Selva Oscura

My work Selva Oscura translates from Latin to meaning dark jungle or forest and is discussed in Dante’s Inferno.

In 2023 I visited the Tarkine Rain Forest in the north west of Tasmania. This forest is also known as Takayna to the Tasmanian Indigenous people and was considered a sacred place to the tribes who once lived there. Walking through this dense and dark rain forest full of strange plants and animals I thought about the poet Dante’s words as he encountered being in a dark forest, he wrote….”In the middle of the road of our life I found myself in a dark forest, because I had lost the straight path”. I believe that Dante was trying to understand his own spirituality and suggests that either you take the good path through the forest or the bad one…a decision we all face in life.