The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri, 1321
A guided tour of the afterlife in which every punishment is a portrait of the sin, and every heaven a lesson in desire.
Dante Alighieri
1265–1321
Dante wrote in the early fourteenth century, and his afterlife still reads like a place built out of human character: the proud bent under stone, the angry sunk in mud, the generous shining. The «Divine Comedy» moves through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in one long poem, and its people argue, remember and complain in ways you recognise. Start with Longfellow's translation of «Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell» if you want the descent first, since it stands on its own and shows how Dante gives even the damned a voice you half understand.
Feels like morality, awe and dread.
Start with The Divine Comedy.
Dante was exiled from Florence in 1302 and never returned; he wrote much of the Comedy while moving between Italian courts, dying in Ravenna.
The moment a poet admits that language has finally run out.
Whereat to turn mine eyes on BeatriceMy seeing nothing and my love constrained me.If what has hitherto been said of herWere all concluded in a single praise,Scant would it be to serve the present turn.Not only does the beauty I beheldTranscend ourselves, but truly I believeIts Maker only may enjoy it all.Vanquished do I confess me by this passageMore than by problem of his theme was everO’ercome the comic or the tragic poet;For as the sun the sight that trembles most,Even so the memory of that sweet smileMy mind depriveth of its very self. Books by Dante Alighieri
Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell
Dante Alighieri, 1320
A man lost in a dark wood is led down through nine circles of Hell, and the poet gives every sinner a voice, a grievance and a reason you half understand.
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