Title Divine Comedy Series --- Author Dante Alighieri Illustrated by Gustave Doré Publisher Chartwell Books - 2008 First Printing 1320 Category Classic Literature Warnings None Main Characters Dante, Virgil, Beatrice Main Elements Angels, demons, and several creatures from Greek mythology

Translator - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Long narrative poem originally titled Commedia (about 1555 printed as La divina commedia) written about 1310-14 by Dante. The work is divided into three major sections--Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso--which trace the journey of a man from darkness and error to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in the beatific vision of God. It is usually held to be one of the world's greatest works of literature. The plot of The Divine Comedy is simple: a man is miraculously enabled to visit the souls in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. He has two guides: Virgil, who leads him through the Inferno and Purgatorio, and Beatrice, who introduces him to Paradiso. Through these fictional encounters taking place from Good Friday evening in 1300 through Easter Sunday and slightly beyond, Dante the character learns of the exile that is awaiting him (an actual exile that had already occurred at the time of writing). This device allowed Dante not only to create a story out of his exile but also to explain how he came to cope with personal calamity and to offer suggestions for the resolution of Italy's troubles as well.

I decided this year to do a reading theme of Gods, Angels and Demons, and to take from various mythologies and pantheons. I decided to start here for Angels which are predominantly Jewish/Christian constructs. I didn't want to get into the Bible, it's one thing to treat the mythology of a dead religion as fantasy but I wouldn't go there for any active one, so I'm avoid the truly religious texts for this exercise. However, I was willing to tackle Dante's classic as while it is of course theological, it is also his personal view of Heaven and Hell and thus in many ways a fantasy of his own imagining. So I am going to treat this review as if I were reading a fantasy and not Christian doctrine so take no offense if I critique something as being nonsensical along the way.

I would suggest having a good background in Ancient Greek/Roman mythology and history, you can go into this with virtually no knowledge of Christianity, but you will lost without the other. You'll also be lost without an indepth knowledge of people, places, politics and events of 14th century Italy but that's a bit hard to expect from most readers so plan ahead to just accept a certain amount of confusion.

I'll start first with the fact that I obviously had to read a translated version and that means I lost of lot from the original, the beauty of the language, in fact mine didn't even rhyme. I can't compare versions but I found this comment from someone online - "Longfellow's translation is not the easiest or fluent translation of Dante but it provides the most gratifying and poetic version I ever encountered." So I guess I did ok with the version I have. At least I had Gustave Dore's many gorgeous artworks in my edition. In fact the book itself is quite beautiful just to look at, but it was very large and weighed a ton so I had to sit in all kinds of weird positions so my arms wouldn't fall off holding it, which didn't help with maintaining the concentration needed to read it.

And yes, concentration was very required. If you didn't keep track of the opening and closing of quotes it was impossible to tell who was speaking, or even if the text was dialog in the first place (yes I couldn't always tell). They text is literature and lyrical and verbose and repetitive, and requires a lot of effort decode. It can take three stanzas for Dante to do nothing but to introduce himself and ask a question, using about fifty words when about five would suffice, so you need to muddle through an overflow of somewhat archaic verbiage that never really gets to the point. There were sections that no matter how often or intensely I read it, it was just a bunch of words that said nothing.

Next, while I'm pretty good with my ancient Greek mythology, I'm no expert, so a lot of references went over my head. And if you think that's bad, when talking about Dante's contemporaries, he would say things like "You know that guy, that lives between the two hills from whence the river near which you were born springs forth? Yeah, he's in Hell". Of course I'd have no idea who that could be, though Dante's contemporaries probably could. Thus if there were times where I would read though an entire page and get absolutely nothing from it, I decided not to worry about it since without indepth research I never would understand it.

Fortunately at the start of each canto I had a little plain English prose blurb that described what followed and named those characters and places I would have had to otherwise guess by description (or create a Denial of Service attack on Google with all the times I'd have to look something up). That helped enormously! I often found myself flipping back to it wondering "What did I just read?". Should I get even a little distracted, I could read half a page and not remember a single word. Thus I recommend having at least some additional guide if you choose to read, I wouldn't have minded more (I didn't even have Dante's bio in mine) but without those blurbs I probably would have had to give up.

Unless it was "peradventure", it was, literally, in nearly every canto. When I started noticing I started keeping track. Could make a drinking game out of it, but then I guess would be even harder to understand the text...or maybe easier?

