I finally finished reading this (Longfellow translation).
I recognize the genius behind it and it's obvious Dante was intelligent and very well read but I really can't say I overly enjoyed it.
Would a different translation or more knowledge of Christianity (and its many notable contributors) increase my liking for it?
Reading up on it might do it. It should include relevant information about Christianity.
>>7315982
fanfic doesn't belong on /lit/
Clive James' translation if you want a more bombastic, modern translation that takes a lot of liberties with the source text
John Ciardi's if you want a perfectly serviceable translation with great notes on the deeper allegorical meanings of the work
The Hollanders' translation if you want each cantica in seperate , aesthetic at volumes brimming with academic commentary. Probably the dryest of the three but still very enjoyable.
A lot of the reason the Divine Comedy is so popular is because Dante is very intimate with his reader, addressing him directly and inviting us to go along with him. In a sense, the best readers perform a bit of their own moral inventory as they accompany Dante along. If you read this not as a dusty old poem but as a great work of moral fiction, and really sit on and contemplate the horror of Hell and the beauty of heaven, it s one of the most powerful poems I've ever read. Approach the historical figures present in the poem not as boring historical figures but real actual people who lived who did some fucked up shit and were saved by the grace of their faith in a better life.
Not to mention Dante's language always shines through
No. It's a pretty boring and dry text that isn't enjoyable.
No. Even the basic concept of the story is shit: a protagonist who just walks around looking at scenery and people, sometimes having short and invariably shallow conversations (often just an excuse for the author to vent his pettiness and resentment) and never encountering challenge or adversity of any kind.
Some of the descriptions of the punishments/scenery are beautiful and wonderfully imaginative, which redeems the book somewhat, but that's it. The Italian original might have good rhymes or something, I don't know. But as an epic it's a complete failure, especially when compared to the work of his Roman idols.
>>7316965
Mfw you will parrot opinions about how great it is but can't say anything of substance yourself
Mfw this is old lit
What translation should I read for my first time and am admittedly a /lit/ pleb?
>>7317020
someone just reviewed a bunch of translations itt you idiot.
>>7317020
>>7316447
the reason the comedy is so popular is because it's fucking perfect
>thread su Dante
>nessuno l'ha effettivamente letto
mfw
>>7317086
this is made really simple by a 3 month crash course in italian and prior knowledge of Latin
"but I'm not gonna learn italian!"
it should take you 3 months tops before you can read dante. maybe less. literally pleb
>>7317394
Nah I'll have mozzarella mate ;)
>>7317016
>implying you posted of anything of substance to refute within your initial claim
>what is shitposting?
new /lit/ is /shitlit/
>>7317396
>he thinks you can read dante with 3 months of italian
fucking lol
>>7316018
I hate you. I hate you so, so much. If I were to take every strand of DNA in my body and stretch it out, writing "I hate you" on every nucleotide, it still would not express a fraction of a fraction of the hate I feel towards you. Literally kill yourself.
>>7318773
>blatantly ripping off I have no mouth
plagiarism that also counts as fanfic, noice
>>7317390
Dante's poetic role models, for one. Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Statius... all great writers whose epics are masterpieces. Unlike Dante.
>>7316965
As if that post wouldn't have existed a week ago.
Harold Bloom recommends monoglots read it in John D. Sinclair's lucid prose. I read Sinclair's Inferno and liked it better than the verse translation I read (Esolen).
I've dabbled in Ciardi. He's all right.
>>7317016
>mfw you have unironically started to believe your own bait about the Divine Comedy, one of the greatest and most influential works in Western history, the birthbed of the Italian language, being 'shit'
>>7318362
>not shallow conversations
"Florence sure sucks, am I right guys?"
"The Papacy is bad lol."
"And now for my most brilliant theological argument... how do I know the biblical miracles really happened? Because the Bible became really popular, which is itself a miracle, proving that everything in it is true! Checkmate atheists! Man, what a genius I am."
>>7320842
Aaaaand there we have it. The person defaming Dante's masterpiece is a fedora.
Don't know what I expected.
>>7320845
>Accepting Christianity based on Dante's shitty justification and not on Kierkegaardian faith.
