When he wrote The Divine Comedy, Dante was already a well known writer.  He had been exiled from Florence for political reasons.  In the poem, he is the poet pilgrim and Virgil, a poet who inspired Dante, is his guide.  He will protect Dante and guide him physically and spiritually through Hell and Purgatory.  He has been sent by Beatrice, Dante’s idealised childhood love to whom he dedicated much poetry and who, in this poem, symbolises Heavenly Wisdom.  The story is of Dante’s journey, in the middle of his life (nel mezzo), through life to salvation.  He must descend into Hell to eventually ascend to Paradise. 

Inferno / Hell is a series of circles, often with sub levels, each containing sinners in different categories, worsening as we go deeper into Hell.  On the gates of Hell are written the words, ‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi chi intrate’ - ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here’ - as, once you are in, you can never leave.  Dante is not dead so he is able to pass all the way through.  Minos, ex ruler of Crete, acts as judge and indicates to which circle of Hell each sinner must go.  Before entering the first circle of Hell, we pass through Limbo which contains those who are unbaptised and includes those who were born before the Christian Era, such as the Virtuous Pagans, which includes Virgil, Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan.  The group acknowledges Dante’s status as one of them - bearing in mind he is writing this, what an ego!  As he descends through the circles of Hell, he meets many famous and infamous people, some from history, some his contemporaries, and some from myth.  The vast majority are men.  Many are Dante’s political enemies and much of the poem is a diatribe against Florence and those who exiled him.  Dante sometimes feels compassion for the sinners he meets but Virgil generally chides him for that.  The punishments meted out to the sinners become more extreme, more imaginative and more vile the deeper into Hell we go.

What kind of mind did Dante have to think up all these cruel and unusual punishments?  What sin has he committed that he feels he has to embark, through the poet pilgrim, on such a journey, examining his own identity with reference to each category of sinner?  Some of the punishments can be linked to passages in the Bible but not all.

Purgatory - As in Hell, the punishments inflicted upon the penitents are grotesque.  I read this with something approaching morbid fascination!

Paradise - Dante recounts the poet’s journey through an eternal world, navigated through a hierarchy of light and by way of the nine planets. He eventually sees God.

I struggled most with Paradise. Inferno and Purgatory were interesting on so many levels but Paradise, if this doesn’t sound too absurd, was just too religious for me! Nevertheless, there was a definite feeling of joy - or perhaps relief on my part! - at the end of the journey.

Countless academics have dedicated their lives to studying this work. I don’t know of any other that has such depth or that has so many levels on which it can be studied, i.e. religion, the Bible, Christian, Church and papal history; Greek and Roman myth and history; Florentine and wider Italian history and politics (Guelph & Ghibelline); European history; philosophy; scientific investigation; music; literature / poetry. I read it on the Georgetown University My Dante website which provides a guided reading that I found very helpful and informative. It has taken me two full months to read and study it and yet I know I’ve only scratched the surface of its meanings. I’ve written out many beautiful passages that I’m sure I’ll return to but it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever read the full poem again.

The Divine Comedy is a 14,233 lines-long Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered to be the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. I've wanted to read it for a long time but had, thus far, been too daunted to actually take up the task.

The narrative describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, while allegorically the poem represents the soul's journey towards God, beginning with the recognition and rejection of sin, followed by the penitent Christian life, and ultimately leads to the soul's ascent to God.

The three cantiche of the Comedy – Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso – each consist of 33 canti. In addition, there's an initial canto, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, which brings the total number of canti to 100.

The structure of the three realms follows a common numerical pattern of 9 plus 1, for a total of 10: 9 circles of Hell, followed by Lucifer contained at its bottom; 9 terraces of Mount Purgatory, followed by the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the 9 celestial spheres of Heaven, followed by the Empyrean containing the very essence of God.

Within each group of 9, seven elements correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdivided into three subcategories, while two others of greater particularity are added to total nine. For example, the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the late repentant and the excommunicated by the church. The core seven sins within Purgatory correspond to a moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy, Pride).

The last word in each of the three cantiche is stelle ("stars").

In central Italy's political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor. Florence's Guelphs split into factions around 1300 – the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII, who supported the Black Guelphs. This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy, from prophecies of Dante's exile to Dante's views of politics, to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents.

"Inferno" – 2,5 stars
The poem begins on the night before Good Friday in 1300. Dante is 35 years old, half of the biblical lifespan of 70, lost in a dark wood (understood as sin), assailed by beasts (a lion, a leopard, and a she-wolf) he cannot evade and is unable to find the "straight way". Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Hell is a contrapasso, a symbolic instance of poetic justice by which each punishment matches its sin.

"Purgatorio" - 5 stars
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom to the Mountain of Purgatory. The Mountain is on an island and was created by the displacement of rock which resulted when Satan's fall created Hell. The classification of sin here is drawn primarily from Christian theology, rather than from classical sources. However, Dante's illustrative examples of sin and virtue draw on classical sources as well as on the Bible and on contemporary events.

"Paradiso" - 2 stars
After an initial ascension from the Garden of Eden, Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, as in Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. While the structures of Inferno and Purgatorio were based on different classifications of sin, the structure of Paradiso is based on the four cardinal and the three theological virtues.

Çok geç bir okuma, bir nedenle okuma listemde öne çıkması üzerine okudum. Dante Alighieri’nin (1265, Floransa - 1321, Ravenna), Cehennem, Araf ve Cennet başlıklı üç ciltten oluşan “İlahi Komedya” tek kelimeyle şahaser. Eserin yazıldığı dönem (Hristiyanlığın dini baskısı, rönesansın ve matbaanın olmaması, salgın hastalıkların yaygın olması, şehirler arası savaşların yoğunluğu vb nedenler) gözönüne alındığında ve yazım tekniğindeki zorluk (terza lima tekniği) düşünüldüğünde yukarıda belirttiğim “şahaser” tanımlaması daha net yerine oturur. Öncelikle çevirinin mükemmel olduğunu, açıklayıcı dipnotlarla Rekin Teksoy’un kitabı anlaşılır kılmaktaki emeği karşısında şapka çıkardığımı belirtmeliyim. Öyle ki; İlahi Komedya’nın anlaşılabilirliği açısından okunmasının çok yararlı olacağı vurgulanan Homeros’un İlyada ve Odesea destanları ile Vergilius’un Aeneis destanının ayrıca Kitab-ı Mukaddes’in okunmamış olmasındaki eksikliği bu dipnotlar büyük ölçüde gideriyor.

Üç mısralı şiir tarzında (terzina) yazılan bu hacimli kitap yazar Dante’nin öteki dünyaya yaptığı düşsel bir geziyi destansı biçimde anlatır. 1300 yılında 7 Nisan’da Cehennem ile başladığı ve arada Araf’a uğrayıp Cennet ile sonlandırdığı ruhani gezisi bir hafta sürer. İlk iki durakta büyük hayranlık duyduğu (ustam, ozan, rehberim, gönlü yüce gölge, iyi yürekli, bilge, güzel babam, güneş, uyanık ustam vb sıfatları kullandığı) Latin ozan Vergilius (İÖ 70-19) rehberlik eder. Vergilius ünlü eseri Aeneis destanında Truva savaşından yenik çıkan Aeneis’in İtalya’ya gelerek Romalılar’ın atalarını oluşturduğunu anlatır. İlk iki ciltte Antik Yunan mitolojisi ve felsefesi ağırlıktayken, üçüncü ciktte teoloji ön plana çıkmıştır. Dipnotlar sayesinde sayısız isimler, olaylar, bilgiler ile başedilebilinmektedir. Borges, Komedya'yı bir alegori olarak ele alırsak Dante insanoğlunun, Beatrice inancın, Vergilius da aklın simgesi olacağını ileri sürmüştür ki çok akla yatkın.

İlahi Komedya içine bir aşk hikayesi yerleştirmiştir Dante, sevdiği kadın Beatrice’dir bu aşkın kahramanı, en zor ve karamsar olduğu anlarda ona olan sevgisine sığınır. Bu aşk destanda ayrı bir ilahi tema oluşturur. Cennet, Cehennem ve Araf’ta bulunmasını uygun bulduğu kişiler çok ilginç. Örneğin antik çağ filozoflarını ve ozanlarını çok beğenmesine rağmen cehenneme yerleştirmiş, çünkü bu kişiler vaftiz olmamışlardır. O dönemde Hristiyanlığın olup olmaması önemli değildir Dante için, bu çok enteresan bir mantık. Keza yeni bir dinin temsilcisi Hz Muhammed de Cehennemin alt katlarındadır, peygamberliği Dante’nin hışmından kurtaramamıştır onu ve Hz Ali’yi. Kitabın tadı kaçmasın diye daha fazla ayrıntı vermeyeceğim.

Kitabını o zaman geçerli dil olan Latince yerine İtalyanca, yaşadığı bölge olan Toscana lehçesiyle yazmıştır ki bu devrimci seçimi bile kitabın önemini arttırmaktadır. Her bir kitapta 33’er bölüm (kanto) vardır, Cehennem bölümündeki giriş ile birlikte toplam 100 kanto (destan bölümü) vardır. Vergilius rehberliğini Araf’ın tepesinde Beatrice’ye bırakır, Beatrice ise Cennetin son katmanında kaybolup yerine Aziz Bernard geçer ve Cennet’teki geziyle 14 Nisan 1300’de düşsel gezi sona erer. Bu arada Clairvaux manastırının başında bulunan başkeşiş Bernard’ı niye seçmiştir Dante acaba? Bu kitap daha çok su götürür aslında !

Kitabı anlatmak zor, okunması gerekiyor çünkü. Temel olarak antik Yunan mitolojisi, Homeros’un destanları, Eski ve Yeni Ahitler, ilahiler, dini metinler ve hristiyanlığa ait söylenceler ile Dante’nin dönemindeki tarihi olaylardan beslenen bir destan. Beni kitapta etkileyen olgulardan birisi de yazarın bazı öngörülerinin gerçekleşmesi (Papalığın bir ara Vatikan’dan taşınması, kendisinin sürgüne gönderilmesi, Floransa’nın savaşta yenilgiye uğraması, Dominiken ve Fransisken tarikatları arasındaki birbirini kötüleme faaliyetleri vb gibi), bir diğer olgu da tanrıyı bir enerji, gül şeklinde ışık olarak tanımlaması keza Papa’nın kötülüklerini sakınmadan dile getirmesi oldu, ki çok cesurca. O dönemde Luther, Calvin gibi hristiyanlıkta rol ayrımlarının olmadığını hatırlatmakta yarar var. Filozoflar, astroloji, tarih ve din konusunda andiklopedik bilgisi de çok etkileyici. Çağdaşı Boccacio’nun ünlü eseri “Decameron”da bahsettiği vebadan Dante’nin hiç bahsetmemiş olması şaşırtıcı. Belki bir bildiği vardır diyerek kitabı hararetle öneririm. Son bir kısa bilgi-yorumu A. Manguel’den alıntılıyorum: “Dante okumanın dört düzeyi vardır; düz anlamlı, alegorik, mitsel, ahlaki. Teolojik çerçevenin içinde derin ve şiirsel edebi çerçeve vardır.”

First read more than 50 years ago. A classic contribution to Western Civilization. Dante's introduction of terza rima influenced other great poets of the early Renaissance. However, you shouldn't explore his Hell without a map and a program. The Inferno is populated with many individuals involved in the politics of the time and place, Dante's contemporaries including foes, acquaintances, and a few friends. So you better know your Ghibellines from your Guelphs and your Black Guelphs from your White. Moreover, there are allusions galore to Greek and Roman mythology and history which makes sense, since Virgil acts as the narrator's spiritual and physical guide through the Underworld.

When, disappearing, from our hemisphere,
The world's enlightener vanishes, and day
On all sides wasteth, suddenly the sky,
Erewhile irradiate only with his beam,
Is yet again unfolded, putting forth
Innumerable lights wherein one shines.
Of such vicissitude in heaven I thought,
As the great sign, that marshaleth the world
And the world's leaders, in the blessed beak
Was silent; for that all those living lights,
Waxing in splendour, burst forth into songs,
Such as from memory glide and fall away.

