Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Divine Comedy” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

more photos (4)

Read Book* *Different edition

The Divine Comedy

(La Divina Commedia #1-3)

Dante Alighieri,

Allen Mandelbaum (Translator)

Eugenio Montale (Introduction)

4.07 · Rating details · 104,934 ratings · 3,431 reviews

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption.

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 798 pages

Published August 1st 1995 by Everyman's Library (first published 1320)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Divine Comedy, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Best Books Ever

56,116 books — 193,270 voters

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Books That Everyone Should Read At Least Once

21,384 books — 95,165 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.07 ·

Rating details

· 104,934 ratings · 3,431 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Divine Comedy

Dec 20, 2008 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: life-is-dante, science-fiction, why-not-call-it-poetry, transcendent-experiences

"You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth."

- Niels Bohr

I was thinking about Dante the other day and wondering how one could approach him from the angle of a GoodReads review. One of the obvious problems is that he lived a long time ago, and many of the cultural referents have changed. You're constantly having to think "Well, nowadays what he's saying would correspond to THAT". It isn't so bad in Hell, when there is "You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth."

- Niels Bohr

I was thinking about Dante the other day and wondering how one could approach him from the angle of a GoodReads review. One of the obvious problems is that he lived a long time ago, and many of the cultural referents have changed. You're constantly having to think "Well, nowadays what he's saying would correspond to THAT". It isn't so bad in Hell, when there is plenty of entertainment to be had in seeing how the different sins are punished, and indulging your schadenfreude. Then Purgatory tells a moral story that's more or less timeless if you go for that sort of thing, but once you arrive in Paradise it starts getting seriously tricky. A lot of the stuff at first sight just seems irrelevant to the 21st century world... all these explanations about the mechanics of Ptolomaic astronomy, and Dante querying the inhabitants of Heaven on obscure theological points. It's notorious that readers most often give up somewhere in the third book. I started wondering if there was any modern-day author one could identify with Dante, and if that might help us connect to his concerns. And in fact, I do have a suggestion that some people will no doubt condemn out of hand as completely heretical: Richard Dawkins.

Now of course, I am aware that Dante was deeply immersed in the Christian world-view, and Dawkins is famous for being the world's most outspoken atheist. But it's not quite as crazy as it first may seem. Dante was a Christian to the core of his being, but he was furious with the way the Church was being run; he put several of its leaders, notably Pope Boniface VIII, in Hell. On the other side, I challenge anyone to read "The Ancestor's Tale" to the end, and not, at least for a moment, entertain the idea that Dawkins is in actual fact a deeply religious man. He admits as much himself: as he puts it, it's often not so much that he disagrees with conventionally religious people, more that "they are saying it wrong". Amen to that.

As noted, both Dante and Dawkins are extremely unhappy with the way mainstream religion is being organized. The other characteristic that unites them for me is this passionate love for science. One has to remember that, for Dante, Ptolomaic astronomy was state of the art stuff, and the details of the angelic hierarchy were a topic of vital importance; of course he cross-examines the hosts of the blessed to find out more. These days, I imagine he would be trying to get inside information on what happened during the Big Bang before spontaneous symmetry breaking occurred, whether or not the Higgs particle really exists, and how evolution produced human intelligence. For Dante, there didn't seem to be any opposition between religious faith and science - they were part of the same thing. I do wonder what he would have thought if he had been able to learn that many leading religious figures, even in the early 21st century, reject a large part of science as being somehow unreligious. It's wrong to spend your life dispassionately trying to understand God's Universe? I can see him getting quite angry about this, and deciding to rearrange the seating a little down in Hell.

I keep thinking that there's a book someone ought to write called "Five Atheists You'll Meet in Heaven". Please let me know when it comes out; I'll buy a copy at once.

**************************************

PS I couldn't help wondering what Paradise might have looked like if Dante had been writing today. Obviously we wouldn't have the old geocentric model of the Universe - it would be bang up to date. I think there is now far more material for an ambitious poet to work with than there was in the 14th century. For example, when we get to the Heaven of the Galaxy, I imagine him using this wonderful fact that all the heavy elements are made in supernova explosions. "We are all stardust", as some people like to put it. Then when we get to the Heaven of the Cosmos, we find that the light from the "Let there be light" moment at the beginning of Creation is still around - it's just cooled to 2.7 degrees K, and appears as the cosmic background radiation. But it's not completely uniform, as the quantum fluctuations left over from the period when the Universe was the size of an atomic nucleus are the beginnings of the galaxies created on the second day. Finally, we reach the Heaven of the Multiverse, and find that we are just one of many different universes. It was necessary to create all of them, so that random processes could make sure that a very small number would end up being able to support life. How impious to assume that God would only be able to create one Universe, and have to tweak all the constants Himself!
...more

flag 275 likes · Like · see review

Jul 09, 2014 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

I once thought I'd write an essay on how long it takes a serious author (of fiction or nonfiction) before he or she inevitably quotes Dante. If I were to write a novel myself (this is a hypothetical grammatical construction!), I'd probably manage about a page before I'd exclaim that I am lost, and middle-aged, and in the middle of a dark forest. I'd try to kill off annoying acquaintances and punish them severely for their lack of admiration for me and my creativity (not to mention my sarcasm and I once thought I'd write an essay on how long it takes a serious author (of fiction or nonfiction) before he or she inevitably quotes Dante. If I were to write a novel myself (this is a hypothetical grammatical construction!), I'd probably manage about a page before I'd exclaim that I am lost, and middle-aged, and in the middle of a dark forest. I'd try to kill off annoying acquaintances and punish them severely for their lack of admiration for me and my creativity (not to mention my sarcasm and irony!!), and of course I would meet my teenage love and be joined together forever in eternal happiness in the end (or maybe not, come to think of it, I might skip that part!), after spending a life travelling the underworld in the company of the most brilliant author I can think of.

Dante fulfilled all his (and my!) dreams with the Divina Commedia, and I envy him his bravery and talent, not to mention his ability to write in that beautiful Italian. However, not all parts of the poem were equally appealing to me.

I found myself loving Inferno, liking Purgatorio, and not quite identifying with Paradiso at all.
I always wondered why that is, and concluded that humans are much better at depicting hell than heaven, chaos than order, dystopia than utopia. Reason being, in my (not very important) opinion: there's no storyline behind real bliss, and without stories, we are not entirely connected to humanity and its questions anymore. Paradiso is nice, but uninteresting, sort of.
"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate" - the ticket to hell: I doubt if there ever was a better advertisement for a rollercoaster adventure!

Update in Year One Of Post-Truth Wall Building:

I am still lost in that dark forest of middle age, trying to make sense of life, and Dante comes to mind more and more often, in the same way Orwell's 1984 does: it grows more realistic with every day that passes. This morning, "The Wall Of Dis" all of a sudden forced itself upon my thoughts, - the great wall separating Dante's Upper and Lower Hell. Upper Hell is for the Carnal, Gluttonous, Greedy, and Wrathful, whereas the other side of the wall contains the Heretical, Violent, Fraudulent and Treacherous. It just struck me that every wall in the world has created that kind of "mental division". The typical representatives of "upper hell", consumed by the everyday sins of wanting most of everything for themselves without being bothered by others, usually keep their "moral upper hand" by accusing the "other side of the wall" of worse crimes, such as the "wrong religion", violence, and treason.

