4.19

5

Dec 20, 2008

"You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth."

- Niels Bohr

I was thinking about Dante the other day and wondering how one could approach him from the angle of a GoodReads review. One of the obvious problems is that he lived a long time ago, and many of the cultural referents have changed. You're constantly having to think "Well, nowadays what he's saying would correspond to THAT". It isn't so bad in Hell, when there is "You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth."

- Niels Bohr

I was thinking about Dante the other day and wondering how one could approach him from the angle of a GoodReads review. One of the obvious problems is that he lived a long time ago, and many of the cultural referents have changed. You're constantly having to think "Well, nowadays what he's saying would correspond to THAT". It isn't so bad in Hell, when there is plenty of entertainment to be had in seeing how the different sins are punished, and indulging your schadenfreude. Then Purgatory tells a moral story that's more or less timeless if you go for that sort of thing, but once you arrive in Paradise it starts getting seriously tricky. A lot of the stuff at first sight just seems irrelevant to the 21st century world... all these explanations about the mechanics of Ptolomaic astronomy, and Dante querying the inhabitants of Heaven on obscure theological points. It's notorious that readers most often give up somewhere in the third book. I started wondering if there was any modern-day author one could identify with Dante, and if that might help us connect to his concerns. And in fact, I do have a suggestion that some people will no doubt condemn out of hand as completely heretical: Richard Dawkins.

Now of course, I am aware that Dante was deeply immersed in the Christian world-view, and Dawkins is famous for being the world's most outspoken atheist. But it's not quite as crazy as it first may seem. Dante was a Christian to the core of his being, but he was furious with the way the Church was being run; he put several of its leaders, notably Pope Boniface VIII, in Hell. On the other side, I challenge anyone to read "The Ancestor's Tale" to the end, and not, at least for a moment, entertain the idea that Dawkins is in actual fact a deeply religious man. He admits as much himself: as he puts it, it's often not so much that he disagrees with conventionally religious people, more that "they are saying it wrong". Amen to that.

As noted, both Dante and Dawkins are extremely unhappy with the way mainstream religion is being organized. The other characteristic that unites them for me is this passionate love for science. One has to remember that, for Dante, Ptolomaic astronomy was state of the art stuff, and the details of the angelic hierarchy were a topic of vital importance; of course he cross-examines the hosts of the blessed to find out more. These days, I imagine he would be trying to get inside information on what happened during the Big Bang before spontaneous symmetry breaking occurred, whether or not the Higgs particle really exists, and how evolution produced human intelligence. For Dante, there didn't seem to be any opposition between religious faith and science - they were part of the same thing. I do wonder what he would have thought if he had been able to learn that many leading religious figures, even in the early 21st century, reject a large part of science as being somehow unreligious. It's wrong to spend your life dispassionately trying to understand God's Universe? I can see him getting quite angry about this, and deciding to rearrange the seating a little down in Hell.

I keep thinking that there's a book someone ought to write called "Five Atheists You'll Meet in Heaven". Please let me know when it comes out; I'll buy a copy at once.

**************************************

PS I couldn't help wondering what Paradise might have looked like if Dante had been writing today. Obviously we wouldn't have the old geocentric model of the Universe - it would be bang up to date. I think there is now far more material for an ambitious poet to work with than there was in the 14th century. For example, when we get to the Heaven of the Galaxy, I imagine him using this wonderful fact that all the heavy elements are made in supernova explosions. "We are all stardust", as some people like to put it. Then when we get to the Heaven of the Cosmos, we find that the light from the "Let there be light" moment at the beginning of Creation is still around - it's just cooled to 2.7 degrees K, and appears as the cosmic background radiation. But it's not completely uniform, as the quantum fluctuations left over from the period when the Universe was the size of an atomic nucleus are the beginnings of the galaxies created on the second day. Finally, we reach the Heaven of the Multiverse, and find that we are just one of many different universes. It was necessary to create all of them, so that random processes could make sure that a very small number would end up being able to support life. How impious to assume that God would only be able to create one Universe, and have to tweak all the constants Himself!
...more

5

Jul 09, 2014

I once thought I'd write an essay on how long it takes a serious author (of fiction or nonfiction) before he or she inevitably quotes Dante. If I were to write a novel myself (this is a hypothetical grammatical construction!), I'd probably manage about a page before I'd exclaim that I am lost, and middle-aged, and in the middle of a dark forest. I'd try to kill off annoying acquaintances and punish them severely for their lack of admiration for me and my creativity (not to mention my sarcasm and I once thought I'd write an essay on how long it takes a serious author (of fiction or nonfiction) before he or she inevitably quotes Dante. If I were to write a novel myself (this is a hypothetical grammatical construction!), I'd probably manage about a page before I'd exclaim that I am lost, and middle-aged, and in the middle of a dark forest. I'd try to kill off annoying acquaintances and punish them severely for their lack of admiration for me and my creativity (not to mention my sarcasm and irony!!), and of course I would meet my teenage love and be joined together forever in eternal happiness in the end (or maybe not, come to think of it, I might skip that part!), after spending a life travelling the underworld in the company of the most brilliant author I can think of.

Dante fulfilled all his (and my!) dreams with the Divina Commedia, and I envy him his bravery and talent, not to mention his ability to write in that beautiful Italian. However, not all parts of the poem were equally appealing to me.

I found myself loving Inferno, liking Purgatorio, and not quite identifying with Paradiso at all.
I always wondered why that is, and concluded that humans are much better at depicting hell than heaven, chaos than order, dystopia than utopia. Reason being, in my (not very important) opinion: there's no storyline behind real bliss, and without stories, we are not entirely connected to humanity and its questions anymore. Paradiso is nice, but uninteresting, sort of.
"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate" - the ticket to hell: I doubt if there ever was a better advertisement for a rollercoaster adventure!

Update in Year One Of Post-Truth Wall Building:

I am still lost in that dark forest of middle age, trying to make sense of life, and Dante comes to mind more and more often, in the same way Orwell's 1984 does: it grows more realistic with every day that passes. This morning, "The Wall Of Dis" all of a sudden forced itself upon my thoughts, - the great wall separating Dante's Upper and Lower Hell. Upper Hell is for the Carnal, Gluttonous, Greedy, and Wrathful, whereas the other side of the wall contains the Heretical, Violent, Fraudulent and Treacherous. It just struck me that every wall in the world has created that kind of "mental division". The typical representatives of "upper hell", consumed by the everyday sins of wanting most of everything for themselves without being bothered by others, usually keep their "moral upper hand" by accusing the "other side of the wall" of worse crimes, such as the "wrong religion", violence, and treason.

The funny (or sad) thing is that it works both ways. You can turn hell upside down and have the same results: egotistical, narcissistic angry men accuse others of treason and heresy to deflect from their own faults. No wonder Inferno is a timeless classic: after all, Dante based it on his own experience of a divisive, violent political situation. ...more

5

Jul 06, 2019

”THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST.
JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER;
MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.”


Botticelli’s vision of Satan. There are 92 illustrations by Botticelli, inspired by The Divine Comedy, of which this edition contains a selection.

I read ”THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST.
JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER;
MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.”


Botticelli’s vision of Satan. There are 92 illustrations by Botticelli, inspired by The Divine Comedy, of which this edition contains a selection.

I read Inferno while in college and had always intended to go back and read Purgatorio and Paradiso, but somehow the years passed and I never returned to Dante’s masterpiece. When my son went off to college and asked to borrow some classics to read, I sent him, along with my copy of The Divine Comedy, Canterbury Tales, Utopia, Paradise Lost, and several other important works of literature. The rule with books, of course, is that there is no such thing as lending and returning. The lending part goes fine, but the returning is usually the tricky part. When I decided it was time to return to Dante, I didn’t ask for my copy back from my son, though he would be one of the few people who would return a book. I feel that giving a book to either of my children is an investment in all of our futures.

Since I decided to descend into hell with Dante, I was frequently glad to have Virgil as our guide. He explained the explainable. He provided a protective wing from the many monstrosities that we encounter.

”Gross hailstones, water gray with filth, and snow
Come streaking down across the shadowed air;
The earth, as it receives that shower, stinks.
Over the souls of those submerged beneath
That mess, is an outlandish, vicious beast,
His three throats barking, doglike: Cerberus.
His eyes are bloodred; greasy, black, his beard;
His belly bugles, and his hands are claws;
His talons tear and flay and rend the shades.”

As I was reading Dante’s descriptions of various horrendous beasts, it reminded me of the fantastical medieval expressions of imagination that I’ve encountered numerous times in the margins of holy books. These early monk illustrators displayed such a vivid creativity in how they depicted their fears. I can only wonder how terrifying their nightmares were and for them to believe that these terrors were real would only add wings and claws to their trepidation. They were infected with these fears by Christianity, while being dangled the balm and possibility of heaven.