****

"O thou Almighty Father, who dost make
The heavens thy dwelling, not in bounds confin'd,
But that with love intenser there thou view'st
Thy primal effluence, hallow'd be thy name:
Join each created being to extol
Thy might, for worthy humblest thanks and praise
Is thy blest Spirit. May thy kingdom's peace
Come unto us; for we, unless it come,
With all our striving thither tend in vain.
As of their will the angels unto thee
Tender meet sacrifice, circling thy throne
With loud hosannas, so of theirs be done
By saintly men on earth. Grant us this day
Our daily manna, without which he roams
Through this rough desert retrograde, who most
Toils to advance his steps. As we to each
Pardon the evil done us, pardon thou
Benign, and of our merit take no count.
'Gainst the old adversary prove thou not
Our virtue easily subdu'd; but free
From his incitements and defeat his wiles.
This last petition, dearest Lord! is made
Not for ourselves, since that were needless now,
But for their sakes who after us remain.

****

We from the bridge's head descended, where
To the eighth mound it joins, and then the chasm
Opening to view, I saw a crowd within
Of serpents terrible, so strange of shape
And hideous, that remembrance in my veins
Yet shrinks the vital current. Of her sands
Let Lybia vaunt no more: if Jaculus,
Pareas and Chelyder be her brood,
Cenchris and Amphisboena, plagues so dire
Or in such numbers swarming ne'er she shew'd,
Not with all Ethiopia, and whate'er
Above the Erythraean sea is spawn'd.

Amid this dread exuberance of woe
Ran naked spirits wing'd with horrid fear,
Nor hope had they of crevice where to hide,
Or heliotrope to charm them out of view.
With serpents were their hands behind them bound,
Which through their reins infix'd the tail and head
Twisted in folds before. And lo! on one
Near to our side, darted an adder up,
And, where the neck is on the shoulders tied,
Transpierc'd him. Far more quickly than e'er pen
Wrote O or I, he kindled, burn'd, and chang'd
To ashes, all pour'd out upon the earth.

04/25/22

Well, for the second time, my journey is over. When I first read The Divine Comedy nearly nine years ago, I viewed the great poem primarily as an academic exercise, Dante's effort to collate the sum total of earthly and heavenly knowledge into a single Epic of Existence. Now that I'm closer to the age Dante was when he wrote it (a deeply humbling thought), I can see more clearly how intensely personal this project was for him; how it reflects, at the christening of his personal maturity, Dante's spiritual need to burst free from his own insularity, to find a truer Self than the chimera he had fastened in adolescence and young manhood by rushing out of himself and into everyone else - men, beasts, angels, poets, kings, saints, friends, popes, heroes, and the Holy Trinity. He could no longer live in the ego-self to which he clung with such tenacity in his youth. He had to lose his soul in heaven and hell in order to find it; to reveal himself to himself through the medium of Love, given and received in one immanent and transcendent mystery.

Did he find what he was looking for? Perhaps that answer waits for a later stage of our life's journey.









07/18/2013

Dante's Divine Comedy is one of the classics of western literature for a reason. It represents, in many respects, the intellectual summation of the high middle ages. It is riddled with symbols and allegory, frequent references to classical history and mythology, and sports, particularly in Paradiso, an impressively deep exploration of theological questions and the nature of divinity and divine love. The extent to which contemporary political questions figure prominently in the narrative was surprising to me. Dante holds nothing back in indicting the church for straying from its official mission and for the corruption of its leaders - perhaps most famously in a humorous meeting between Dante and Pope Nicholas III in Hell - as well as the decadence that gripped his native Florence.

There is an unfortunate tendency in American high schools and universities to introduce students to Dante by simply showing them excerpts from Inferno and saying, "look, here's what people in the middle ages thought Hell was like!" In reality, The Divine Comedy is so much more than that. It is, in turns, a theological treatise, a political manifesto, a primer on medieval astronomy and cosmology, and, of course, an epic poem intended to carry on the tradition of Homer and Virgil. It deserves to be read and reread by students of western civilization.

I We attempt to rewrite the Divine Comedy

Canto I

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."

I said I would continue when I had found new inspiration. I considered changing my muse and interviewed several applicants, but Nandakishore's celestial connections turned out to be better than mine:

Canto II

But verily, the Americans did dump
This gargantuan mistake of evolution
This travesty of humanity called Trump

Down the drain; so, though not a final solution
It does prove that your Muses
Are not entirely mistaken

In clamming up; the mind refuses
To accept the fact that the presidency was taken
By a man whose only claim to fame is

Bankrupting every business he has ever lead;
In fact, one can say that the "Trump" name is
Enough to ensure that the enterprise, as a business, is dead.

