“The Divine Comedy” (1321) by Dante is an epic poem about travels through the worlds of the Catholic afterlife: heaven, hell and purgatory:
- hell: underground below Jerusalem. A place of devils, unbelievers and unrepentant sinners. Famous people: Homer, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, Caesar, Ptolemy, Galen, Averroes, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Pope Nicholaus III, Odysseus, Jason, Muhammad, Brutus, Cassius, Judas, Satan.
- purgatory: a mountain that rises out of the sea on the opposite side of the earth from Jerusalem, south of what we now know as French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean. A place for repentant sinners, where they are punished before going to heaven. Famous people: Cato, Dante, Cain, Pope Adrian V, Statius.
- heaven: the moon and beyond, continuing past the stars to where the angels live, and on to where God lives beyond space and time. A place of angels and saints. Famous people: the saints Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Francis, Dominic, Peter, James, John, Bernard, Mary, Jesus Christ.
Virgil guides him through hell and purgatory. Beatrice, the love of his life, guides him through heaven.
Hell was by far the most interesting to read about. Heaven was kind of boring. But that is understandable.
It reads more like Jules Verne than Narnia. For example, Dante points out how the sun is to the north at Mount Purgatory and how his body casts a shadow while shades (souls without flesh-and-blood bodies) do not.
The Comedy certainly was based on the latest Western thinking of the time in science, philosophy and religion. It is a painless way to find out how educated Westerners saw the world back then. Certainly much easier than reading Aquinas’s “Summa Theologica” (1274).
Heaven, hell and purgatory are each divided into seven or more levels, each one for a particular virtue or sin. Purgatory, for example, has a level for each of the seven deadly sins (greed, gluttony, lust, pride, envy, anger and sloth). Dante sees himself as winding up in purgatory because he wants to be a famous writer (pride).
While Dante does see plenty of famous people, like the evil popes in hell, most of the people he meets are Italians of his own time. So you need good footnotes. Most likely there is an online Comedy that footnotes through to the Wikipedia.
The book seems to be a moral warning to the Italians of his time. Not just because of who he meets, but also because he wrote in Italian, not Latin. Like Orwell, Dante does not believe in just world doctrine (this world as being more or less just).
English translations: I read the Allen Mandelbaum (1984) and Charles Eliot Norton (1892) translations. Both are on the Internet. While the plot and imagery come through – like how those who killed themselves became dark and twisted trees – Dante has to be a much better writer than how he comes across in their English.
See also:
I like your Jules Verne comparison. I never saw it like that, probably because professors (it was a compulsory read in high school) insisted on allegories and similar aspects. Sure, it’s a moral warning, but in a way, it could be read as an early example of a fantasy/adventure story. It also makes you understand his world view better.
Now, only “hell” was compulsory, so I haven’t read “purgatory” or “heaven”, but many people who have agree with you: hell is the most interesting. What I liked the most is the way he organized the circles of hell and who goes where. But I particularly liked the way he described Satan.
As a part of my high school graduation essay, I had to write about a chosen literary theme. I chose devil (ok, it sounds creepy; I don’t have any fascination with the subject, but I do think it’s interesting to see how this theme was presented in famous literary works). I chose three books, written in three different time periods and different cultures (and three representations of devil): Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Goethe’s “Faust” and Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”. Out of these, Bulgakov’s book made the biggest impression. So if you haven’t read it, do.
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OMG! I have not read it yet, but my sister gave me that Bulgakov book for my birthday!
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Do read it. It’s really one of the best novels written in XX century (or maybe ever). It is good on so many levels. I forgot to nominate it for the desert island books poll. But it’s quite good.
(But prepare yourself for a bit different interpretation of well known Christian themes. Part of the book takes place in Judaea, and Jesus and Pontius Pilate – particularly Pilate – are important characters).
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I’m not a Dante scholar, but besides the Divine Comedy being a moral warning, it’s a social critique. If I’m not mistaken, he places people in hell in keeping with his view of contemporaries and figures pertinent to his time and culture, which helps to explain why there’s so many Italians in hell. Many of them are people he disdained or disliked.
It is worth noting that you found the inferno part of the Comedy to be the most interesting. I think most readers find the Comedy considerably less interesting, and finally boring, the closer one gets to heaven. A theologian once remarked that perhaps the reason we find hell more interesting is that we are far more alienated from divinity than we realize, so that we find the concept of “heaven” as extremely hard to imagine, let alone enjoy.
As Dante goes, I recommend reading a shorter work, La Vita Nuova, a poem about his love for a pretty girl named Beatrice.
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Well, when I agreed about “moral warning”, I meant “social critique”, and not only the moral parts of the story. I agree with you: it’s written with a precise point in mind.
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I’ve read it and as I understand he did place people he did not like in hell. As a story it is amusing. I don’t find it that great other than it is one of the first written in italian.
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I think there are significant cultural differences (manly in time) between us and him to appreciate his work as it is, as a literature. After all, he wasn’t writing this for us, but for the people of his own time and place. It’s understandable we don’t fully understand it and are unable to fully appreciate it for what it is. Still, it’s a good, significant book. Truly unique and innovative for its time.
Still, judging by the small number of replies to this topic, it makes me wonder how it got to top 10. Maybe some people did vote, like somebody suggested, on books they thought they should vote for, and not the books they really liked?
I always say: don’t be ashamed of your preferences. If you didn’t like a highly-praised, classic book, just say so. Don’t be afraid to appear “stupid”. It’s elitist to think that way.
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I wrote my college admission essay on “Master and Margarita”.
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I highly recommend the version in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 7th edition, Volume 1. It has a diagram of Dante’s hell complete with Circles I – IX and corresponding cantos. Dante was proselytizing, the punishments meted out in his Inferno are amusing and quite frightening.
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