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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A brilliant look into what Dante believed of the worse half of the afterlife. It is amazing that it was once believed to be so linked to Greek and Roman mythology despite modern Christianity denying some of its roots.
It was however very difficult to understand at a lot of points, although it may have just been the translation I had.
It was however very difficult to understand at a lot of points, although it may have just been the translation I had.
I think I need to read a different translation of this to appreciate this as much as it deserves.
I started reading it, then realized while watching a movie (Chahine's "Destiny") I wasn't actually gaining anything. I went back and started it again to get more. I don't think I got it all. Maybe down the line I'll need a third time —
Yet what I did get, in its image and fear and critique, remains. "Inferno" is a ubiquitous work throughout cultures influenced/derived from western Europe (so many images of evil come from here), yet in actually sitting down and reading it I was struck by how much is Dante attacking the political institutions and actors of his day. Society, to him, had fallen to the inferno so much where contemporary figures were seated next to some of history's worst figures in his eye.
Yet what I did get, in its image and fear and critique, remains. "Inferno" is a ubiquitous work throughout cultures influenced/derived from western Europe (so many images of evil come from here), yet in actually sitting down and reading it I was struck by how much is Dante attacking the political institutions and actors of his day. Society, to him, had fallen to the inferno so much where contemporary figures were seated next to some of history's worst figures in his eye.
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
não é o meu tipo de livro, talvez daqui a uns anos consiga perceber melhor a finalidade e assunto do livro mas nesta primeira leitura, achei-o bastante confuso e parece apenas um diário de toda a gente que ele odeia, massacrando-as de forma terrivel e maldosa que chega de certa forma a ser ironico, ele tambem tem o uso frequente de metaforas que se nao fosse pelas notas de rodape, via-me grega para as identificar e perceber.
Bowie’s Books by John O’Connell ⚡️4 of 100
#StoryGraph: fiction classics poetry challenging informative reflective slow-paced
528 pages | first published 1320
• Read in 1974
• Read in 2013 (Henry Wordsworth Longfellow version)
• Read in 2022 in conjunction with Hillsdale College’s new free online course, “Dante's Divine Comedy.”
https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/dantes-divine-comedy
The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest works of Western literature. An epic poem in three parts, it tells the story of Dante’s journey through the afterlife: Inferno describes the suffering of souls warped by vice. Purgatorio explores the theme of repentance and the elements of good character. Paradiso reveals the true glory and freedom attainable with God.
Product Description
"Professor Esolen's translation of Dante's Inferno is the best one I have seen, for two reasons. His decision to use unrhymed blank verse allows him to come nearly as close to the meaning of the original as any prose reading could do, and allows him also to avoid the harrowing sacrifices that the demand for rhyme imposes on any translator. And his endnotes and other additions provoke answers to almost any question that could arise about the work." —A. Kent Hieatt
A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante's masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with scholars, teachers, and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.
#StoryGraph: fiction classics poetry challenging informative reflective slow-paced
528 pages | first published 1320
• Read in 1974
• Read in 2013 (Henry Wordsworth Longfellow version)
• Read in 2022 in conjunction with Hillsdale College’s new free online course, “Dante's Divine Comedy.”
https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/dantes-divine-comedy
The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest works of Western literature. An epic poem in three parts, it tells the story of Dante’s journey through the afterlife: Inferno describes the suffering of souls warped by vice. Purgatorio explores the theme of repentance and the elements of good character. Paradiso reveals the true glory and freedom attainable with God.
Product Description
"Professor Esolen's translation of Dante's Inferno is the best one I have seen, for two reasons. His decision to use unrhymed blank verse allows him to come nearly as close to the meaning of the original as any prose reading could do, and allows him also to avoid the harrowing sacrifices that the demand for rhyme imposes on any translator. And his endnotes and other additions provoke answers to almost any question that could arise about the work." —A. Kent Hieatt
A groundbreaking bilingual edition of Dante's masterpiece that includes a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem's line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with scholars, teachers, and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.
This book is really a "you had to be there" type thing. I can't really say I understood all the references because they all looked like random Italian names. But hey, I feel Dante's pain.