How about this for a living nightmare?

”As I kept my eyes fixed upon those sinners,
A serpent with six feet springs out against
One of the three, and clutches him completely.
It gripped his belly with its middle feet,
And with its forefeet grappled his two arms;
And then it sank its teeth in both his cheeks;
It stretched its rear feet out along his thighs
And ran its tail along between the two,
Then straightened it again behind his loins.
No ivy ever gripped a tree so fast
As when that horrifying monster clasped
And intertwined the other’s limbs with its.
Then just as if their substance were warm wax,
They stuck together and they mixed their colors,
So neither seemed what he had been before.”

After seeing some of the horrors awaiting us in hell, which has proved to be a much better scare tactic for considering improving my heavenly resume than Death on the Highway or Red Asphalt II were for improving my driving skills, we encountered the pantheon of classical writers Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. Dante was so proud (we will deal with pride in Purgatory) that they accepted him as a member of their club. I was starting to wonder if Dante may have already resigning himself to a life in hell. Are great writers who don’t use their gifts glorifying God doomed to hell?

One of the wonderful things about writing, to paraphrase Chaucer, is that you can eviscerate your enemies forever in print, and certainly the people who had most offended Dante in life were experiencing the tortures of everlasting hell. Writers do play God. Because of the fame of The Divine Comedy, their names will always be associated with a list of famous sinners. I would say that Dante’s revenge was served cold, but really it was rather warmly given.

We also meet some sinners who led pious lives worthy of heaven, but because they were never baptised for the reason they lived before Christianity existed, or fell under the catchall phrase ”did not worship God in fitting ways,” and were all, every one of them, consigned to hell. God does seem to be very particular about all of his children fearing him, loving him above all else, and most importantly of all worshipping him. So it wasn’t about whether these people were good people, but that they showed proper reverence to his worshipness. Later, when I visited heaven, I didn’t see any issues with overcrowding, so I’m not sure why a few get out of hell free cards couldn’t have been surreptitiously handed out to those bereft of sin who didn’t completely conform to his will. How about even just a leg up to purgatory, where eventually one might after thousands of years of suffering earn a pair of wings?

It was with some relief, my deodorant was starting to give way, we ascended to Purgatory and confronted the seven terraced mountain, representing the seven deadly sins. For those in need of a recap, there are the malicious uses of love, such as wrath, envy, and pride, and those where love is too strong, such as lust, gluttony, and greed. Sloth is the only sin not based on excesses, but on a lack of enough self-love or energy to be a contributing member of society. As I weigh myself on these scales, I can honestly say that sloth and greed have never been sins of mine. Pride, I will admit, was a struggle when I was younger, but life has a way of knocking the piss out of us and reminding us constantly that we are only half as smart as we think we are. I’ve had a few wrathful moments in my life, but being around human beings for too long will test the patience of the most sainted among us. Lust I will plead the fifth, and gluttony . . well, food has never been an issue, but one could make a case that I do suffer from a serious case of book gluttony.

I did check out some of the real estate pricing while in Purgatory. *sigh*

It was with some relief that we discovered some angels in purgatory, bedraggled ones to be sure, but still ones doing what we want angels to do, which is protect us from marauding beasts.

”I saw the company of noble spirits,
silent and looking upward, pale and humble,
as if in expectation; and I saw,
emerging and descending from above,
two angels bearing flaming swords, of which
the blades were broken off, without their tips.”

Angels are badass warriors, and there have been several television shows in recent years that has depicted them as soft and warm cuddle buddies, but really angels aren’t for clinking beers with, but for us to stand behind when winged, fire spitting beasts are attempting to turn us into crispy critters.

Dante shared an epiphany with me while in Purgatory that left me thinking about the creation of dreams and how important it is for all of us to continue to build new dreams as we leap the final hurdles of achieving a dream or find that other dreams may no longer suit us.

”A new thought arose inside of me and, from
that thought, still others--many and diverse--
were born: I was so drawn from random thought
to thought that, wandering in mind, I shut
my eyes, transforming thought on thought to dream.”

Virgil was replaced as our guide by Beatrice as we were about three-quarters of the way through Purgatory. I was sorry to see Virgil go, but I must admit I’ve always wanted to meet Beatrice, just to see what type of woman would inspire such a lifetime of devotion from a man like Dante. She was the daughter of a banker, married a banker, and with her premature death at 25 remained forever the very vision of beauty. According to Dante, he only met her twice, but those sightings must have been magical because they left him with a permanent love hangover. I wanted to ask Dante if he had ever even talked to the lass or if he just projected all of his visions of her from glimpses of her outer beauty, but then the fact that she is here in Paradise may answer that question for me.

”In ascent, her eyes--
All beauty’s living seals--gain force, and notes
that I had not yet turned to them in Mars,
can then excuse me--just as I accuse
myself , thus to excuse myself--and see
that I speak truly: here her holy beauty
is not denied--ascent makes it more perfect.”

Heaven light, as it turns out, is even better than bar light. We all look our best.

If you are considering reading Dante, I would recommend for sure reading Inferno. Most likely when you encounter Dante references appearing in your reading, they will probably be from the Inferno. This Allen Mandelbaum translation is wonderful and so easy to read, and there are copious notes in the back to help guide you if Virgil loses you in a flaming forest. This is one of the classic works which I have felt for some time I’ve needed to read. There will be many more this year, including but not limited to War and Peace, Magic Mountain, and Les Miserables.

If a bit of flayed skin flies out from between the pages once in a while, don’t be afraid; it’s just part of the adventure. A word of caution though, be sure to buy some SPF1000 before you take this scenic walk with Dante.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten ...more

5

Jun 02, 2008

Divina Commedia = Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia #1-3), Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work in Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped Divina Commedia = Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia #1-3), Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work in Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه جولای سال 1976 میلادی
عنوان: کمدی الهی در سه جلد: دوزخ - برزخ - بهشت؛ سروده: دانته آلیگری؛ مترجم: شجاع الدین شفا؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، 1335؛
البته که ترجمه های دیگران از نامداران و مترجمان این اثر کم بدیل جداگانه معرفی شده اند
سرود اول بهشت
جلال ِ آن کس که گرداننده ی همه چیز است، سرتاسر جهان آفرینش را به فرمان خویش دارد. ولی در اینجا (آسمان) بیشتر، و در جاهای دیگر کمتر متجلی است. بدان آسمانی رفتم، که بیش از هر آسمان دگر از فروغ او بهره مند است، و چیزهایی را دیدم که آنکس که از آن بالا فرود آمده باشد، نه میداند و نه میتواند بازگفت. زیرا که حس ادراک ما، با نزدیکی به مایه ی اشتیاق خود، چنان مجذوب میشود، که حافظه ی ما را، یارای همراهی با آن نمیماند. با این همه، آنچه را که از قلمرو مقدس (بهشت) در گنجینه ی اندیشه، جای توانسته ام داد، اکنون مایه ی این سرود خویش میکنم، و بازش میگویم. ای «آپولوی» نیک نهاد، برای این سهم آخرین، مرا آن اندازه، از نبوغ خویش عطا کن، که برای سپردن تاج افتخار محبوب خود به کسان، از آنان طلب میکنی... ا. شربیانی ...more

5

May 26, 2018

I attempt to rewrite the Divine Comedy

In the middle of the journey of my life
I came across a man named Trump
Who seemed bent on causing much strife

O! how he was an unpleasant, fleshy lump!
Like some hobgoblin of the child's imagination
Or a thing that in the night goes bump.

But in spite of lengthy cogitation
I find I have produced fewer words
Than members of the crowd at an inauguration

I've doubtless disappointed the Dante nerds
And before long may well concede defeat
My plan, I admit, was strictly I attempt to rewrite the Divine Comedy

In the middle of the journey of my life
I came across a man named Trump
Who seemed bent on causing much strife

O! how he was an unpleasant, fleshy lump!
Like some hobgoblin of the child's imagination
Or a thing that in the night goes bump.

But in spite of lengthy cogitation
I find I have produced fewer words
Than members of the crowd at an inauguration

I've doubtless disappointed the Dante nerds
And before long may well concede defeat
My plan, I admit, was strictly for the birds

Alas! Success will not these efforts greet
I am totally running out of steam
And will soon be mocked by some misspelled tweet

I had despaired. Then last night, in a dream
I heard a voice say, "Manny, just have some fun.
Go on, I tell you, it'll be a scream."

"Master," I said, "I think I'm not the one."
"Fear not," he answered. "All things will be well.
Recount the tale of Trump and Kim Jong-Un."

"But first," I asked, "What is the place in Hell
Reserved, I hear, for Justin Trudeau's soul
And what his punishment? I beg, please tell."

