Is this a great poem, in English translation?
I can do a course on The Inferno -- a long course, 22 hours. That's a lot! But every time I read it I think that it may be interesting from the point of view of medieval history and theology, but from the point of view of poetry and ideas which speak to a 21st century dude, there's nothing there.
Am I wrong?
There's certainly lots of very good poetry in the Comedy. But on the other hand, it needs to be heavily annotated for the modern reader just to know who each new character is, and why they are found in whatever section of the afterlife Dante thought suitable for them.
I have a bilingual edition--the Italian with a prose translation on facing pages, and explanatory notes after each canto.
The other problem with the Comedy is that it distracts people from reading the Vita Nouva.
This is the translation I have, but in an older edition.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1OzYEKGrAL._AC_SX296_SY426_FMwebp_QL65_.jpg)(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91b3OtCQ8LL._AC_SX296_SY426_FMwebp_QL65_.jpg)(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81NwGP1LaaL._AC_SX296_SY426_FMwebp_QL65_.jpg)
The covers remind me that Dore's illustrations are worth having in their own right, as are Blake's.
I'm beginning to see that one challenge for me is to learn to read allegorically. I don't know that I've ever studied this type of writing before.
I think one problem is that the special kind of verse with eternal chains of final rhymes is impossible to translate (maybe into Spanish, but not German or English) and the harder it is tried the more stilted it will sound whereas it supposedly sounds rather "natural"/flowing in Italian.
And the history/philosophy/mythology/theology overload is so strong that one cannot ignore it, or even if one does one cannot escape it.
I think I tried first (always in translation) at about 17 and got stuck in Purgatorio (no pun), next time in my 20s and got stuck in the early cantos of Paradiso and then in my 40s and got through. In 2015, I think, I then planned to learn enough Italian to eventually read it again at least in a bilingual edition but I haven't gotten so far.
Poetically, Paradiso is as good as the other parts but the theology overload is worst, so one is always looking up something in the margin/bottom/end notes.
Inferno is easiest because it's the most picturesque, sometimes grotesquely funny and these aspects don't suffer so much from translation, I think.
I have a number of translations of The Divine Comedy (John Sinclair, John Ciardi, Longfellow, Charles Tomlinson, and Robert Pinsky) - and enjoy them all. I rank Dante with Shakespeare and read both often.
Even though I am 100% Italian, I can't speak or read the language, and regret not being able to read Dante in his language (not that I haven't tried several times to educate myself; I am lousy with languages).
Despite my ignorance, his books have given me many hours of pleasure and wisdom.
Any of you Danteans feel like having a go of making sense (I mean non-literal sense! The superficial meaning seems clear enough) of Inferno Canto V? This is the Singleton translation, which is the one I'm using.
https://mason.gmu.edu/~rnanian/Dante-Singleton.pdf
Quote from: Mandryka on December 15, 2025, 12:28:32 AMI'm beginning to see that one challenge for me is to learn to read allegorically. I don't know that I've ever studied this type of writing before.
It goes even deeper than that.
Dante was a proponent of the fourfold method of interpretation, the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (the latter is the hardest one to wrap one's mind around).
This means there's likely four levels of meaning in his works, from the moral, political, theological and at the highest level spiritual which is the hardest to grasp because there is not much information on the subject. We know that Dante likely belonged to a chivalric esoteric/initiatic group called Fedeli d'Amore but what exactly does this entail is hard to say.
I am of the opinion that the Divine Comedy is actually a blue print for some kind of spiritual/esoteric path that intertwines Catholic exoteric intellectual frameworks like Thomism with an inner, more neo-Platonic "like" (as in somewhat similar to neo-Platonism, not that the group was literally neo-Platonic) Christian esoteriticism the true nature of which we were never meant to know explicitly (but those who have the "ears to hear" will understand).
This is not speculation either. In the Vita Nova Dante actually downright says his verses are intended for those "fedeli d'amori" who are the only ones capable of actually understanding them. Whether he is talking about an actual religious order or a more universal class of people (those with a more spiritual and contemplative temperament) is more difficult to say. One should think there would be no point in making public works of art
unless one is trying to reach a larger number of people as opposed to a secretive private society but again who knows.
So with that mind, it's likely there's a lot that is going to be lost in translation, though as someone who is in a privileged position of bieng able to read the original i'll say the meaning is not immediatly obvious in Italian either. Also, since i can read the original i cannot offer any opinion on translations since i never had any need for them and never actually tried one.
BTW, i think it ought to be pointed out that the "love" spoken of by Dante is not romantic love. We are talking about an actual spiritual state of being. This is the same love St. Paul mentions in the first epistle to the Corinthians.
Also in the case of Dante, this love is associated with wisdom or the intellect, which in medieval Catholic esotericism has direct ties with Marian worship. Thus, we have Santa Lucia (illuminating grace, luce = light) who, acting on the behest of the Virgin Mary (who is the Sedes Sapientiae, the seat of Wisdom), sends Beatrice (beatidude) to aid Dante to find his way towards salvation, which is a step pagan wisdom (rapresented by Virgil) could not take.
Quote from: Opus131 on December 18, 2025, 01:37:18 AMIt goes even deeper than that.
Dante was a proponent of the fourfold method of interpretation, the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (the latter is the hardest one to wrap one's mind around).
This means there's likely four levels of meaning in his works, from the moral, political, theological and at the highest level spiritual which is the hardest to grasp because there is not much information on the subject. We know that Dante likely belonged to a chivalric esoteric/initiatic group called Fedeli d'Amore but what exactly does this entail is hard to say.
I am of the opinion that the Divine Comedy is actually a blue print for some kind of spiritual/esoteric path that intertwines Catholic exoteric intellectual frameworks like Thomism with an inner, more neo-Platonic "like" (as in somewhat similar to neo-Platonism, not that the group was literally neo-Platonic) Christian esoteriticism the true nature of which we were never meant to know explicitly (but those who have the "ears to hear" will understand).
This is not speculation either. In the Vita Nova Dante actually downright says his verses are intended for those "fedeli d'amori" who are the only ones capable of actually understanding them. Whether he is talking about an actual religious order or a more universal class of people (those with a more spiritual and contemplative temperament) is more difficult to say. One should think there would be no point in making public works of art unless one is trying to reach a larger number of people as opposed to a secretive private society but again who knows.
So with that mind, it's likely there's a lot that is going to be lost in translation, though as someone who is in a privileged position of bieng able to read the original i'll say the meaning is not immediatly obvious in Italian either. Also, since i can read the original i cannot offer any opinion on translations since i never had any need for them and never actually tried one.
Yes, I've read about spiritual allegory, and I am sure that to really appreciate it I would have to read some Thomist ideas.
There is a tradition of allegory in English literature -- Spenser in The Faery Queen, for example, and Chaucer's Dream Poems. But I don't think that it goes beyond simple personification (So Spenser's Knight of the Red Cross is the personification of courage, for example.)