I’m drawn to works of art that say things other than what they say they say. Milton’s unspoken sympathy for the devil is a particularly delicious example; more poignant is the veiled or transfigured longing in the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop or Marianne Moore.
But surely there’s no weirder example of an artist contradicting his stated intentions through the very content of his artwork than the paradoxical presence of Virgil in Dante’s Commedia. This colossal poem narrates the journey of the still-living Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven; the divine powers have selected Dante to make this singular pilgrimage, both so that he can give the world a first-hand account of the afterlife and so that he can save his own soul, which had evidently come perilously close to being lost. Virgil, the spirit of the great Roman poet, is his guide.