[To be continued when I find new inspiration. I am currently interviewing muses] ...more

5

Jan 09, 2014

THE DARING, somewhat COMIC, and also DIVINE, INVENTIO


It is very difficult not to be lured by the highly intelligent craft of Durante degli Aliguieri (DA). And may be it is not a coincidence that he was the exact contemporary of Giotto, his fellow Florentine. For if Giotto planted the seed for a pictorial representation of the world in which man, at the center, and through a window, delivers to us a naturalistic depiction of divine stories, Dante also used his writing to posit himself as the



THE DARING, somewhat COMIC, and also DIVINE, INVENTIO


It is very difficult not to be lured by the highly intelligent craft of Durante degli Aliguieri (DA). And may be it is not a coincidence that he was the exact contemporary of Giotto, his fellow Florentine. For if Giotto planted the seed for a pictorial representation of the world in which man, at the center, and through a window, delivers to us a naturalistic depiction of divine stories, Dante also used his writing to posit himself as the Author who through his fictional persona or Alter-Ego, gives us the viewpoint to contemplate the full cosmos. His cosmos, but for us to share.

Still, we modern readers, in spite of Modernist and PostModernist awareness, are still fooled by DA’s handling of illusion, and easily become pilgrims and start on a literary trip more than ready to absorb everything that DA wants us to see, and think, and believe.

POLITICS

So, for example, we will learn his political views. DA was exiled in 1301 and led a peripatetic life, outside Florence, until his death in 1321. He wrote the Commedia during the exile, from 1309 and finished it in time. By masterfully welding the fact and mythologized fiction of the world of Antiquity, he cloths himself with the full robes of Auctoritas, and presents us the complex development of European politics during the thirteenth century. He summons his views repeatedly either by the succession of visits to the traitors or in fully developed historical pageants.

Of course, Hell is populated by DA’s enemies, with the very pope responsible for his exile, Boniface VIII, holding stardom in Circle 8th. In this Inferno DA is the very Minos. He is the one who with his pen of many tails wraps around his enemies and throws them down the pit to the Circle that DA believes the chosen sinners deserve. Even if this spectacle horrifies his ingenuous Pilgrim.

The ranking of the Inferno Circles reflect also DA’s values. Lust is the least damaging while Treason, in particular political treason and the betrayal of friends, is the most despicable. In comparison even Lucifer, a rendition that remains faithful to the medieval tradition, is not much more than a grotesque, and not particularly hateful, monster.

Politics continue in Purgatory. DA’s audacity is again proved by the way he exploits to its fullest what was still a relatively new concept in Christian dogma (1274). If DA had been Minos in Inferno, he now is the discerning Cato of Purgatory. He is the one holding the Silver and Gold keys, and who claims to know the very intimate thought of those who had the luck to repent the instance just before dying. He awards then the transit ticket to Paradise. Can we be surprised if some of the awardees had some relation to those figures who had welcomed DA during his exile?

DA’s authorial knowledge is supplemented by the granting his protagonist with the role of Messenger of Hope. The Pilgrim, as the only human in Purgatory, can bid for more prayers to the still living relatives when he goes back to Earth. He can effect a change in the duration that any purging sinner is to spend in the transitional stage, the only one of the three realms in which the clock is ticking.

Could one expect DA to finally drop the political discourse in Heaven? No, of course not. There it even acquires greater strength since the discourse is cloaked with a divine mantle. In Paradiso it will be no other than Saint Peter himself who will denounce the path of degeneration that the Papacy had taken in recent years. And if Boniface VIII (died in 1303) had been repeatedly identified as the culprit for the evil in earth, now it is his succeeding popes, --and contemporary to the writing of Commedia--, who are selected by DA’s saintly mouthpiece. Pope Clement V was responsible for the transfer of the papacy to Avignon, and the cupidity of John XXII was for everyone to see.

Indeed, a secluded Apocalyptical 666 attests that politics forms a triptych in Commedia. In agreement with the intricate framework of parallels, symmetries and balances in this work, DA devoted the three chapters 6 in each book to political diatribes.

Apart from his relying on Ancient Auctoritas, DA also accorded the full weight of history to his views, and it is mostly in a couple of major pageants and in the Valley of the Kings that he exposes the political disaster that the withdrawal from the Italian peninsula by the Empire had on the various city states. It was left to the corrupt papacy and to the corrupt smaller kingdoms to spread crime along the full Europe. His solution was clear. The papacy had to govern only religious matters, and he extolled the Emperor Henry VII to hold the political reins of Europe. It is DA’s canonized Beatrice who has a reserved seat for this Emperor in God’s White Flower if he does succeed in exerting his salvific political role.






DOGMA

But the Commedia is not just about politics. This extremely complex work is also soaking in Christian Dogma. Of course politics and dogma were inextricably joined during the Middle Ages, and that was part of DA’s very complaint. And what is to me extraordinary about the immediate reception of Commedia, is that it was treated like Scripture. Even the early editions were illustrated like illuminated manuscripts—which in a way is most befitting if we remember that it is about the progress of a Pilgrim’s as he approaches Light and gains a 20/20 vision elevated tho the Trinitarian power.

In his appeal to religious dogma DA was extraordinarily successful, even if some of his claims were shockingly daring. He modified or added realms to the Christian Cosmos, with the peculiar understanding of the Limbo to accommodate revered figures from Ancient Antiquity, or added the Pre-Purgatory for the unabsolved Rulers. He designed his own ranking of the Sins, both for Hell and Purgatory. But most importantly he proposed his understanding of Free Will and its conflicting relationship to Predetermination and God’s vision. Not by chance did he place the discussion of Free Will at the very center of the work, in Canto 16 of Purgatory.

But the most dangerous proposition, for him, was his vehement defense of the limitations of the Papacy on Earth. He started writing in 1307 just a few years after the Papal Bull of Unam Sanctam the very controversial claim of papal infallibility. Not this book, but Dante’s Monarchia, in which he strongly attacked official tenet, was burned soon after Dante’s death and was included in the list of forbidden books during the 16th century.





NARRATIVE SCHEMES

To us, however, it is not his proclamations on Dogma, and not even his political views (except for historians), which offer the greatest interest. What is most remarkable for literature addicts is how DA, the author, develops all these themes, and succeeds in weighing with the gravest authority his poetic treatise. And this he does through his masterful manipulation of the power of fiction and the sophisticated uses of voices.

For a start, there is the protagonist: DA’s Alter Ego, and the only human in the full work. His humanity, and his being in the middle of the moral mess in which he has placed himself is the perfect mirror for the reader. But we can trust him to embody us because Virgil, the greatest Roman poet and chronologist of the foundation of Rome, will guide us. We can trust him also because Christian Divinity has selected him as the, temporary, guide. It is only when Virgil’s powers have reached his limits, two thirds into the full work, that the pilgrim’s identity is revealed to us. He is Dante himself, or Dante the Pilgrim (DP). With his revealed identity he can say goodbye to the pagan guide who cannot, alas, have a place in Heaven.


Dante, however, will.





The spoiler provided by our general culture has damaged the way we read the work. The astounding pretention of DA in assigning himself the powers in deciding who goes where in his system of divine retributions has been blurred to some naive readers. Some of them try to excuse Dante precisely because they have been entirely convinced by his acting puppet. The highly successful Dante the Pilgrim (DP) as a candid personality with the qualities of kindness, fear, anger and similar emotions, distracts our attention away from the real Dante, the Author.

The Pilgrim is an alibi mechanism for his creator. He shows pity for the people DA condemns. He can go beyond the Terrace of Pride, in which the rather proud DA may be still spending some of his time. And he becomes the anointed messenger from the Heavens to deliver to us what DA is writing. But we would also be mistaken if we did not recognized that not always him, but many other characters voice DA’s opinion. His brilliant dramatization with innumerable personages constitutes the choir of a ventriloquist.

In the sophisticated Narrative technique, the handling of time is also magisterial. Apart from the symbolic unfolding of the action during Holy Week of the year 1300, and the references to eternal cosmic time, it is the numerous voices of this clever ventriloquist who continually foretell what is to happen to the sinners.

Most outstandingly the voices predict the eternal condemnation of DA’s particular enemies. Some of these were not yet dead at the time of the pilgrimage, but had already passed away when DA was writing his poem. Such an example is the premonition that the most hated pope Boniface VIII will be damned. He died three years later. But there is also the shocking case of the soul that is already in penance while his body is still living on earth. This personality died even after Dante.

Finally it is DP himself, once he has entered Heaven, who engages in this foretelling, and of course, it had to be in his warning to the Popes that were about to be in power in the years after the voyage of the Commedia, reminding them to stay out of politics and to forget material wealth.

