounter with Lucifer is placed at the very end of his journey through Hell as it symbolizes the ultimate confrontation with sin and untruth.

For the pilgrim, this is yet another step that initiates him into moral truth and the greatest divine mysteries of the universe. Moreover, Satan's punishment is the worst of all the sinners in Hell. Trapped at the very center of the universe, Satan is doomed to stay in absolute immobility on the lake frozen by his very wings. He represents the very root of evil, and therefore his punishment is the greatest of all the sinners.

Thus, Lucifer is conquered, a prisoner because he is guilty of the greatest transgression: blindness to the absolute truth. Satan is depicted as immobile and dumb, a state which symbolizes his impotence. After going through all the circles of the Inferno, Dante proceeds to the Purgatory where he sees those who await redemption for their sins. Thus, Dante and his symbolic companion Virgil, pass from Hell to the Purgatory and then finally to Paradise, thus significantly.