Matter and Substance (Prose Poem)

I had a dream wherein I could not hear the music for the loud, distracting discord of the damned sounds.
But then I noticed, perplexed: these too, in all their corruption, are like a kind of music—
inscrutable and distant, and yet more tangible.
To listen and to hear, then
—or, rather, to do these singly, without distinction—would be to be transfigured.
For to understand is not to know; to know sounds as music by necessity means the death of at least some understanding.

Dante’s Inferno, illustration by Gustave Doré

Dante’s Purgatorio, illustration by Gustave Doré

Dante’s Paradiso, illustration by Gustave Doré

Matthew J. Hall is a historian and musician.