Dante’s poem is called The Divine Comedy. Sacrilegious poet! He usurped the impassible sceptre of Godhead to assign his friend and foe to the eternal terraces of the paradiso and the inferno. Does not all writing, even if it aims at Gelassenheit—to let things be—arrogate such illegitimate authority?

Philosophy provides a humbler definition of comedy, which eludes the hubris of the medieval poet: “The comical as such implies an infinite light-heartedness and confidence felt by someone raised altogether above his own inner contradiction and not bitter or miserable in it at all; this is the bliss and ease of a man who, being sure of himself, can bear the frustrations of his aims and achievements.” This is Hegel’s version of the divine comedy. No human being possesses sureness of self: this can only mean being bounded and unbounded, selved and unselved, “sure” only of this untiring exercise. Then, this sureness of self, which is ready to be unsure, makes the laughter at the mismatch between aim and achievement comic, not cynical; holy, not demonic. This is not love of suffering, but the work, the power of love, which may curse, but abides. It is power to be able to attend, powerful or powerless; it is love to laugh bitterly, purgatively, purgatorially, and then to be quiet.