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A review by sarataha98
Seven Nights by Jorge Luis Borges
medium-paced
4.0
A collection of translated essays originally delievered as public lectures in the 70's. This is an all time favorite that I find myself picking up at least once a year.
If the written word was to disappear without a trace, I could probably recite the essay on The Divine Comedy from memory.
"There is something that Dante does not say, but which one feels at a distance from the episode and perhaps gives it its virtue. Dante relates the fate of the two lovers with an infinite pity, and we sense that he envies their fate. Paolo and Francesca are in Hell and he will be saved, but they have loved and he never won the love of the woman he loved, Beatrice. There is a certain injustice to this, and Dante must feel it as something terrible, now that he is separated from her. In contrast, these two sinners are together. They cannot speak to each other, they turn in the black whirlwind without hope, yet they are together. When she speaks, she says “we,” speaking for the two of them, another form of being together. They are together for eternity; they share Hell and that,― for Dante, must have been a kind of Paradise."
If the written word was to disappear without a trace, I could probably recite the essay on The Divine Comedy from memory.
"There is something that Dante does not say, but which one feels at a distance from the episode and perhaps gives it its virtue. Dante relates the fate of the two lovers with an infinite pity, and we sense that he envies their fate. Paolo and Francesca are in Hell and he will be saved, but they have loved and he never won the love of the woman he loved, Beatrice. There is a certain injustice to this, and Dante must feel it as something terrible, now that he is separated from her. In contrast, these two sinners are together. They cannot speak to each other, they turn in the black whirlwind without hope, yet they are together. When she speaks, she says “we,” speaking for the two of them, another form of being together. They are together for eternity; they share Hell and that,― for Dante, must have been a kind of Paradise."