In my experience of reading, there has not been any book as elusive, influential and polarising personally for me as Dante’s Inferno. It is a work that I have studied in pieces even before I picked up the dirty habit of reading excessively — it is in some ways, the stepping stone to my love of literature. It is a work taught in Italian high schools for students who would anyway become electricians one day, as it is taught in schools where the students would one day become academicians.
For Italians, The Divine Comedy is an indisputably respected work and you can see the tributes everywhere, like that guy who burped a whole canto of the poem in a burping contest, or how the cobbled streets of Florence are filled with statues and graffiti of Dante’s hawkish face, or how any Italian you’d talk to don’t really have a bad word against the guy and his works. And for me, that was enough to love Dante’s Divine Comedy even before I have finished the first Canto.
But after having read Inferno, I feel lukewarm towards Dante.
I think that the Divine Comedy is one of the most self-indulgent books in literature. In it, Dante puts himself as the hero, with the poet of his choice as his mentor. His enemies are forsaken and buried in the circles of hell, as he’d wish, and his best mates are enjoying the high life in paradise. Dante often compared himself to his predecessors, Ovid and Homer and try to outdo them in the Divine Comedy.
Like many of the Renaissance artists at the time, Dante has some serious ego. Yet, it is undeniable that what he wrote is revolutionary for literature, for the Italian language, that it captures in a snapshot the context of the times unlike any other works of poetry had ever done, even up to now. The Divine Comedy is the work of a genius, even with its flaws. And yet, with all ths knowledge and conviction, I am not convinced that I had enjoyed the work as much as I should have.
How do you enjoy the Divine Comedy? Heads up: it ain’t a walk in the park.
I am confident enough in my Italian to order food in a restaurant for my family, or even having a conversation which might last a good half hour. After that my brain just fuken dies. But I wanted to read Dante in Italian even though I have not spoken or read the language for years, and it is old Italian, as Shakespeare to us is no longer our modern English. When the original language is within reach, then you should go for it.
The orange Penguin edition I bought was thankfully bilingual, line by line. It comes with a heavy introduction which exceeded 100 pages and another 140 odd pages of summary and footnotes which describe each canto in detail. Before I finished Dante, I read The Florentines by David Strathern which had a few chapters about the man and the strives he had to go through after having been exiled by the Guelphs, never to return to his home city of Florence.
But my knowledge of Italian Renaissance is still embryonic and this context is vital in reading the Divine Comedy. Even with the endless notes at the back of my copy, I still feel lost. Perhaps I will need to study more, and the work demands that. I personally feel it is difficult to enjoy, even with my passable Italian, having read about Florentine history and using old mate ChatGPT to understand more about the context.
It makes me question: how do modern readers enjoy Dante if I can’t?
How do you read Dante? The variations are endless.
I guess it is my stubornness to read the work in its original language, even if I can only 30% of the meaning behind it. I didn’t scrutinise every line, or to bridge the gaps where the words look like C++ and just as meaningful to me as Fremantle Dockers are with premierships.
I could read the Italian first before reading the English, cover to cover. Or I can do this canto by canto, page by page, or even stanza by stanza. We can get as granular as going line by line. I thought the right balance was going page by page, in which case, the neighbouring page will anchor me to the ethereal words of Dante’s Tuscan tongue, and I can read the poem one page after another for better flow.
I try to read the words out loud, but I was out in public a lot of the times, and got too distracted at night to pick up the book. I think I was just plain procrastinating. It is a daunting book to pick up, no matter how you’re doing in life. I swapped to The Florentines after I finished the behemoth intro and the first canto,hoping that the history in that book will illuminate my reading of Inferno, and I’m glad I did though I think the help was only marginal.
At some point, I tried going stanza by stanza, but this was too exhausting and I reverted back to the page by page reading. Before each canto I would read the summary of the canto before attacking it head on. Then I would read the footnotes for the characters suffering in hell. Each canto is a mountain to climb, and each page turned is a small chip from the chisel. Did I mention that Inferno was one of the most challenging reads I’ve ever picked up?