The suitability of DP as our Alter-egos to reach salvation is certified by his examinations on the Theological Virtues by the the Apostles Peter, James and John. He passes them with flying colors, because DP acknowledges that his knowledge is based on the Holy Text.

And it is also with Text, and DA was very well versed in exploiting its four levels of interpretation (Literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical), that is, with this new poetry that Dante Aliguieri is proposing a plan for his, and our, salvation. Because after such a heavenly Graduation who can deny the Commedia its status as Prophetic and Scriptural? May be we saw it coming, when the still anonymous Pilgrim posited himself, at the very beginning of the poem, as the 6th greatest poet after the likes of Homer, Ovid, Virgil etc. So, may be it is not by chance that his identity as Dante is revealed until Virgil is used and expensed.

Several other poets also populate the triptychal poem: representatives of the two pioneering schools of Provençal and Sicilian schools, as well as by those Florentines who with or just before DA, started formulating the sweet new style (dolce still novo) and exploring the literary possibilities of the still vernacular Tuscan tongue. But if DA has been exploiting his abilities as ventriloquist, it is with his own voice as a poet that he makes a presence in Commedia. A few of his fictional characters quote some of Dante’s earlier verses.

Having reached the Empirium of the poem, we can stop and think about where Dante Alighieri has taken us. Because, even if not eternal salvation, he has delivered us a most extraordinary feat of literature that we cannot but qualify as divine. Furthermore, he has done so in a newly coined language, to which he added some words of his own invention, and, most outstanding of all, he positioned the Author at the very center of that literary White Rose of fiction.

And this flower continued to exude its rich scent until, in a similar process to the displacement of Giotto’s viewer, Roland Barthes, plucked it in the declaration formulated in his 1967 Essay The Death of the Author.


But before that, it had a long life.




...more

5

Mar 22, 2019

Reading the Divine Comedy at seventeen was, for me, to see the world sub specie aeternitatis. Apparently that’s not okay in the World’s eyes. Writing it, in the 14th Century, was not considered okay either.

So Dante was banished for life from Florence.

In the Comedy eternal flame is the just deserts of corrupt conformity. That doesn’t seem quite right in the eyes of the comfortably politically correct, back then as now. And they, like it or not, always have the final say. And what they say, goes! Reading the Divine Comedy at seventeen was, for me, to see the world sub specie aeternitatis. Apparently that’s not okay in the World’s eyes. Writing it, in the 14th Century, was not considered okay either.

So Dante was banished for life from Florence.

In the Comedy eternal flame is the just deserts of corrupt conformity. That doesn’t seem quite right in the eyes of the comfortably politically correct, back then as now. And they, like it or not, always have the final say. And what they say, goes!

So reading this literary landmark for the first time, when I was seventeen, marked the inauguration of a colossal climacteric in my life. The winds of change, back then, were howling all around me and - as if in reaction - Dante’s vertical landscapes, ascending and descending, morphed within my mind to become the central mythos of my world and my young spirit.

For Dante’s work states clearly - from his symbolic POV - that we CAN find lasting happiness: in spite of the majority’s comfortable perpetual nay-saying to the contrary.

What we have to do to find it is pacify our dark impulses, work out our emotional trauma with diligence and awareness, and then aspire to reach the gates of Real and Lasting Happiness in the crown of our emotions and intellect - Faith.

In the Unforgiving Face of the World.

That sums it up: Hell. Purgation. And Paradise. And it all takes place right here on the face of this unforgiving planet. Sink or swim!

Now, here’s a key point that many have missed about the Comedia: while it is easy to fall through the cracks of life into an Infernal Reality, it’s next to impossible to maintain a decent attitude while falling. The cthonic tempest of the Inferno is just too intense!

But Dante did it. So, while enduring his cruel vision in the daily life of ruthlessly divided Florence, he kept his rational cool throughout.

It speaks volumes of his character. And it tells you EXACTLY the kind of virtue you need to get to Heaven...

In the era of my first reading of it, my grandmother had a beautifully bound edition of the Longfellow translation - with its wonderful nouveau Gothic plates by Gustave Doré - which I carried all around my parents’ house, absorbed in its mystical milieu.

By the next summer I had graduated to a library loan of the much less bulky-sized John Ciardi translation, in a limited edition with abstract modernistic illustrations.

You know, one or another edition has been with me all throughout the intervening 50+ years between then and now, my literal ‘sine qua non’ Vade Mecum in all of its multiple shapes and sizes!

At university, it was the must-own tiny Everyman Library dual-language edition, with its graceful Pre-Raphaelite line drawings - very easy to stick into my shirt pocket going to and from lectures...

And, do you know, I recently realized that in all my many, many readings of the poetic translations available, I’ve never been able to fully grasp the subtle complexities of Dante’s Aristotelian/Thomist philosophical arguments?

So I picked up Charles Eliot Norton’s eminently accessible PROSE translation for my Kindle.

So, as well as the print edition pictured above - another excellent translation - THAT is the story of my life... in One Book!

And now that the end of of my life is approaching Sooner - rather than Later (or that’s the impression I now get), I can look back at my life, and the world I’ve lived in, and agree with The Comedy’s author that, as is inscribed in bold letters on the glorious facade of the old San Francisco Public Library:

“La gloria di colui che tutto move
Per l’universo penetra, e risplende
In una parte piu e meno altrove.”

“The glory of The Prime Mover penetrates throughout the entire universe - in one part less, and another more!”

And He, the Prime Mover Himself, will guide you safely Home through the howling storms of this dark world. ...more

5

Feb 06, 2014

Plumbing the crucible of happenstance.

I should give a quick intro and say that I rarely EVER, EVER re-read a book. I should also mention that 3 years ago I had never cracked Dante's Divine Comedy. Now, I am finishing the Divine Comedy for the 3rd time. I've read Pinsky's translation of the Inferno. I've read Ciardi. I've flirted with Mandelbaum and danced with Hollander, but from Canto 1 of Inferno/Hell to Canto XXXIII of Paradiso/Heaven, I can't say I've read a better version than the Clive Plumbing the crucible of happenstance.

I should give a quick intro and say that I rarely EVER, EVER re-read a book. I should also mention that 3 years ago I had never cracked Dante's Divine Comedy. Now, I am finishing the Divine Comedy for the 3rd time. I've read Pinsky's translation of the Inferno. I've read Ciardi. I've flirted with Mandelbaum and danced with Hollander, but from Canto 1 of Inferno/Hell to Canto XXXIII of Paradiso/Heaven, I can't say I've read a better version than the Clive James translation. He replaced the terza rima (**A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D-E-E** a measure hard to write without poetic stretch marks in English) with the quatrain, and in doing so made the English translation his own. It gives the Divine Comedy the verbal energy and the poetry that makes inferior translations a slog and makes Dante so damn difficult to translate well. A mediocre translation might capture the stripes but lose the tiger. Clive James pulled off a master translation of one of the greatest works of art in any medium -- ever. ...more

5

Nov 14, 2018

The Divine Comedy is so divine (I pass the redundancy) that we can bring some of Dante's narration to our day, without necessarily dividing our moments in stages, and we do not even have to die to see the stages we have passed. Nowadays humanity, so sordid and unmasked, acts, treating one another personally, as if it had a particular Heaven of false power, knowing that it actually lives a real Hell. Worse still is not to reach out to the next, pushing them to innumerable Purgatorys at once, The Divine Comedy is so divine (I pass the redundancy) that we can bring some of Dante's narration to our day, without necessarily dividing our moments in stages, and we do not even have to die to see the stages we have passed. Nowadays humanity, so sordid and unmasked, acts, treating one another personally, as if it had a particular Heaven of false power, knowing that it actually lives a real Hell. Worse still is not to reach out to the next, pushing them to innumerable Purgatorys at once, offering no other choice. The owners of power gaining millions and millions, pretend to have mercy on suffering humanity, continuing with their shenanigans and lies, wanting the humiliated citizen to believe he is in Heaven, because they are still alive. These greedy people whom we know very well, live a true and particular Hell, in the dispute of who can do more. The poor, suffering workers are already in Purgatory. Until, from time to time they feed a false hope that one day they will live in the Heaven of the mighty, causing a paraphernalia among the many greedy miserable ones, who is taking life, pushing and trampling those who try to pass before them, because many are in a hurry, and believe they can get out of Purgatory and reach the Infernal Heaven of illusion and social inequality. ...more

5

Jan 07, 2014

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

There is no much one can say about this marvelous poem that has not been said before. One of the greatest epic poems to have been written, “Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

There is no much one can say about this marvelous poem that has not been said before. One of the greatest epic poems to have been written, ever. The book is divided into three books, Inferno, meaning hell; Purgatorio, meaning purgatory; and Paradiso, meaning heaven. My favourite has always been Inferno, but Paradiso is highly underrated, as underrated as this brilliant work can possibly be.

