La Divina Commedia

My newest book is The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Florentine by birth, but not by character (as supposedly described by Dante himself.

Before I start on the summary and my opinions, there is some backround information that I'll give you (which isn't really necessary, but you'll get anyway).

Let's start with the title: The Divine Comedy. 2/3 of it may cause some misconceptions. First, Divine; it wasn't actually Dante himself that used this adjective, it was added a century or two later. My initial thought was that he wasn't that pretentious but, 30 pages in, I honestly think that he would have added it if he had thought of it. Comedy is clearly th more important word, but its possibility for causing confusion is larger. The word "comedy" did not initially mean that something was funny. It was simply the opposite of "tragedy," meaning that a comedy just had a happy[ish] ending; this is the sense in which Dante uses it.

On to Dante himself. As shown in the title, he was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. In the period in which he lived in Florence, his family had sided with the Guelf party, who wanted to give more power to the pope. They opposed the Ghibellines, who sided with the emperor. This division seems to have affected Danted less than another division; the White Guelfs (who were in the industrial and new-rich class, in general) and the Black Guelfs (who were largely the old aristocracy, though actually poorer than the Whites). (Note: these two parties have nothing to do with race.)

Dante, an important white, was exiled from his home city in 1302, when the Blacks came to power in the city with the help of Philip IV, king of France. Sentenced to death should he ever return, he never saw the city again.

The story opens to Dante (he is the main character in his own poem) being chased by a leopard, lion, and she-wolf (representing Worldly Pleasure/Florence, Ambition/France, and Avarice/the Papal See, respectively and drawn from Jeremiah 5:6) on Good Friday, 1300. He is saved by the poet Virgil, who offers him an alternate path: through the lands of the dead. He was sent as help by Beatrice, whom Dante had loved in life (in real life, as well as fictional).

They descend, crossing the river Acherus, carried by Charon (who does not want to let Dante [being alive] in at first).

They have now entered Limbo, the first ring of Hell, where the only torment is that of being eternally seperated from God. There, they meet Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan.

Opinion:

Despite the large amount of words that go on my list to look up (such as those last three people), The Divine Comedy is still off to a great start. It has a nice meter to it that keeps it firmly in the "verse" category, but doesn't fall to far into it. As a result, it reads almost like prose (which, for some reason, more easily holds my attention), while still feeling vaguely musical (for lack of better word).

How of this is due to Dante himself and how much to the translator, I couldn't say.

As I mentioned earlier, he does seems rather full of himself. Just the fact that he wrote himself in as the main character (who is having a miraculous journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven) is almost enough to demonstrate this, but he also appears to put himself on par with Virgil and Homer (which may or may not be true, but still).