And then Théodore also found divine inspiration:

Canto III

Thus my muse is so capricious,
She only visits me when I'm not home.
I know, it sounds so superstitious

But I have this damn syndrome.
There are so Manny reasons to take my life
But wouldn't be a sin, being so handsome ?

Oh joy! My original muse, who apparently had been off on an extended trip to the Empyrean, returned with new verses:

Canto IV

Hunky or not, to leave this vale of strife
And make my dwelling in the wood of suicides
Maybe next to Ted Hughes's ex-wife?

The sweet poetry that she to me confides
With these images my heart is riven
But my good sense the thought derides

That Sylvia will fall for me is not a given
Particularly since she'll be arboreal and dead
That's just some crap I read in Larry Niven

Nel mezzo del camino di nosotras vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta vía era smaritta

I was lost in my midlife crises
In a jungle of sin, looking for sense

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...)

I wanted to read “Divine Comedy” for quite a while, but was not sure how to approach it. My main problem was that it is written in verses and I do not know Italian to read it in original. At the end, I’ve picked up a classic middle of the 20th century translation into Russian in tercinas verse as well. And, I think I’ve made a good choice. After a while, I got used to the pace and the music and the poetry had become palpable. But I only could imagine how amazing it is to read it in in original.

Reading was not an easy work as I needed to flip to the notes at least a few times per page. But i got used to it and, at the end, the notes have started to act as as second meta- narrative. I would re-read all the notes related to a chapter before reading the chapter. It helped a lot to enjoy the verses and follow the story.

It seems that modern readers often prefer “The Inferno”. I liked it as well. Especially, I enjoyed the architecture of it - downward spiral. And of course, the stories. Francesca and Paolo were the big highlight. I repeat after Borges’s that Dante seemed to be a bit envious of their attachment to each other, that they could be together for eternity if only in Inferno. While his intimacy with Beatrice was possible only through divine love.

My modern sensibilities did not appreciate Dante’s treatment of the Prophet Muhammed, though I understand perfectly the historical context. He seems to be treated especially unfairly considering the hypothesis the Dante’s Paradiso is in many ways similar to the Isra and Mi'raj or night journey of Muhammad to heaven (According to Wiki and then initially raised in Miguel Asia Palacios. L’Eschatologle musulmane dans la Divine Comedie suiul de Histoire et critique d’une polemique. — Traduit de I’espagnol par B. Durant. — Arche Edidit,1992). But I guess, one could forget the man of his time.


The amount of historical details and Dante’s knowledge is totally striking. I did not know much about Italy in the 14th century. And after reading it, I think i have a good impression how people thought at that time. The Inferno Journey was not scary for me. It was like the journey of discovery. And Virgil was a great guide.

Moving on to Purgatory and Paradiso, I was not very much impressed by Beatrice as a guide, after Virgil. She seemed to be somewhat detached. And Dante’s dismay is palpable when she finally takes her place in Heaven (even if the feeling for her is replaced by the feeling of the divine love). But I absolutely admired the architecture of the both places he created. Specifically, I want to talk a bit about the role of mirrors and reflections. Now, for me Dante’s Paradiso will always be associated with the infinite reflections when everything is reflected and multiplied in the image of each other.

Apparently, Dante mentions mirrors at least 30 times in the poem. The role of a mirror is to reflect light. He uses mirror as an allegory for the angels who do not need the language as they reflect God. He mentions it first in Chapter XV of Purgatory:

Come quando da l’acqua o da lo specchio
salta lo raggio a l’opposita parte
salendo su per lo modo parecchio

a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte
dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta,
sì come mostraesperïenza e arte;

così mi parve da luce rifratta
quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso;
per che a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta.

[13, XV: 16–24]

He compares here the appearance of the angel to the reflection of the light from the mirror. And, in the process, he elegantly repeats the scientific law of light’s reflection.

The power of God is compared by Beatrice to the power creating many mirrors, reflecting in all them, while keeping unity:

Vedi l’eccelso omai e la larghezza de l’etterno valor, poscia che tanti speculi fatti s’ha in che si spezza,
uno manendo in sé come davanti.