“The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.”



This is a basic view of the world as Dante knew it back in the 14th century, a human’s soul journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven.

This poem mixes religion and science, everything from the most basic Christian Dogma to early Islamic astronomy, with a lot of his political views mixed in. At the time this work was being written, Dante was living in exile, he uses this work as a way to show his enemies and what he thought not only of figures of his time, but of historical figures in general, including Plato, Aesop, Alejandro Magno, Mary as well as legendary people, such as Abel, Diana, and Isaac. If one does not wish to read this simply because it is a long poem, read it for the historical view, so many interesting characters for history buffs. My favourite thing perhaps, was how he used his work to slam the people that harmed him, including Pope Boniface VIII, the man who exiled him. Basically, apart from this being a religious work, and a historical work, it is a big “F-you” to everyone he disagreed with him, or harmed him in any way, those parts were hilarious to me. I have a horrible sense of humour.



Basically, read this poem, there is: Satan, angels, the circles of hell, philosophers in Tartarus, a reference to the Muslim conquest as “Dragon,” “the bird of Jove” attacking a church, a bunch of symbolism for “Reason,” unnecessary invocation of the Muses, Tristan and Isolde, many interesting murderers and a bunch of other cool stuff. ...more

0

Aug 02, 2012

I propose an extra level in the Inferno for procrastinators and abandoners. I was planning to write a novel where three protagonists commit suicide and end up in Scottish Hell. Since overcrowding has plagued the old Scottish Hell HQ, the protagonists are forced to queue up for weeks on end before arriving at the building for processing. Upon their arrival, their sins are assessed by an administrator to determine which circle of Hell is appropriate for them. But due to cutbacks and financial I propose an extra level in the Inferno for procrastinators and abandoners. I was planning to write a novel where three protagonists commit suicide and end up in Scottish Hell. Since overcrowding has plagued the old Scottish Hell HQ, the protagonists are forced to queue up for weeks on end before arriving at the building for processing. Upon their arrival, their sins are assessed by an administrator to determine which circle of Hell is appropriate for them. But due to cutbacks and financial instabilities, the three suicides are deemed unfit for service in Hell and are returned to their bodies. Back on Earth, the three characters return to their miserable lives, which they want to leave immediately. But before they commit suicide again, they have to break free from their mousy personalities and commit sins grievous enough to secure them a decent place in Hell. As the characters commit petty thefts and minor infelicities, the sin requirements to Hell become tougher and tougher, and they are repeatedly returned to their bodies. They spend their lives building up to larger and larger sins, constantly being returned to their bodies as the world around them becomes increasingly more depraved and violent. When they die, because the notion of “sin” has been completely reclassified to mean the most vile, sickest violations, they are secured a place Heaven for their relatively minor embezzlements, murders and rapes. I started this book but lost impetus halfway through. I was convinced this idea was derivative of other works (the Hell-as-bureaucracy has certainly popped up in British satire) and lost heart. I also lost heart halfway through the Inferno section of this, despite the translation being very fluent and readable. So I am going to the tenth circle, for the procrastinating bolter. (I did read the graphic novel version: partial redemption?) ...more

3

Aug 15, 2013

I finished it! Someone, bring me my medal...


the Inferno is Hieronymus Bosch with words

A few caveats to this review: I am not a theologian, philosopher, medieval historian, Dante expert, nor astrologist. I am, however, a reader who wants to read "all of teh books" and I appreciate vivid imagery and interesting human interactions in fiction. I tackled the recent Clive James version of Dante's Divine Comedy--no footnotes or canto introductions here--because I just wanted to let the story wash over I finished it! Someone, bring me my medal...


the Inferno is Hieronymus Bosch with words

A few caveats to this review: I am not a theologian, philosopher, medieval historian, Dante expert, nor astrologist. I am, however, a reader who wants to read "all of teh books" and I appreciate vivid imagery and interesting human interactions in fiction. I tackled the recent Clive James version of Dante's Divine Comedy--no footnotes or canto introductions here--because I just wanted to let the story wash over me, to see how much I could "get" on my own without knowing why Dante's father's baker's frenemy's ex-lover's dog-handler was sitting upside-down in the burning pitch in Hell. And when it comes to vivid imagery, the Inferno delivers. Surprisingly (to me), the Purgatorio was also fairly easy to follow, as Dante and Virgil continue up a ceaseless barren slope past the singing, self-flagellating sinners who do their time for various sins and, each time an angel wipes an ash-mark from their foreheads, become one level closer to heaven.

From reading the inferno in high school I had recalled Dante as a sniveling, swooning sissy--but on this re-read found myself very much liking his sensitivity and sense of empathy, especially to many of the sinners in hell (well, as long as they are classical figures. If he knows them, he's more likely to go stomp on their heads). Guide Virgil has to chastise him numerous times to keep him from getting (understandably) emotionally mired in the horrors he witnesses. My favorite parts, besides perhaps the insult-throwing trident-wielding demons, were the back-and-forths between Dante and Virgil.

Sadly, though, Virgil is barred from entering heaven, and in the third book Paradiso we are stuck with the so-nauseatingly-lovely-and-perfect-that-you-just-want-to-smack-her Beatrice. Regardless of this new guide, I found Dante's heaven as impenetrable as listening to someone describe an acid-trip. It struck me as a sort of renaissance-era Yellow Submarine (complete with its own Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) though the incessant choral music wasn't quite as catchy.


Lucy in the sky with Dante

Seriously, I'm amazed at how similar this clip from Yellow Submarine is to the Paradiso! Watch it!

*EDIT* Sorry, it looks like the Submarine link keeps breaking, so my apologies if it doesn't work. If I notice a problem, I will fix it! Should be working now, anyway. ...more

5

Feb 26, 2009

I first read this poem four years ago as part of a dare. And by “dare,” I mean a professor listed it on the syllabus and I had to read it and then write papers about it. The next summer, I wanted to read it again on account of the graphic imagery of Inferno and Purgatorio. The punishments/reparations are mindblowing, scary, and beautiful. Everyone should at the very least skim Inferno. Particularly in Inferno, the political references are funny and provocative, and the historical significance of I first read this poem four years ago as part of a dare. And by “dare,” I mean a professor listed it on the syllabus and I had to read it and then write papers about it. The next summer, I wanted to read it again on account of the graphic imagery of Inferno and Purgatorio. The punishments/reparations are mindblowing, scary, and beautiful. Everyone should at the very least skim Inferno. Particularly in Inferno, the political references are funny and provocative, and the historical significance of this epic poem is right up there with the Bible and Paradise Lost for me. Paradiso is far more abstract and sappy than the other books.

I re-read all three last Fall because I’ve always felt attached to this work, and I figure you gotta read something at LEAST three times before you say its your favorite book. But yeah, this is my favorite book. It makes me want to learn Italian and read Dante’s Italian (and the whole part about him writing it in Italian instead of Latin pissed off so many people—again, the history of this piece is great). It makes me want to visit Italy. It makes me want to write something worth reading!
...more

5

Nov 11, 2015

This is one of the best epic poems ever! I highly recommend everyone reads this, Homer's works, and Virgil's works. This was a great translation and a wonder forward and glossery.
5 huge stars!
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond

5

Jul 19, 2018

I am back reading another version of The Divine Comedy. This translation by Australian poet Clive James is the most lyrical that I have read. It is as if I was reading it for the first time and with all that joy of discovery.

This review is based on the first book of this trilogy.

"Had I the bitter, grating rhymes to fit
This grim hole on which all the other rocks
Bear down, I’d do a better job of it
When pressing out my thought’s sap.
But what blocks
The flow is just that:
my soft, childish I am back reading another version of The Divine Comedy. This translation by Australian poet Clive James is the most lyrical that I have read. It is as if I was reading it for the first time and with all that joy of discovery.

This review is based on the first book of this trilogy.

"Had I the bitter, grating rhymes to fit
This grim hole on which all the other rocks
Bear down, I’d do a better job of it
When pressing out my thought’s sap.
But what blocks
The flow is just that:
my soft, childish tongue.
It is with fear that I begin to speak,
Because a language we employ when young
To call our mother “mummy” is too weak
To use, even in sport, when touching on
The lowest level of the universe..."

"And though my frozen face
Felt nothing, like a callus, still somehow
I felt the wind, and more than just a trace.
“Master,” I said, “What causes this?
I thought All heat down here was quenched.”
And he to me: “Your eyes will soon be able to report
Directly, for the cause you’ll plainly see
That drives the blast.” And from his frozen crust
One of the wretches cried: “O souls so cruel
You roam free in the last pit of despair,
Lift off my brittle veils and break the rule,
That I might just a little give release
To the sadness that swells my heart, before
My tears freeze up again. So they will cease…"
...more

5

Sep 18, 2016

I must confess that so much was beyond my comprehension; but I think that is the mark of a great work of art...it allows you to take what you can from it from where you are. I was so happy when I finished this book!