Enjoy being an unwashed pleb.
>>7315982
You shouldn't see the Divine Comedy as a mere story: it is the poem that contains every aspect of the medieval culture and relationship with religion, plus lots of beliefs and common ideas of the time. Plus Dante is really "in his time", so much that he puts various people that he effectively knew in the three different reigns, giving also a great view of the political situation of the time. You should more "study" the Divine Comedy rather then read it like a story, because it is so filled with details that yu could endlessly go deeper in its comprehension. Plus, you obviously should read it in Italian ;) even if it's veeery difficult for us too, especially Heaven. In Italy we spend three whole years of school studying the three parts of this poem, so yeah, it's pretty complex, but its beauty is astonishing and its imagery is unbelievable. Also, the Divine Comedy was the work that established the rules of a whole new Italian language, and so the words and the construction of phrases that he uses is very important and interesting to analyze too. I could talk about this masterpiece for ages, but I think you got the point, Dante was incredible.
>>7317086
Does the Mandelbaum edition come with good notes and introduction?
>>7320861
You know that you don't have to be christian to enjoy this masterpiece, right? It is possible to enjoy religious literature with out being religious.
>>7320861
>he thinks Dante is proselytizing
ayy lmao
>>7322222
nice numbers bro
Dante confirmed top tier, fedora's btfo
>>7316018
Neither does shitposting, but here we are
Grinds my gears when people just read the Inferno and ignore the rest of the work never understanding the beauty, structure, and meaning of its entirety.
>>7322222
>he thinks shit-tier theology is no longer shit-tier theology if it isn't intended to proselytize
ayy lmao, enjoy eating Dante's intellectual diarrhea
>>7316511
>Not enjoying the most atmospheric piece of literature of all time
>Not enjoying maybe the best last sentences in a book ever written
>Virgil > Han Solo
> "... like a man whose mind is on his winnings, when time comes from him to lose, all his thoughts turn into sorrows and tears..."
>Not getting on the feel train
>>7322222
>God himself has granted quints to shoo the fedoras
>>7317016
Have you ever thought that people with taste will naturally converge on the same great works on art because they are better than the rest rather than it just being a result of people parroting others?
Oh wait no, because you're a fucking pleb.
>>7322033
Yes. And a comprehensive essay at the end that places Dante in a socio-political context.
>>7322440
Not my fault Purgatorio is such a slog.
But really, I think people get turned off by the elevated prose of the latter two volumes. Inferno is gritty and banal, and the language becomes loftier and more intricate as the Commedia progresses.
>>7323927
When Virgil laments to Dante that he will never see the gates of heaven I tear up. Every time.
"Confine yourselves, o humans, to the quia;
had you been able to see all, there would
have been no need for Mary to give birth.
You saw the fruitless longing of those men
who would--if reason could--have been content,
those whose desire eternally laments:
I speak of Aristotle and of Plato--
and many others." Here he bent his head
and said no more, remaining with his sorrow.
>>7324613
>>7315982
I too want to read this.
Which translation/modernization version should I get?
Longfellow is a bit archaic. He really turned me off from reading the Divine Comedy when I tried to do it in high school. Picked it up again last year with the Mandelbaum translation and I really enjoyed. So yeah, try another translation. It can make a big difference.
>>7316018
For what it's worth, I love you for this.
>>7325395
There's literally a chart in the same fucking thread.
>>7316878
>might have good rhymes
I don't like Dante, but this is hilariously retarded.
>>7324613
Virgil (and others who were good pre Jesus) should at least get to go to purgatory.
I wonder how Virgil felt after returning to Inferno.
Would the other souls ask him of his journey, would he compose a poem for them? Would he be thankful for being teased the beauty of purgatory or would it make him bitter that he'll never experience it?
>>7325852
Dante places a few virtuous Pagans in Purgatory and Paradise. You have the Trojan in the Just Rulers and Statius plays a major role in leading Dante in Purgatory for example.
>>7325852
If memory serves, Virgil does travel through Purgatory with Dante. He just can't pass into The Earthly Paradise which sits at the summit of Mount Purgatory.