I think it was the code switching between one language to the next which may have taken the enjoyment out of it. There is no flow, and it is constantly interrupted, every page, so it becomes an exercise of adaptation instead of the enjoyment of fluid poetry. I will perhaps try reading each canto in Italian before reading the English translation, and also getting my Italian magically better somehow.
Spiralling through the circles with Dante and Virgil
I have realised now that I have spewed about my experience with the book without speaking much about the work itself. The Divine Comedy is one of the most influential works of literature besides Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. It laid the foundations for other greats such as Chaucer and Milton in their own depictions of the afterlife.
Of course, much of it is speculation, and much of it is contentious. But Dante did not only put Boniface in hell, who exiled him, for no reason. But he also put some of his own respected acquaintances, such as Brunetto Latini as he was loosely connected with sodomy. There are historical figures here before Dante’s time, such as his poetical compatriots in Ovid and Homer, unable to enter through the gates of heaven as they have no knowledge of Christianity, being pagans. Ironically, this also includes his guide through hell, Virgil himself.
Curiously, there are mythical figures such as the minotaur, bridging the pagan literature and the Christian context together. For me, this was equitable to when C.S. Lewis wrote in Santa Claus in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — a bit out of place. But this is Dante’s work and he could do whatever he wants with it.
Curiously, not much of the hell depicted here is full of fire, though in some cantos there are still devils with pitchforks, and yes there is still fire and burning. Much of hell is covered in ice and cold. It is a place of banality, as sin often is. At the bottom of the circle, the head honcho is not someone the modern media depicts to be. He’s a mere mechanical mouth, chewing through Brutus, Cassius and Judas, over and over again without emotion.
For those who are now the permanent dwellers of hell, sin seems to be the natural result of their natures, whether they are endowed in lust, murderous intent, usurious deeds or just a cheating, lying cunt. The characters of those interacting with Dante often regret their actions, but viewed their actions as inevitable. Just ask Paolo and Francesca, the two lovers who were caught in their own winds of passion and now must dwell in said tempest.
We need to be mindful of Dante the protagonist, as well as Dante the bard who lends us his voice. Though we can deem them interchangeable, the Dante that we see walking through hell is a construct, a shadow. Dante experiences hell as a novice, absorbing experiences like student. There is a naïveté in Dante the character whilst conversely, Dante the voice carries the gravitas of the poet’s thoughts and passions. Dante is a proponent of Florence the city, and the voice of the poet does not look kindly on the future of Florence, though to be fair the Renaissance was just about to begin even during the shakiest time in Italian history. He wrote the Divine Comedy towards the end of his life in Ravenna, where he would be laid to rest.
Should you read The Divine Comedy? I think so, but that’s just me.
I guess my reasons for reading Inferno is entrenched in my own reading ambitions: I want to read all the classics. If you dig deeper why I want to complete such an absurd task, I really don’t have an answer for you. But I can’t deny that I enjoy reading, very, very much. And perhaps I trust the classics because it had stood the test of time, especially with a work such as the Divine Comedy.
A propos, it was never really called the Divine Comedy by Dante himself — it was just Comedy. Sometimes you may be hard pressed to find the comedy in the Comedy, especially in regards to issues as dire as eternal damnation. But there are funny bits here, such as Dante’s depictions of the devils with odd names such as Cagnazzo (Nasty Dog), Ciriatto (Big Pig) or Malacoda (Evil Tail). And perhaps it is a comedy as Dante himself would know that it is a deeply human and therefore imperfect work. His inaccuracies and mistakes in his speculations are laughable to those who knew better (but who would?).
You’d see Inferno making it to reader’s book lists often, but not Purgatorio or Paradiso which came as mere afterthoughts. I think most readers would be happy to surmount the challenge of the first book alone, and for those who had I salute them. But yes, read this book for the poetry, prepare yourself a little with the historical context. There is no use of picking up this book without humility, because it will humble you. Read it for the challenge, if that’s your thing. But it is a work of undeniable importance and beauty.
