Bread and Stairs: Reflection on Exile

Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale. [You will prove how bitter the taste of another man’s bread is, / And how hard it is to descend, and climb, another man’s stair. Par XVII: 55-60]

Why are these lines spoken by Cacciaguida so poignant? Because they allow us a glimpse of the life the real Dante was already living and predicting for his younger self: of years spent traipsing around Italy, between various cities that weren't Florence, staying at the houses of various temporary patrons or more humble friends that weren't his first friends, ignoring the party downstairs and the shout in the hall because of the immense work consuming his head and also because, well, frankly they weren't Florentines.

And thinking about those lines again, it makes me realise that eating other people’s bread is bitter because it isn’t the bread of home or the stairs of home, which one knows how to ascend and descend without thinking because you know where the creak is and where the broken runner – and it is in such tiny departures, such microscopic alterations to the familiar worn texture of reality, like a living room in which one thing is moved out of place, that we are telescoped into a dizzying macroscopic awareness of how alien this life is and how far you've come – how widely from the ones who stayed behind.