After all while this is a trip through Heaven and Hell, it's Dante's way of exploring the sins and errors of the Italian people of his time (of course wasn't Italy then, but a group of city states) and to criticize those he felt were in error, and to praise those he admired. It would presumably be just a little biased, after all he was exiled at the time so probably pretty annoyed at quite a few.

But I'm pulling this review back to the "fantasy" part of it, I have no background get into the political and historical aspects of it.

So we start off with Virgil, an ancient Roman poet, leading Dante through Hell. He starts in purgatory, where everyone who wasn't baptized is stuck. I've alwasy found this to be a flaw in Christian lore...why would God let ~3000 years of human history pass (using approximate Biblical age of the world) before giving people Christ so they can actually get past the limbo part...and then why wait another one and a half thousand years before the Natives of North America to be given a chance to ascend to Heaven? As of the writing of the book, Europeans still didn't know they existed. I mean they die, get to the gates and are told to sit in the waiting room forever because they were supposed to somehow magically know the right god to worship without even being told this one exists, even if they were the most virtuous person that ever existed. Even Dante wondered about this and the best answer he got is "Don't try to understand God's logic, it's not for mortals to understand". Uh-huh.

And yet...Dante is inconsistent, we run into several pagans who ended up in Hell, which I thought equally unfair as they may not have know they were breaking the rules, and weirder yet a few made it into Paradise...through some convoluted thing where they died, then came back to life just long enough to be able to convert, and the died again...wait what? I guess Dante just needed proper examples in each part of the tale and if only a pagan would do, he'd find a way to squeeze him in.

The next interesting bit is that Hell is apparently run by Greek mythological creatures. Centaurs, Chiron, giants, Arachne, and more. There were a few demons lurking about but seemed the real wardens were all pagan creations. For what it's worth, this was the most interesting part for a fantasy reader, the shocking yet appropriate horrors of each punishment, the descriptions of Hell and its inhabitants, the difficulties Dante has in getting through it (like discovering a broken bridge and needing to get down a mountain face then back up again, or getting chased by a mob of demons), it was a kind of adventure story.

Next comes Purgatory, where people who don't deserve Hell are working to purge their sins. Now as a reader, you're getting a little tired of struggling through the text, but again, the different punishments at each level for each sin do still make for an interesting tale. There's an entire level filled with black smoke that Dante needs to blindly wander through for example.

However, by the time you make it to Paradise, your mind is exhausted from trying to understand the text (and your arms are spaghetti and your back hurts from trying to hold the book), and honestly, Paradise is kinda boring. Don't get me wrong, of the three it is the place you want to be but yeah... On one level angels do nothing but decorate a giant cross. In another they do aerial displays all day spelling out Latin quotes that glorifies God (why Latin? Bible is older than that and these are angels, not souls). They sing a lot. They sit around smiling a lot. There's a lot of glowing going on too. And...that's about it. An improvement over being buried head down in the earth and having your feet set on fire, but you think you might like to do something other than think about God's love all day? Like maybe spend time with family and pets that passed before you and walk about in pristine nature. To be able to do things that you once loved to do like paint, or read books...but nope, you just smile at the light all day, every day, for all eternity. Oh, and nothing every changes, there is no night, no seasons, nothing but happy smiling people milling about. An improvement over the Greek Fields of Asphodel where everything is grey and dull, but otherwise very similar as to giving the dead souls something to do.

Or maybe it's this statement I saw in a review - "There's no storyline behind real bliss, and without stories, we are not entirely connected to humanity and its questions anymore." Basically might be a wonderful experience to live through, but utterly boring to read about someone else doing it.

On the other hand, while I might question some of the logic behind the theological stuff, there is some interesting science in it too, like when Dante and Virgil are crawling down Lucifer's hairy legs (yes, that was quite the image, cannot unsee that one) they have to turn around half way down since they are passing through the center of the Earth and gravity flips as they come out the other side. Little laws of physics that one wouldn't have even noticed not being there given the fantastical nature of everything else.

BTW if you are wondering about the "comedy" bit, no, it's not funny (well maybe if you know that so an so gets to spend eternity being shot at by centaurs). In Greek literature there are the tragedies that end badly and comedies that end well. So this is a comedy, that's all.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things I feel satisfied to have actually read it start to finish. I have read one of the great works of literature, when people make references I'll recognize it ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" for example), and maybe I'll have some background for other fantasy books I'll read this year that used this and other sources for their inspiration.