>>7325875
Yeah but he means they shouldn't be in hell, even if they aren't being tortured like others.
>>7325872
But while Virgil is prideful shouldn't he at least get moved to the others who have pride in purgatory?
Is the Inferno just one giant hissy fit? All of the people that made fun of Dante are suffering in hell, everything he dislikes is punished. I know hell is generally just one big revenge-fantasy but Dante doesn't even try to hide it.
>>7326033
Can we petition Hiro to ban tripping on /lit/? The field to enter a tripcode might as well be a 'make this comment bait' checkbox
>>7322673
>he thinks he has to buy Dante's theology wholesale to enjoy and benefit from reading the Divine Comedy
Lmao you're literally everything wrong with academia today
>>7320842
this is sad
>>7327224
No one has said that the garbage theology is the only problem or even the main one. The main problem is that everything good in it is essentially scenery (i.e. the environments, but also the punishments and the rewards, which are little more than scenery). Everything else is mediocre at best and laughable at worst.
None of the characters are ever challenged and none of them develop (aside from Dante, but his development is minimal and not interesting in any way). And the characters aren't even interesting in the way a static character can be interesting because none of them are examined in any depth whatsoever. The dialogue sometimes consists in awful theology and sometimes in mediocre psychology, but mostly it's Dante giving his value judgments on 14th century Florence or some religious order/obscure historical figure or other. But these value judgments are neither entertaining nor interesting. If he wanted to write a shitty religious-political essay full of personal attacks he should've written a shitty religious-political essay full of personal attacks, and not an epic.
What remains after this is the scenery. And again, the scenery is great. But scenery alone can never aspire to the same heights as a depiction of conflict, struggle, danger and tragedy on a grand scale, as found in the very works Dante claims to idolize -- that is, the works of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Statius -- and of course in many other epics from other eras and cultures. But the Comedy is lacking even if we confine ourselves to comparing it with other Christian epics. Take Paradise Lost. Actually, don't: take just ONE of its twelve parts, and chances are that in that one part you will find more beauty, passion, tragedy etc. than in the Comedy as a whole.
>>7328234
this is like the kind of criticism you see on fanfiction.net
>>7328238
Meanwhile praise for the Comedy on this site reaches such heights as "it's good" and "it influenced the Italian language." Well, let me give criticism that better fits the intellectual level here, then: "its a shit book m8, btw I took your mum to paradiso last night lol"
>>7328234
>static characters
>i didnt like it
>>>/goodreads/
>>7328268
we don't need to prove it's good. besides its longevity, the consensus of thousands of actual, educated scholars of literature over the generations since its publication is on our side. the burden of proof is on you, my friend, and if the best you can come up with 'i don't like christianity' and 'the characters aren't interesting,' well, i'm afraid it's a burden far too heavy for your myopic intellect to shoulder.
>>7324022
>muh groupthink is actually me being better than you without being able to say anything of worth and u just a pleb nah nah
>>7328278
>"And the characters aren't even interesting in the way a static character can be interesting because none of them are examined in any depth whatsoever"
>"And the characters aren't even interesting in the way a static character can be interesting"
>"static character can be interesting"
>ignoring other criticisms and assuming that interesting characters, whether static or not, are at all claimed to be a prerequisite for a great story, while in reality that isn't said anywhere
I seriously doubt that someone who is barely literate has read the Comedy at all.
I can't believe we're now at a point where we have to defend the worth of Dante.
Fuck you /lit/, fuck you all.
>>7328287
>besides its longevity, the consensus of thousands of actual, educated scholars of literature over the generations since its publication is on our side
>"Why do I like it? Oh, well, because I was told I should."
>the best you can come up with 'i don't like christianity' and 'the characters aren't interesting,'
Again, I doubt that someone who can't even read 4chan posts without tripping over his own feet, hallucinating things that are not there (like the idea that "I don't like Christianity" has at any point been advanced as an argument) while ignoring what is actually written (leading to the idea that "the characters aren't interesting" is the only criticism) has read the Comedy at all.
>>7328330
I can't believe we're now at a point where no one can defend the worth of Dante themselves.
Fuck you /lit/, fuck you all.