5

Aug 07, 2017

Dante? Awesome! I’ve always wanted Brent to review a game from the Devil May Cry series! Which one did you play?

Er… well, let me explain. I wanted a space with my new website design to talk about video games—I love them. But I also want to, from time to time, engage with other media. “What I’m Playing?” fits in a shorter space than “What form of media is Brent playing or reading or watching, and what particular title currently, and what is his take on that?”

So, uh, really this sidebar is “Brent’ Dante? Awesome! I’ve always wanted Brent to review a game from the Devil May Cry series! Which one did you play?

Er… well, let me explain. I wanted a space with my new website design to talk about video games—I love them. But I also want to, from time to time, engage with other media. “What I’m Playing?” fits in a shorter space than “What form of media is Brent playing or reading or watching, and what particular title currently, and what is his take on that?”

So, uh, really this sidebar is “Brent’s Brain at Play” … so, yeah, it’s false advertising. Sorry.

I’ve just re-read The Divine Comedy for the first time since four miserable weeks in 1995. Miserable not because I hated Dante. I read the Dorothy Sayers translation in terza rima, and I loved much of it. The misery came from the class: Freshman Honors English, semester 1. This was my introduction to college. One semester, one class: 4,200 pages of reading.

I still believe this was the class that convinced the smartest student in the college—I’m talking ‘pun in Latin and expect others to laugh along with you’ smart—to drop out and become a priest. Little known fact: that kid punched me in the face once. (A little known fact that will doubtless come up when he’s up for canonization—he was a pretty darn good guy. Is still, I assume!) It was not the only fight I got into in college, oddly enough, though it was the only one where I didn’t hit back… So I guess you could say I… lost?

But c’mon, you try to hit back after a future pope punches you. If the word ‘discombobulating’ had been invented for any legitimate purpose, it would have been for that moment. (But that’s a pure hypothetical. Don’t combobulate if you hope to copulate, nerds.)

But I digress. Every student in Honors English 101 had a B or lower. (B- here.) Our professor was a poet. He really liked the word “wen”. No further explanation needed, right? The end of the semester was fast approaching. Panic set in for all these kids who’d never earned less than an A- in their 18 blesséd years, sir, by my troth!

The professor said we could add AN ENTIRE LETTER GRADE to our grade if we… outlined the entire Divine Comedy. That’s… a trilogy of epic poems.
It was an assignment that would later save my soul. But that’s another story.

Imagine thirty sweating honors class freshmen, some of whom had scholarships riding on their GPA, others—far more importantly—had their entire self-worth riding on their GPA. All of us faced Thanksgiving Break with the shame of a B. It had just become Thanksgiving “Break”.

There were three weeks from Thanksgiving until finals, when the assignment was due. Three weeks in the inferno—or, if one paced oneself correctly, one would only spend one week in Inferno, one in Purgatorio, and the last in Paradiso.

Oh, let me tell you, how those freshmen rejoiced their way through Paradiso. Well, maybe the final canto. Paradiso’s a bit of a slog, dramatically.
Want to see a textbook definition of subclinical triggering? Just whisper “Bernard of Clairvaux” to any veteran of Dr. Sundahl’s H ENG 101.
*insert meme here*

The angel on my right shoulder: *No, really, don’t.*

All this is prologue. (Dizzam, bruh, that’s some Jordan-esque level prologue.)

On to the review.

I was glad to see that after 20 years, Dante hasn’t become dated. Ages well, Ol’ Danny Alighieri. Okay, fine. I should say, “more dated”. One thing in particular struck me repeatedly about Dante, reading him now as a 39-year-old fantasy writer, versus reading him as an 18-year-old college freshman, and I mean so oft-repeated I felt like my face belonged to a P.I. in a noir novel–I mean repeatedly like the bass thunder from the stereo in a 75hp Honda owned by that pepperoni-faced dude who thinks he’s auditioning for Fastest and Even More Furiousest Than Evar:

The chutzpah. The sheer audacity. Dante was writing the work without which he would be forgotten by most everyone except Italian lit majors. He’s coming into this famous but soon to be forgotten, like the English Poet Laureate Robert Southey–you’ve heard of him, right? No. So before Dante’s written his Great Book, he presumes himself into the company of the all-time greats. (He deserves it, but he jumps into that place like that kid challenging Mario Andretti to a quick couple laps for pink slips.)

But not only that. He, a Christian (if one who finds himself lost along the Way in the dark wood of middle age), readily consigns foes and even acquaintances—some not yet dead, if I remember correctly—to Hell. If there’s one thing the modern mainstream Christian doesn’t do, it’s to presume the eternal destination of others. As C.S. Lewis said, (paraphrasing) “When we get to Heaven, there will be surprises.” That lack of presumption is bolstered on our culture’s favorite partial Scripture “Judge not lest ye be judged” which goes on “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Most Christians today are like, “Yeah, I’d prefer a really lenient measure, thanks. So I’ll just not presume to judge anyone else, either. Plus, not judging at all gets me thrown out of way fewer parties.” Dante, not so much. He’s like, “This pope from a few years back? Totally burning in Hell, right now. Look at the evil he did!”

Dante does this while, as far as I can tell (as a non-medievalist, and no longer even a Roman Catholic) remaining himself orthodox. He doesn’t question the pope’s authority as it was understood then. Check this example out: that evil pope who himself is burning in hell? He’d corrupted one of his own courtiers, who had previously been some kind of shady guy, but repented, turning his back on all the evil he’d done earlier in his life. (Think like Godfather 3.) The kicker? Evil Popey makes him go back! (“I try to get out and the Pope (!) keeps pulling me back in!”) Evil Pope gets him to betray some folks, by promising our repentant Michael Corleone, “Hey, yeah what I’m asking you to do is evil, but I’ll forgive you for all this evil you do for me. I’m the Vicar of Christ, so I can totally give you an Evil Pass.” So the courtier does said evil stuff. And gets ‘pardoned’.

Now the demons in hell that Dante encounters are super pissed, because “Hey, that guy should totally belong to us! He did evil stuff!”

But Dante DOESN’T question that the evil pope effectively uses a loophole to get around God’s perfect justice. Nope. That courtier guy is heading for heaven—except the demons later tricked him into committing suicide by demons, a sin for which the pope apparently forgot to preemptively forgive him for.

This whole episode is listed as proof that the pope was evil: he used his authority to pervert eternal justice. That’s really, really bad. Later Protestants would say, “This is redonkulus! No one gets to use a loophole to escape God! That’s the whole point of eternal justice: often on Earth justice isn’t served, but we can deal with that because we know no one can escape God’s justice. If your doctrine lets people fool God, your doctrine is wack, yo. [Also, that you have Evil Popes in the first place seems to point out a problem in your system.]”

Dante’s audacity though, goes further than merely presuming himself in the company of the greatest of the greats, and also being comfortable judging the quick and the dead: Dante sets out to out-epic Homer and Virgil.

Homer [with a battered old harp, ratty beard, and mismatched sandals–dude’s blind, give him a break on the fashion policing, people]: “Friends, Achaians, countrymen, lend me your ears. I’mma tell you about big war and a big voyage with the ideal Greek man.”

Homer’s poetry and story-telling, his nuance and his imagery would capture and define an entire culture, and deeply influence many others through the present. It’s hard to overstate his impact.

Virgil [strides forth in a solid gold toga, taking a bit of snuff from a slave]: “No offense, old sport, but your hero was bollocks, Homes. He was actually the bad chap, and not nearly as wonderful as you make him out to be. Let’s talk about that Trojan War thing, and I’ll subvert the Hades out of your narrative.”

Oh snap.

Virgil is a master of poetry and storytelling who is self-consciously telling the story of an entire people and their founding mythos, (small) warts and all (sorry ’bout that, Dido! a real James Bond always loves ’em and leaves ’em… burning!). Virgil meant his epic to be studied and admired by audiences high and low, and he meant to define his Romans as the best of the best. Sort of “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward Rome.”

