I first read of the Road to Santiago in Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist,” a journey he himself took and wrote of in “The Pilgrimage” and credits to inspiration for his art. I found it again, unsuspecting when intentionally taking a break from Coelho’s books, in Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” when Jack, a great artist and creator follows it in search to learning something of his storytelling father. By traveling the Road, the Love of Jack’s Life is returned to him and miracles (dismissed by the agnostic Jack, failing to see how simply God sometimes works—especially through our subtle-guided acts) permits him the gift of returning home to fulfill another Life Passion.
The Road is said to be the Pilgrimage of Storytellers, its trail once lined by jongleurs and romantic poets and storytellers in times of old, speaking and spinning stories to travelers as they passed.
The Road spoke again this morning, in the third to last Canzo of Dante’s “Vita Nuova,” which if we are to hold Dante’s emphasis on the number three, its timing must mean something. In the final canzo of “Vita Nuova,” Dante writes”
“…there came to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blessed one until I would be capable of writing about her in a nobler way. To achieve this I am still striving as hard as I can, and this she truly knows. Accordingly, if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live that my life continue for a few more years, I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman.”
This story, romance, became “The Divine Comedy.” Whether he ever traveled the Road to Santiago, Dante traveled its journey of discovery in soul and, as with so many of its Pilgrims, was gifted the Story he sought to write and share.
I would like to travel this Road someday, live and tell the story of my Reason, but I will wait until “capable of writing about (it) in a nobler way.”