Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso by Dante Alighieri

1 review

seanml's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

This is probably more of a review of the Carlyle-Wicksteed translation than it is of the Divine Comedy. The poem itself takes you through the classical ideas of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. There is a LOT of Italian history important to the context of this book and Dante's place in life while writing it; history that I neglected to learn about before beginning this. Because of that, a huge percentage of the book is lost to me, since being an Italian, the majority of souls that Dante meets through the poem are Italian figures of contemporary times or a few generations before. I probably would have enjoyed this MORE if it were assigned in a class. Either way, you can still encounter the famous ancient Greek heroes and philosophers, although all of them are found in Inferno only because they didn't know Yahweh existed and unfortunately had to go straight to hell for it. The Carlyle-Wicksteed translation was published in the 1950s, and it shows.I don't know if people were smarter back then or what but this translation reads like a parody of Shakespeare. Every verb ends in -eth and every sentence snakes around for a long time before you get to the end and then understand what the first part was trying to do. I like to read classics in the wintertime, and the Divine Comedy was this year's. Unfortunately, I'm just not Italian enough. 6.5/10.
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