In the final chapters of Paradiso, when he loses the ability to speak, he almost become a mirror himself focusing on reflecting the divine love. Although, Borges seemed to think that it indicates that Dante is simply asleep and dreaming of it all.

And I finish with the quote from an article I’ve read in Russian (since than, I’ve lost it so I cannot site it properly at the moment):

“We can suggest that the whole text of the poem was created like a huge “mirror” which reflected all intentions, all impressions learned by Dante-character in the process of his life and journey in the poem. All phenomena made by the Creator and multiplied by the love of the Poet are getting communicated to the past and future readers, like the light reflected in the universe of the Divine Comedy.”

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.

Inferno: The poem begins on the night before Good Friday in 1300, "halfway along our life's path". Dante lost in a dark wood, he cannot evade and unable to find the "straight way" – also translatable as "right way" – to salvation. Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he is falling into a "low place" (basso loco) where the sun is silent, Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld.

they had their faces twisted toward their haunches
and found it necessary to walk backward,
because they could not see ahead of them.
... and since he wanted so to see ahead,
he looks behind and walks a backward path.

Purgatorio: Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the under gloom to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world. The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere, created by the displacement of rock which resulted when Satan's fall created Hell.

The mountain has seven terraces, corresponding to the seven deadly sins or "seven roots of sinfulness." The classification of sin here is more psychological than that of the Inferno, being based on motives, rather than actions. It is also drawn primarily from Christian theology, rather than from classical sources. However, Dante's illustrative examples of sin and virtue draw on classical sources as well as on the Bible and on contemporary events. ...

Paradiso: After an initial ascension, Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, as in Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. While the structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based on different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues.

The seven lowest spheres of Heaven deal solely with the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Fortitude, Justice and Temperance. The first three spheres involve a deficiency of one of the cardinal virtues – the Moon, containing the inconstant, whose vows to God waned as the moon and thus lack fortitude; Mercury, containing the ambitious, who were virtuous for glory and thus lacked justice; and Venus, containing the lovers, whose love was directed towards another than God and thus lacked Temperance.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه جولای سال 1976میلادی

عنوان: کمدی الهی در سه جلد: دوزخ - برزخ - بهشت؛ سروده: دانته آلیگری؛ مترجم: شجاع الدین شفا؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، 1335؛ موضوع اشعار شاعران ایتالیا - سده 14م

البته که ترجمه های دیگران از نامداران و مترجمان این اثر کم بدیل جداگانه معرفی شده اند

سرود اول بهشت: (جلال ِ آنکس 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...)؛ پایان نقل از برگردان روانشاد «شجاع الدین شفا»؛

میاندیشم این رویاها را، شاید در خیال خواب خویش، همگان نیز دیده باشیم، «دانته» نیز دیده است؛ این منظومه ی بلند، دارای سه بخش «دوزخ»، «برزخ» و «بهشت» است، و هر بخشی سی ‌و سه چکامه (کانتو) دارد، که با مقدمه، در کل شامل یکصد چکامه می‌شود؛ «دانته» برای این اثر از قافیه ‌پردازی نوی، که به «قافیه ی سوم» مشهور شد، سود جستند؛ هر چکامه، به بندهای «سه بیتی» تقسیم می‌شود، که بیت اول و سوم، هم قافیه هستند، و بیت میانی، با بیت اول و سوم بند بعدی، دارای قافیه جداگانه ‌است؛ مبنای وزن هر بیت، یازده هجایی است؛ مجموع ابیات «کمدی الهی» به دوازده هزار و دویست و سی و سه بیت می‌رسد؛ زبان این اثر گویش ایالت «توسکانا» در «ایتالیا»ی آن روزگاران است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 26/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

رحلة العمر...

رحلة ملحمية متخيلة عبر الجحيم والمطهر والفردوس، كتبها أحد أكبر الشعراء العالميين، فأنتج لنا قصة خالدة عن الايمان والحب، تتحدث عن الدين والفلسفة والتعليم والسياسة ومواضيع أخرى، واستحق بقائه على عرش الكتب الخالدة.

ترجمة رائعة لكاظم جهاد.