‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، «دانته» نویسندهٔ ایتالیایی از آن دسته از مذهبی هایست که نوشته هایش برایِ مذهبی هایی همچون شخصِ خودش جالب میباشد و برای خردگرایان و اندیشمندان، نوشته های «دانته» که از موهوماتِ غیر عقلانی بسیاری تشکیل شده است، هیچگونه گیرایی و جذابیتی ندارد، حتی اگر به چشمِ طنز به این موهومات نگاه کنیم... تنها موردِ قابل توجه در این کتاب، ترجمهٔ بسیار عالی از مردِ خردمند «شجاع الدین شفا» بود.. درود بیکران بر ایشان
‎عزیزانم، در این کتاب نیز شما چیزی جز موهومات و خزعبلاتِ دینی و مذهبی چیزی نمیبینید، وگرنه مطمئن باشید از آن در کتبِ درسی بچه هایِ بیخبر از همه جایِ ایرانی، یاد نمیکردند... هرچه نوشته های موهوم و خرافاتِ مذهبی وجود دارد در کتب درسی فرزندانِ سرزمینمان چپانده شده است
‎در "کمدی الهی" نویسنده یعنی «دانته» نه حاضر است کسانی چون بقراط و جالينوس و ابن سينا و مزدک و زرتشت و دمکریت و صدها اندیشمند و انسانِ بزرگ را در آتش دوزخ و جهنم موهوم و احمقانهٔ مذهبیان بسوزاند و نه می تواند آنها را بخاطر مسيحی نبودنشان در بهشت جای دهد، لذا ناگزير پناهگاهی بنام "لیمبو" برای آنان در دوزخِ موهوم می سازد که این خردمندان هم در جهنم باشند و هم از آتش جهنم در امان باشند
‎خوب عزیزانم، شما انتظار دارید چنین نوشته هایی ک�� برگرفته از عقدهٔ بیخردانهٔ مذهبی و دینی میباشد را با لذت بخوانیم و از آن تعریف و تمجید کنیم!؟ هیچ خردمندی به بهشت و جهنمِ موهومِ ادیانِ گوناگون و بخصوص ادیانِ پوچِ سامی اعتقاد ندارد
‎عزیزان و نورِ چشمانم، دقت کنید که تا چه اندازه منطق این ادیان و مذهب های سامی ابلهانه میباشد... یعنی بهشت موهومشان که بیشتر به فاحشه خانه شباهت دارد و صبح تا شب همه بر روی آلتِ یکدیگر ووول میخورند، برای خودشان است.. جهنمشان نیز برای کسانی که به ادیان بند تمبانی و غیر انسانی سامی (یهودیت-مسیحیت-اسلام) اعتقاد ندارد و خردگرا بوده اند... یعنی تکليف همهٔ آنهایی که پيش از ظهور مسیحیت و اسلام، به جهان آمده و از جهان رفته اند چه می شود؟ از پيدايش نخستين انسان ها در روی زمين حدوداً سه ميليون سال و از پيدايش انسان های امروزی 30 تا 35 هزار سال می گذرد. اولين تمدن ها نيز پنج تا هفت هزار سال پيش شکل گرفته اند، در صورتيکه از آغاز مسيحيت تنها دو هزار سال و از ظهور اسلام تنها هزار و چهارصد سال می گذرد. اگر هيچکدام از آدميانی که پيش از اين دوهزار ساله در روی زمين زيسته اند راهی به بهشت نداشته باشند به چه دليلی، و با چه مجوزی بايد اين راه را نداشته باشند؟ و تازه در ميان آدميان همين دوهزار ساله نيز، آنهائيکه چون بوميان آمريکایی يا استراليایی يا مردم آفريقا اساساً نامی از مسيحيت يا از اسلام نشنيده و با آنها آشنائی نداشته اند چرا بايد تا ابد و تا جهان باقیست، در آتش دوزخ بسوزند يا در بی تکليفی برزخ بسر برند؟
‎این منطق بتِ «اللهِ اکبر» تازیان است!؟ یا گربهٔ سوخته شده در صندوق «یهووه»!!؟ یا منطق خدای عیسی!؟ این چه قانونِ ابلهانه و نابخردانه ای است؟!؟ مذهبی ها و به خصوص عرب پرستان، آنقدر به این موهومات و خزعبلات اعتقاد داشته باشید تا مغزتان از این پوچ تر شود
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‎امیدوارم این ریویو برایِ شما خردگرایانِ آگاه، مفید بوده باشه
‎«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»

What can one say about The Divine Comedy that hasn't been said? An analysis? Many scholars have already done that — and quite outstandingly, I must say, to a degree that I would never achieve. A funny meta review of sorts? It's already been done. So I guess it's like Solomon said and there's no new thing under the sun about this masterpiece: it needs no explanations about its grandeur and it does itself justice.

