Not gonna lie, reading this poem felt, at times, like being punished in one of the lower Circles of Hell.Dante's Commedia is among those classics that I desperately want to *have read* but never actually *read*. Add War and Peace, Don Quixote and Paradise Lost to that list of shame and procrastination. But sometimes, in rare moments, I feel like sucking it up, putting on my big girl pants, and facing the giant. Sometimes it goes right (see my stellar review for Moby Dick) and sometimes it goes t...

I did not expect Dante’s Inferno to be easy, but it was not as hard as I expected it to be.In order to make sure that I gave it my all, over the course of about 40 days I listened to it twice, had a physical copy that I skimmed and referenced, looked at online study guides, and discussed with some of my Goodreads friends. While I still feel there is more here to be learned and grasped due to all the symbolism and word craft used by Dante, I feel like I at least got a good feel for it in my Divin...

Another book in verse that I read and it did not make me scream as in the pains of hell. Pun intended.The divine Comedy is a post-classical epic poem, apparently. It is an epic because it is long (such as the Iliad and Aeneid), it talks about heroic deeds, it is an allegory and it does have history elements, of Florence to be precise. What makes this poem different from others is that the narrator is inside the story instead of omniscient, as in other epics. Moreover, elements of Christianity ar...

The Inferno, part one of Dante's epic poem, The Divine Comedy, is the most imaginative poem that I've read in my life. I'm yet to read Purgatorio and Paradiso, but I doubt if any other poetic work can surpass Dante's Divine Comedy. The Inferno is where Dante walks through Hell with his guide Virgil, the famous poet who wrote The Aeneid who was sent to him by Beatrice, Dante's devoted love interest, who is in Paradise. His creation of Hell is influenced by Christian theology, philosophy, and form...

whoa this book is wild.in place of a review of this whole book, i'm just going to write about this single line in Inferno that i full on cannot stop thinking about. warning: this is completely nasty. blame Dante. also: all credit goes out to my literary foundations professor. i'm essentially regurgitating his argument.in Canto XXXIII, the pilgrim encounters Count Ugolino. Ugolino, a former governor of Pisa, is feasting on the neck of Archbishop Ruggieri. in life, Ruggieri betrayed him, leading t...

Since it's Good Friday, and thus exactly 717 years since Dante's pilgrim descended into the underworld, I thought it would be an auspicious moment to tell people about the project I've been pursuing together with Dr Sabina Sestigiani, an Italian lecturer at Swinburne University in Melbourne. Dante's poem is celebrated as one of the treasures of world literature - but it is not very accessible, being written in archaic Italian. Although there are translations, and even these are wonderful, a tran...

Dante’s Inferno - the first book I was assigned to read in my high school World Literature class. Back then I couldn’t get over how much the emotion of fear set the tone as I read each page. I recently revisited this classic. Rather than a more conventional review – after all, there really is nothing I can add as a way of critical commentary –- as a tribute to the great poet, I would like to share the below microfiction I wrote a number of years ago: JOYRIDE One balmy July evening at a seaside a...

“Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.”

“Wisdom is earned, not given.”

“One ought to be afraid of nothing other than things possessed of power to do us harm, but things innocuous need not be feared.”

A must-read in this journey of life! The best read of the year so far :)

The other day, in the comment thread to her review of The Aeneid, Meredith called The Divine Comedy "lame": specifically, she objected to the fact that Dante put all the people he didn't like in Hell. Well, Meredith, you're perfectly welcome to your opinions - but I'm half Italian, and I've been politely informed that if I don't respond in some way I'm likely to wake up some morning and find a horse's head lying next to me. So here goes.I actually have two separate defenses. First, let's conside...

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT HOW HELL IS GONNA SUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK