The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

It took me most of the year to finish this, and here at the end, I don’t have a lot of time to go back through it and do much of a write-up. But here are some quick notes on my experience.

First, I started out reading the Longfellow translation:

The Divine Comedy

by Dante

It was difficult reading, and I stopped frequently to look up words (dolent, caitiff, emprise, glede, …). I also referred to the online Cliffs Notes to make sure I was understanding things. The poem is broken into 100 cantos, so I began writing a summary of each as I was reading it to help with my comprehension. But this was taking forever, and I really wasn’t getting much out of it.

After a while, I got the Great Courses lectures on The Divine Comedy from Audible and began listening to those. The first thing I learned was that there are translations that are much easier to understand. For the lectures, they used one by Mark Musa. As soon as they read a little from it, I knew it would really help to read that instead, so the Longfellow version ended up at Half Price Books.

The next thing I learned was that I really should have read The Aeneid before reading this. There are many references and parallels to it. On the other hand, even if I had read it, I’m not sure how many of the parallels would have jumped out at me. Having them pointed out in the audio lectures was very helpful.

A strange thing happened to me just as I was starting to read the third section of the book, Paradiso. I began writing in my books, something I had never done (much) before. I very abruptly felt compelled to notate sections I liked, passages I disagreed with, and (especially) words or expressions I had to look up (not just in Dante, but in other books as well). As a result, I have some notes I can quickly put down here re: Paradiso, but not much for Inferno and Purgatorio. Here goes:

At the beginning, as he is preparing to describe heaven, he prays to do a good job. But he prays to… Apollo???! (I.13) I know this is a literary choice or something, but come on!

In Cantos 4 and 5, things get pretty terrible – Heaven seems to be a place still under the Law, where all discussion is about good works. See IV.136-138: “Would it be possible for those who break their vows to compensate with such good deeds that they would not weigh short upon your scales?” Having been through Hell and climbing the mountain of Purgatory, I think Dante is somehow back in Hell at this point! Beatrice (his guide here) doesn’t point to Christ when he wants to know if “one can make compensation of the kind that makes the soul secure from litigation” – instead, she responds with rules. Christ is, at best, a “guide” (V.77).

After this, I didn’t want to spent much time in this version of heaven, but Canto 7 includes a pretty clear passage about the Gospel, lines 85-111.

I liked Canto 11, about the marriage of St. Francis to Lady Poverty: “While still a youth, he braved his father’s wrath, because he loved a lady to whom all would bar their door as if to death itself.”

Overall, there is a lot I didn’t like. Decision theology, a doable law, too much focus on Mary. But there were good parts too – XX.130+, XXI.94-96, and XXXII.67-75 show a good view of predestination (in the sense of not looking into the hidden will of God). And in the end, the ultimate mystery, comprehended by Dante in a flash of insight, is the Incarnation. While I don’t believe we will ever comprehend the Incarnation, it is right to make that the pinnacle of this journey.