Dante [ambles up in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and bell-bottoms]: “You guys are far out. Wish I could have heard your stuff, Home-bre, I’ve heard it’s real groovy, but the Saracens haven’t invaded yet with their hippie zeal to give us the LP bootleg translations of your work from the Greek. Sing it for me sometime. I’m sure I’ll dig it. Anyway, bros, thanks for inviting me to your drum circle here, but never start a land war in Asia unless you’re the Mongols, never get in a wit-fight to the death with a guy named Westley, and never, ever invite John Bonham to your drum circle. You guys thought small. Nah, it’s cool and everything, but really? Some guy on a boat? Some other pious guy on a different boat who lost a war to the first guy? I’mma let you finish swiftly here, but I’m going to tell the story of all creation, do world-building that includes the entire universe—both the physical and metaphysical worlds: earth, hell, purgatory, and heaven, AND show how my main man Jesus changed everything, aided in my quest by numerous holy Jesus groupie chicks and the spirit of Virgil himself. Hope you’re down with that, Virg. I mean, you’re an Italian, I’m an Italian, we’re pretty much bros, but I’m like your intellectual successor and stuff? Oh yeah, and because I’m after Christ, I really have an unfair advantage on you, because you were the bee’s knees. Seriously, love your stuff, I even own the b-sides of your pastoral poetry. So if I’m a little better than you, it’s purely happenstance: You came before Ludwig drums and Remo drumheads, man! If someone told you ‘More cowbell!’ you’lda been like ‘A cowbell? In music? What’s next, balancing a shield on a post and banging on it with a stick?!’ By the way, I use Paiste cymbals. I’ll show you later.”

That story of all creation includes the pagans. Dante also sets about to reconcile, or at least appropriate, the gods and monsters of antiquity—though sometimes not very successfully. I’m like, Hey, big D, if some of the figures of Greek mythology are real, are all of them? If they’re real and they did some of the stuff we’ve heard they did, where was God in that? Are these all actually just demons just playin’ around? Fess up, c’mon. You can tell me, buddy, I understand. You just wanted monsters, didn’tcha? You got stuck on that one part and were like, How can I get Dante and Virgil out of this one? Oh, I know! A big ass dragon flies up out of the pit, scares the bejeepers out of them, and then totally lets them become the Dragonriders of Burn and head on down further!

Oh, did I mention that while doing all this, Dante maintains that he’s writing on four levels at once: 1) The literal (which, you know, literally means the literal, the stuff that happens—hey, I write on that level too!). 2) The allegorical (that is, there’s what he calls “truth hidden beneath a beautiful fiction”) so being lost in a dark wood in your middle years might be an allegory for getting lost in your life, or even a mid-life crisis. 3) The moral (which explores the ethical implications of a work of fiction) so what do you think about Odysseus sitting on the beach crying to go home to his wife every day, and then banging goddesses every night? What do you learn about the power of hope or forgiveness when Luke Skywalker confronts Darth Vader? That’s the moral level; and 4) The anagogical. Yeah, you’re not going to see this word unless you’re talking about Dante, I’d guess. I had to look it up again. I was honestly proud of myself for merely remembering the word. The anagogical is a level of spiritual interpretation. This is when the work captures something that is eternally true. In a Platonic sense, it would be when you step out of the cave and instead of looking at shadows on the wall of thing that are True, you look at the things themselves. For Dante, this is of course expounding scripture in a way that captures “a part of the supernal things of eternal glory”. (Supernal: being of, or coming from, on high.)

This is the level where you say, the characters Dante and his guide Virgil are hiking up Mt Purgatory, but Virgil is literally Virgil, a great poet who lived before Christ and thus is a pagan, so when Dante and Virgil get to the top of Mt Purgatory, Virgil can’t get into Heaven—you need Jesus for that. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. None come to the Father except through me”. (Virgil’s not exactly being punished for being a pagan; he gets to hang out talking with all the other awesome pagans forever.) But Virgil is ALSO an embodiment of Reason, so when Virgil and Dante reach a rad curtain of fire up on the top of Mt Purgatory, Virgil can (as Reason) say, “Bro, you got this. You know there’s people on the other side. You know this is the only way to get there. You therefore know they jumped through this curtain. Ergo, you won’t get fried. Probably. Well, at least not everyone who jumps through gets a thermite sun-tan.”

But Reason can’t go through that curtain himself. The thing that makes you jump through a curtain of fire isn’t, ultimately, reason. Reason can’t get you to Heaven. Thus, the anagogic lesson is that belief is, ultimately, an act of the will. Or, in the common phrase of which this scene may be the origin, one must take a Leap of Faith.

Did I mention Dante’s doing this while writing poetry? And apparently his poetry is pretty good? (Not knowing Italian, I can’t say. The Sayers translation I read in college was way more beautiful than the Clive James version I listened to this time. Sorry, Clive, personal preference.)

Now, I should probably address the world-building, too, seeing how world-building is something fantasy writers ought to know something about. (Yes, hecklers in the back, I hear you. Notice the caveat ‘ought to’? Now run along and play. With scissors.) In the mind of your inconsistently humble correspondent, Dante’s world-building is bold, presumptuous, brilliant, and a blithering mess.

Whereas Dante’s treatment of pagan mythology would likely appeal to the common reader and just as likely outrage scholars who knew enough to ask questions, in his world-building, he seems to completely ignore the common readers, and go straight for the art- and map-geeks. You’ve probably seen those elaborate medieval drawings of the world Dante lays out.

(I don’t even know if most of them are faithful to the text or even agree with each other, other than the order of the circles of hell and the like.) On the one hand, this world-building is ingenious. Stunning. (Anyone know if he borrowed most of this, or invented most of it? I know he was synthesizing a lot of speculation and Christian cosmology, but I don’t know how much of his work on this is original.)

It all hangs together, literally and symbolically and morally. Satan is at the center of gravity? Like, literally? At first, you’re like, “Huh?”

Well, he’s got to have his head visible in hell; he’s the king there, and he’s got to be scary. How scary is a guy with buried head-down with his butt in the air like a North Dakotan bike rack? (Sorry, old Montanan North Dakota joke there.) But when you think further, well, hell has inverted values, so after you come past him at the center of gravity, and into a vast crater–he left a giant crater when he was thrown out of heaven. Of course he did! And here he IS head down and not so scary, but he’s also head down because he’s buried in his sin. He’s at the bottom of a pit. Of course he is! He’s denied the light of heaven, his face must be buried. And so on.

But most of the things that I caught on this second listening, I caught only because of the art I’d seen, and the explication of college professors and footnotes back when I’d read it before. Those professors taught me that the common way for people to experience a book during Dante’s time was most usually that someone would stand and read it to everyone else. (Audiobooks go WAY back.) This is a terrible way to experience what he’s doing, though.

When you only listen to the Divine Comedy, there’s no way for you to understand a lot of the imagery. Not a real quote, but a realistic one: “Then I turned left 90 degrees, and saw, up at the point where the sun was crossing the mountain, another path veering to starboard under the sign of the Cygnus at the fourth hour of the morning” oh, and time moves differently in Purgatory. Or something. I still don’t get that part.

This kind of world-building doesn’t work at all for the medium. Certainly the first listeners wouldn’t have any art or maps to help them figure this stuff out in real time, while the reciter continues reciting the poetry describing this weird journey. So it’s definitely weird, it’s opaque, and it’s kind of bad art–at least, bad world-building for what is, at core, more of a travelogue than an epic adventure.

But it works… for the artists and the map-geeks, who fan art the hell out of it.

Now, I call Dante’s world-building presumptuous because leaving the explanations for all the weirdness intelligible ONLY to those geeks ONLY works because Dante was famous. If he hadn’t been famous already, people would go, “Huh, this doesn’t make sense to me. So it probably doesn’t make sense. What garbage.”

So it kind of works in the way Ikea instructions work–if you’ve got a bunch of Ikea engineers in your living room to help you out: “Oh, that was a concise way to explain that… now that you did it all for me.”

Dan, my boy, that is some… what’s the term for accurate hubris? Oh, self-confidence. I guess it’s still that even when the SELF-CONFIDENCE IS GIANT, YO!

All this! Look at all that! He’s doing all that… and more. At the SAME time! All that, and then… Dante flinches.

Dante gets daunted.

Bro!

Bro.

When this pilgrim who has had to fight past so many lesser demons (using his special access badge that says, I’m-on-a-holy-mission-one-of-the-roadies-from-JC-and-the-Sonshine-Band-says-it’s-cool) finally makes it to Satan’s circle and crosses the frozen lake of Coccytus, do you know what Satan says?

Do you know how Satan addresses the first non-traitor to visit Satan since he was thrown out of Heaven? Satan himself… just doesn’t notice. Sure, the big guy is busy gnawing on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius but he’d been gnawing on those guys for thirteen hundred years!

But nope. Satan says nothing. There’s no, “Yeah, I let you come all the way down here by my satanic will. It was all a trap. Now you can rot with the worst of them. I am literally going to eat your idiot face for eternity!”

There’s no big rescue from the monstrously huge arms and hands as that giant is stuck in the frozen lake of Coccytus. No last minute rescue by an angel.

Nope, Satan just doesn’t notice. Even when Dante grabs onto his hairy ass and climbs around him through the center of the universe where gravity reverses itself and climbs out to go to Mt Purgatory, literally past his butthole. Satan. Doesn’t. Notice. Doesn’t notice the man playing George of the Jungle on his hairy hip. And climbing…Past. His. Butt.

Weaksauce, Ali D! Lotta buildup to go limp at the finish! It’s like you’ve never played a video game in your life.

I’m sure someone can defend it. Great literature of this magnitude will always inspire defenders. But just because something is great in... (READ MORE AT http://www.brentweeks.com/2017/08/wha...) ...more

4

Nov 28, 2015

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ریویوی برزخ:
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ریویوی بهشت:
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5

May 19, 2011

I am so glad for the Divine Comedy and Decameron group for providing the structure and encouragement which provided the impetus for my finally reading this classic! I am also very pleased that I decided to read John Ciardi's translation as his synopsis and notes added immeasurably to my reading.

While personally I found Dante's travel's through Hell occasionally difficult, the Purgatorio and Paradiso (except for the first few scholarly cantos) flowed with beautiful poetry. And through it all, I am so glad for the Divine Comedy and Decameron group for providing the structure and encouragement which provided the impetus for my finally reading this classic! I am also very pleased that I decided to read John Ciardi's translation as his synopsis and notes added immeasurably to my reading.

While personally I found Dante's travel's through Hell occasionally difficult, the Purgatorio and Paradiso (except for the first few scholarly cantos) flowed with beautiful poetry. And through it all, Dante maintained his amazing, and consistent, vision.

No wonder this has stood the test of time. ...more

5

Nov 11, 2011

Written for the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament

(sung to the tune of "Minnie The Moocher")

Folks, heres a story about Winnie the Pooh-cher
He was a chubby Pooh-chie-koocher
He was fat and loved his honey
but he was sweet and his heart was sunny

(chorus)
Hunny-Hunny-Hunny-hi
Hundee-hundee-hunndee-ho
Pigletee-pigletee-hee
Tiggery-Tiggery--Ho

He met a dude whose name was Virgil
who hung around in hellish circles.
He took the bear to hell for a match
where he planned to kick Pooh's ass.

{chorus)

Pooh saw Written for the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament

(sung to the tune of "Minnie The Moocher")

Folks, here´s a story about Winnie the Pooh-cher
He was a chubby Pooh-chie-koocher
He was fat and loved his honey
but he was sweet and his heart was sunny

(chorus)
Hunny-Hunny-Hunny-hi
Hundee-hundee-hunndee-ho
Pigletee-pigletee-hee
Tiggery-Tiggery--Ho

He met a dude whose name was Virgil
who hung around in hellish circles.
He took the bear to hell for a match
where he planned to kick Pooh's ass.

{chorus)

Pooh saw things that curled his toes
Things that burned and things that glowed.
Pooh said, "Hey this isn't funny!
And I don't see one ounce of honey."

(chorus)

Virgil said, "Remember where you are.
This is hell not "Dancing with the Stars.
Where people pay for their mortal sins
And I wonder Pooh, where your sins' been."

Pooh now felt out of his league.
For he knew hoarding honey was Greed
And he wasn't the most energetic bloke
"Oh dear! Sloth's a sin! Is there no hope?"

(chorus)

Virgil laughed and was enjoying his victory.
When Beatrice descended and his win was history.
Beatrice squealed like a schoolgirl in joy.
"Oh, what a cutie! A little Pooh Toy!.

(chorus)

Beatrice grabbed Pooh, to heaven he was lifted
Where she cuddled him in eternal kisses
The moral of this tale is simple but clever
Being terminally cute beats all Lucifer's levels.

(chorus)

Yea Win! Yea Win, Yea Win.

(With apologies to Cab Calloway)
...more

5

Oct 29, 2011

For the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament, The Divine Comedy versus 1984

Gabriel, Michael and Raphael
Celestial Architects
Eternity

Dear Mr. O'Brien,

Thank you for your response to our recent tender. After due deliberation, we must regretfully inform you that we have decided not to implement your interesting plan for restructuring and downsizing the afterlife.

Our accounting department confirms your statement that it would be more cost-effective only to retain Hell and wind up operations in For the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament, The Divine Comedy versus 1984

Gabriel, Michael and Raphael
Celestial Architects
Eternity

Dear Mr. O'Brien,

Thank you for your response to our recent tender. After due deliberation, we must regretfully inform you that we have decided not to implement your interesting plan for restructuring and downsizing the afterlife.

Our accounting department confirms your statement that it would be more cost-effective only to retain Hell and wind up operations in Purgatory and Paradise. This would, however, directly conflict with our mission statement, which involves offering the chance of salvation to each and every soul. Our senior counsel, based on numerous precedents, contests your claim that this is in principle equivalent with "a boot grinding a human face, forever".

We appreciate your ingenious compromise suggestion that the "integrated afterlife experience", as you describe it, could be administered by a board chaired by the late Pope Boniface VIII, and accept that this offer was made in good faith. None the less, our feeling is that Signor Boniface is not in all respects a suitable person to fill this role.

The above notwithstanding, we are agreeable to implementing several of the specific points listed in Appendix C which concern improvements to the current structure of Hell. In particular, we will shortly be commencing an upgrade programme according to which the jaws of His Infernal Majesty will be substantially expanded. We are pleased to inform you that the work will be completed well before your own demise, according to our records scheduled for April 19, 1993, and we have already reserved a place for you next to Signor Cassius.

Yours sincerely,

Gabriel

...more

5

Aug 29, 2014

4.5 stars

This was my second attempt to read "The Divine Comedy". The first time, I did not care for the English translation of the book I had selected. I found Mandelbaum's translation in this book to be more readable. Another plus of reading this translation, is this book had wonderful Botticelli illustrations of Dante. I thought the illustrations really enhanced my reading experience as they helped me visualize several of the scenes in the book.

This was not a book that I could read fast, 4.5 stars

This was my second attempt to read "The Divine Comedy". The first time, I did not care for the English translation of the book I had selected. I found Mandelbaum's translation in this book to be more readable. Another plus of reading this translation, is this book had wonderful Botticelli illustrations of Dante. I thought the illustrations really enhanced my reading experience as they helped me visualize several of the scenes in the book.

This was not a book that I could read fast, although there were parts were I wanted to keep reading and not put it down. I really struggled with the beginning but then found my pace. This journey through hell, purgatory and heaven was quite enjoyable once I found my footing with it.

I am definitely glad that I read it. It was not a fast read but once that endured and was well worth it. ...more

5

Feb 01, 2014

How in the World (or Inferno or Purgatorio or Paradiso) am I supposed to review this work?

I could review the edition and translator, though I have nothing else to compare them against. Ciardi's notes at the end of each canto are always illuminating, sometimes funny and occasionally self-deprecating. I chuckled at Ciardi's humor and was appreciative of his honesty whenever he used a rhyme-forced addition, as well as the instance or two when he asked the reader to forgive his less-than-perfect How in the World (or Inferno or Purgatorio or Paradiso) am I supposed to review this work?

I could review the edition and translator, though I have nothing else to compare them against. Ciardi's notes at the end of each canto are always illuminating, sometimes funny and occasionally self-deprecating. I chuckled at Ciardi's humor and was appreciative of his honesty whenever he used a rhyme-forced addition, as well as the instance or two when he asked the reader to forgive his less-than-perfect poetry. He's both thorough and entertaining.

Use any adjective you'd like and it's bound to fit at least one part of Dante's work: condemnatory, fearful and exuberant; horrific, trepidatious and jubilant; political, personal and universal: there's really no point in my going on, especially now that I've used three sets of three.

I'd love to know what kind of person Dante became after finishing this work. He had to be changed in the course of its writing; it would be sad (and too human of him) to think otherwise. ...more

5

Mar 22, 2018

I've been slowly chewing my way through this one for a while. There are already so many reviews that what I have to add seems unimportant.

In crux - the writing is wonderful, the theme relevant today as much as when it was written (minus the contemporary Florentine politics, which are noted throughout the work) and the journey of soul towards transcendence all-encompassing.

It's not an easy work to read, but then again, none of the great ones are. Should everyone read it? Everyone should at I've been slowly chewing my way through this one for a while. There are already so many reviews that what I have to add seems unimportant.

In crux - the writing is wonderful, the theme relevant today as much as when it was written (minus the contemporary Florentine politics, which are noted throughout the work) and the journey of soul towards transcendence all-encompassing.

It's not an easy work to read, but then again, none of the great ones are. Should everyone read it? Everyone should at least try.

My copy is the John Ciardi translation put out by The Franklin Library, with engravings by Gustav Dore. The engravings are a wonderful addition to the text. ...more

4

Aug 13, 2018

While a little hard to read at times but this is still a classic and a good read.