Dante: Our Medieval Contemporary | Hacker News Reader

Dante: Our Medieval Contemporary

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37 pointsportobello10 comments

I was around 15 when I changed highschool and ended up having an Italian literature professor that told us "sorry, I will not follow this year's program and you will probably suffer from this change across the next years since you will have a huge gap, but it's worth it". He was so right about both things.

During one year didn't read other than the Inferno and it changed my life and appreciation for literature and history. He eventually got fired or transferred, I don't know.

By chance I listened to a translation of The Divine Comedy on Audible last month. The production was quite good, with a poetic translation by Clive James. Speaking as someone who has done almost literally no research on the topic, I will share my observations. I'm sure there are lots of scholarly discussions and justifications which take these on from a more "serious perspective," but there are a few things which I found funny.

The Divine Comedy is of a genre that we have only just developed a term for, the "self-insert fanfic." Through his adventures he compares himself favorably with other great poets. Strangely, it doesn't appear on the TV Tropes page for the phenomenon,[0] but the trope does appear on the TV Tropes page for The Divine Comedy itself. I'm glad someone else noticed!

Dante likes to crap on people who are alive or recently dead because of their supposed sins in his eyes. I can only imagine the glee that he must have felt, getting to talk smack about people for their failings in such an illustrious and glorious format. From the standpoint of modern mainstream Christian teachings, this seems really ironic. Judge not lest ye be judged and all that. But pretty much every Canto is just chock full of "this dude's a bastard, that dude's a bastard, screw that guy" for one reason or another. Donning the mantle of speaking with the literal voice of God to basically insult people you don't like is really quite prosaic and humorous to me.

Finally, one thing I thought was really funny is that we go from Dante being led around hell and purgatory by literally Virgil, historically renowned poet whose influence is still with us today, to being led around heaven by, basically, a random Florentine girl (from the article, she was 9 when they first met) he had a crush on when he was a kid.

All of these observations point to a sort of expectations misalignment. You expect to be reading this timeless classic, which provides glorious revelation of some of the most important high-minded concepts in the Christian tradition, and find instead a poem that is extremely situated within its time, place and authorship.

0: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfInsertFic

Despite reading the Inferno in college and finding it quite interesting, I only recently learned that it was part of a trilogy.

Does anyone know why the Inferno appears to be more widely read than Purgatorio or Paradiso?

My initial guess is that it focuses on human depravity, an accessible topic compared to the more explicit theological claims in the latter parts. That is based on my very loose knowledge of the material, though.

The self-righteous urge probably contributes: assurance that "I wouldn't possibly qualify as anywhere near this bad."

> Does anyone know why the Inferno appears to be more widely read than Purgatorio or Paradiso?

"If it bleeds, it leads." Bad news gets more attention than good news, and what could be more bad than seeing people suffer in hell?

* https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-seduction-of-pess...

They talk a little in the article about how the Inferno was more based in earthly things than the the later two books, and that makes it easier to approach.

I think the reason why the Inferno is solely taught is becaue it's just so long a text, and the characters Dante interacts with in his descent are more familiar to an early student of the classics than the later volumes.

I would absolutely recommend reading Purgatorio and Paradiso if you have a chance. Though it's long, it's quick reading, and sublime is an understatement.

It used to be the other way around, but hell became more popular in the modern period.

The 9 circles of hell are a popular literary reference through the ages. Knowing inferno helps you understand future works that you’ll encounter in western literature.

The other two not as much afaik.

For what it’s worth, in my neck of the woods we always learned that The Divine Comedy is a trilogy and dove into Inferno.

Yes, although all three books are beautifully written, it is in the Inferno where he shines. This is because is the most dramatic in terms of passion and where it's more controversial.

In the Inferno he exercises a call for sympathy for putting certain characters there (is god fair for condemning them? Remember the beautiful case of Ulysses or lovers) but also criticism by putting others in that place, even some not yet dead at the time. :)

Would be nice to have links to all those illustrations. Are they inaccessible?

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