My only remaining words would be an endorsement upon this edition published by Oxford University Press, translated by C. H. Sisson. Regardless of the translation's unpopularity, it's absolutely well done, in blank verse, and the explanatory notes were completely helpful for me, since even though I knew many of the works to which Dante makes reference throughout the cantos (such as Ovid's Metamorphoses or Virgil's Aeneid or even The Bible), there were many other authors, political and pontifical personages, and works that I didn't. Furthermore, Dante, besides his undeniable mastery as a poet, was also somewhat of an astronomer, a theologian, a philosopher; so some of his verses can be quite obscure without proper guidance. For me, this edition provided me with everything I needed to know in a 200-paged section of explanatory notes. As I read a canto, I read the corresponding notes: a technique I took from one of Borges's stories. Then as I moved forward in the book I understood that Dante was a virtuoso in poetry, but as I read the notes and came to understand some lines that seemed as nothing more than metaphors that were part of the poem, I knew every single one of them is there for a reason, written by an author who was a genius indeed.

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.

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.

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.

When I was but a young Sentimental Surrealist, I went through a big King Arthur phase, and so my mom took me to the Renaissance Faire. Here I saw a version of the Divine Comedy where a dude dressed as an imp treats our boy Dante to all matters of torments. Among other things, he gives him a wet willy, makes him run into the audience and scream "I am strong, sensitive, and I want to be loved!", dumps a bucket of ice on his head, and, for our climax, trounces the good poet in a wrestling match.

I'm not saying the original is as good as that, but the crazy imagery and the beautiful language make it at least in the same ballpark. Long live the guy who holds onto his own head.

2020 re-read review (B&N Collectible Edition)
Just a few thoughts to add to my previous review:

First of all, it felt more like a period piece this time - so many references to historical figures that I had never heard of which made it hard for me to follow.

Dante’s vision of the hereafter is very imaginative. It’s impressive that so much of this is still a part of today’s culture. I hear references to The Divine Comedy in movies, tv, other books, etc. While I read it this time, I found a Wikipedia list of cultural references in the Divine Comedy. The scope of this is simply amazing.

It takes a lot of time and patience to get through this and there’s no way I could get through it without Cliffsnotes and other guides (Digital Dante website was great, btw).

With all of that said, The Divine Comedy is one of the all time best classics to me - this B&N leather bound collectible version is wondrous throughout.


2018 review (Audiobook from my local library)

Dante Alighieri completed The Divine Comedy in 1320, nearly 700 years ago, and it still holds up today. His depictions throughout the poem are really amazing. The Divine Comedy conveys the story of the poet Dante's theological journey, and for me as a reader it gave a thorough argument for the reasoning behind Christianity and faith in God.

I especially enjoyed Paradiso, where Dante provides his definition of faith "faith is the substance of things hoped for...", and how he was tested on the points of faith, hope, and love by St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, respectively. The imagery and the breadth of Dante's journey is moving and unforgettable.

There were portions where I had trouble following. This version (which I assume is similar to others) had so many "thou's", "didst's", and it seemed like every verb ended in "ith", that it became hard to follow, but my enjoyment of the overall the themes and the florid, beautiful writing outweighed any difficulty I had in comprehending it. I highly recommend this epic classic!

Matt

Este magno poema concebido por Dante es no sólo el texto más importante de la literatura italiana sino uno de los más emblemáticos a nivel universal. Habiéndolo concluido me es fácil comprender porqué. Dividido en tres grandes partes: infierno, purgatorio y paraíso, cada uno integrado por 33 cantos más uno adicional que funciona como introducción, este poema es un despliegue de belleza y estilo, de compromiso con el equilibro y una inimitable proeza de espíritu creativo.

La divina comedia nos sumerge en los círculos más hondos y retorcidos del infierno y nos propone, junto a Dante, su protagonista, y los aliados que este halla en el viaje, un ascenso fascinante, retorcido y lírico hacia lo más alto del paraíso. Ayudado en primera instancia por Virgilio y en las secciones más divinas por Beatriz, Dante recorre los destinos que aguardan a las almas mortales una vez concluido su paso por la tierra y el lugar que les corresponde de acuerdo a las vidas adoptadas y los pecados cometidos. El infierno es, con diferencia, el punto más corrupto, oscuro y formidablemente creativo de la comedia.

Algo que me fascinó profundamente, además del estilo lírico y cuán amena me resultó la lectura, es la constante sucesión de grandes nombres que Dante despliega, desde importantes figuras políticas, pasando por grandes pensadores y enfrentándose a extraordinarios artistas, su viaje por los distintos estratos del infierno, purgatorio y paraíso no está plagado de espíritus anónimos sino que se topa una y otra vez con seres reales, famosos por su corrupción moral, su genio o su sacrificio. Este hecho enriquece en términos incalculables una lectura de por sí extraordinaria.

Me rehúso a profundizar más porque no quiero condicionar al lector con excesiva información, además, difícilmente mis palabras podrían genuinamente capturar la grandeza de lo conquistado por el autor.

Nel mezzo del cammin del nostra vita/ Mi ritrovai per una universita oscura/ Che la diritta via era smarita// Ahi quant a dir' qual'era.*.. In the middle of my life, I found myself in a snowy waste, -28 F real temperature, not wind chill, driving my pregnant wife to St Joseph's Hospital for the birth of our first child Emily, now a lawyer in Milano. Difficult to say, una cosa dura, but not really... After all, I was in a snowy waste, not Dante's invented Inferno. In order to deliver my child, my wife had to go down fourteen snowy steps, get into a VW Bug with an electrical cord to its oilpan heater, and wait for me to put the car battery from inside the house in under the back seat, to start the motor for the drive down Summit Avenue to the hospital.

Amazing, Dante's invention: there's no hell in the Bible, and in the Latin classics, only a place of a couple visits, by boat steered by Charon. Not a lifetime residence, like Mars.
At the time in Minnesota, I was to be in hell because of a professor's not bothering to read my papers, nor those of the student whom he promoted to a prestigious job, though incapable of fine analytic writing.
This was not Dante's hell, but my own. Hell is a pretend professor, a famous one, who doesn't read student papers. It's not muck or fire or a treacherous stone path, as in Dante. Hell is power bowing to flattery as Kent in Lear points out, and as I experienced by the poor writer's having flattered the vain, pretend professor.
Like Dante, I place my enemies in the Inferno. May they remain nameless, unworthy Dante's immortalizing of his.

But Heaven, Paradiso, is reading Dante with my Chaucer teacher John McNally, he of the rich, fruity voice and the Chaucer recordings, 33 rpm, in the 60s. A former Chicago cop, John McNally was a wonderful Chaucer teacher, who read Dante's Italian with the best.
And by the way, the best English translation of the Inferno is Michael Palma's (Norton). He has not done all three parts, so he's not as well known, but Norton has asked him, so he is doing Purgatorio and Paradiso as I write in 2010. (I met him and his wife at the American Academy, Rome.)

* I memorized the first 30 lines of the poem, maybe 12 of which I recited to my Amherst Coll undergrad thesis Advisor, on 16 & 17 C English prosody. He said, “ well, you’ve got a long way to go!” I also saw, in 1968 Firenze, at the Casa di Dante, the whole Divina Commedia printed on a wall, paper maybe 9 feet by 6, Cantos about 1 foot high, 33 across the 9’, top the Inferno, bottom the Paradiso. Never seems in English what it was there on the wall: a long lyric poem.

Un referente para todo humano, un viaje épico a través del Infierno, el Purgatorio y el Paraíso. La narración es profunda y clara, repleta de simbolismo y filosofía. El protagonista es guiado hasta los círculos infernales. Mientras sigue su objetivo: el paraíso, encuentra almas condenadas que nos imbuyen en temas como la justicia, el destino y la naturaleza humana.

I have travelled a goodly distance since I last read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and what a long strange trip its been. So, it was with an introspective bit of drollness that I embarked on this reread.

I was fascinated with Inferno as a teenager and between Dante Alighieri and Robert Smith/Rimbaud it is, frankly, nothing short of a miracle that I didn't put enough reasons together to wind-up as a fleshy tree with harpies perched in my branches somewhere in the lower circles of hell--if you catch my drift. Yeah, I was one tortured soul...

Now, I seem to have arrived in the dread "Existance Age" of my life. In evidence, I need only cite my thinning hair, second mortgage, life insurance, and All American guilt complex. This is also why it's taking me longer than necessary to read Richard Ford's Independence Day--each line just seems like something I'm thinking, and it's hard to be objective with the reading and view it simply as a book. And, it may very well explain why, as I listened to The Divine Comedy with this audiobook edition, I found Purgatorio so fascinating--when as a teenager I couldn't skim through it fast enough.

The Divine Comedy is more of a journey than a book, and as a journey it has stages and waypoints... also its not a trip everyone needs to take. I, for one, never plan on visiting Meca or for that matter, the Mormon General Conference; they're just not my kinds of trips. But, having grow-up in a Televangelist Supercult, The Divine Comedy is just the right kind of retrospective for me. Reasons are abundant but are typified by the way the book helps me look objectively at my spiritual life.

Here is the short list: First, according to Dante, pretty much everybody in hell is Italian and Catholic; second, my tattoo fantasies of the illustrations by Gustave Dore; third, the striking absense of a bathroom break; fourth the paragraph-long metaphores which fill each canto in the same way a bazaar of guillemots might fill something bigger than a breadbox but smaller than a dinghy if there was but some form of guillemot filling aparatus or perhaps a working decoy; fifth, placing people I dislike in different levels of hell--BTW I've decided Walter Kirn is my arch-enemy; and sixth (but hardly last) the unanswerable question of why Dante is obsessed with a woman who isn't his wife and figures her in the seat of grace while the woman he's married to is no doubt fixing his meals, cleaning his dishes, and caring for his kids, while he is writing the Divine Comedy (like some kind of Catholic Penthouse Forum Letter) and this is somehow OK because he still makes it to heaven.

I'll be honest, I've never been able to finish The Divine Comedy. I get to wandering around in Paradiso like a redneck in Walmart and keep on loosing my place due to profound boredom (unlike a redneck in Walmart). Afterall, "Heaven is a place," to quote David Byrne, "a place where nothing ever happens." Maybe someday Paradiso will be the part I just can't get enough of, but for now I'm content with my life in purgatory. I kind of like the idea that I can impress people just by casting a shadow and meeting old friends in really uncomfortable situations.

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.