The funny (or sad) thing is that it works both ways. You can turn hell upside down and have the same results: egotistical, narcissistic angry men accuse others of treason and heresy to deflect from their own faults. No wonder Inferno is a timeless classic: after all, Dante based it on his own experience of a divisive, violent political situation. ...more

flag 230 likes · Like · see review

Jun 02, 2008 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry, italian, classic, historical, religion, epic, 14th-century

Divina Commedia = Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia #1-3), Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work in Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped Divina Commedia = Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia #1-3), Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy is a long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work in Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه جولای سال 1976 میلادی
عنوان: کمدی الهی در سه جلد: دوزخ - برزخ - بهشت؛ سروده: دانته آلیگری؛ مترجم: شجاع الدین شفا؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، 1335؛
البته که ترجمه های دیگران از نامداران و مترجمان این اثر کم بدیل جداگانه معرفی شده اند
سرود اول بهشت
جلال ِ آن کس که گرداننده ی همه چیز است، سرتاسر جهان آفرینش را به فرمان خویش دارد. ولی در اینجا (آسمان) بیشتر، و در جاهای دیگر کمتر متجلی است. بدان آسمانی رفتم، که بیش از هر آسمان دگر از فروغ او بهره مند است، و چیزهایی را دیدم که آنکس که از آن بالا فرود آمده باشد، نه میداند و نه میتواند بازگفت. زیرا که حس ادراک ما، با نزدیکی به مایه ی اشتیاق خود، چنان مجذوب میشود، که حافظه ی ما را، یارای همراهی با آن نمیماند. با این همه، آنچه را که از قلمرو مقدس (بهشت) در گنجینه ی اندیشه، جای توانسته ام داد، اکنون مایه ی این سرود خویش میکنم، و بازش میگویم. ای «آپولوی» نیک نهاد، برای این سهم آخرین، مرا آن اندازه، از نبوغ خویش عطا کن، که برای سپردن تاج افتخار محبوب خود به کسان، از آنان طلب میکنی... ا. شربیانی ...more

flag 156 likes · Like · see review

May 26, 2018 Manny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: life-is-dante, donalds-are-trumps, parody-homage, science-fiction, transcendent-experiences, why-not-call-it-poetry

I attempt to rewrite the Divine Comedy

In the middle of the journey of my life
I came across a man named Trump
Who seemed bent on causing much strife

O! how he was an unpleasant, fleshy lump!
Like some hobgoblin of the child's imagination
Or a thing that in the night goes bump.

But in spite of lengthy cogitation
I find I have produced fewer words
Than members of the crowd at an inauguration

I've doubtless disappointed the Dante nerds
And before long may well concede defeat
My plan, I admit, was strictly ...more

flag 153 likes · Like · see review

Jul 06, 2019 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing

Shelves: italians, horror, religion, middle-ages, philosophy, fantasy

”THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY,
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN,
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST.
JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER;
MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS
WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY.
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.”

photo Divine Comedy Satan Botticelli_zpsggfyple5.jpg

Botticelli’s vision of Satan. There are 92 illustrations by Botticelli, inspired by The Divine Comedy, of which this edition contains a selection.

I read ...more

flag 158 likes · Like · see review

Jan 09, 2014 Kalliope rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-italian, 2014, italy, classics, fiction-spanish

THE DARING, somewhat COMIC, and also DIVINE, INVENTIO

It is very difficult not to be lured by the highly intelligent craft of Durante degli Aliguieri (DA). And may be it is not a coincidence that he was the exact contemporary of Giotto, his fellow Florentine. For if Giotto planted the seed for a pictorial representation of the world in which man, at the center, and through a window, delivers to us a naturalistic depiction of divine stories, Dante also used his writing to posit himself as the ...more

flag 131 likes · Like · see review

Mar 22, 2019 Fergus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Reading the Divine Comedy at seventeen was, for me, to see the world sub specie aeternitatis. Apparently that’s not okay in the World’s eyes. Writing it, in the 14th Century, was not considered okay either.

So Dante was banished for life from Florence.

In the Comedy eternal flame is the just deserts of corrupt conformity. That doesn’t seem quite right in the eyes of the comfortably politically correct, back then as now. And they, like it or not, always have the final say. And what they say, goes! ...more

flag 118 likes · Like · see review

Feb 06, 2014 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: aere-perennius, 2014

Plumbing the crucible of happenstance.

I should give a quick intro and say that I rarely EVER, EVER re-read a book. I should also mention that 3 years ago I had never cracked Dante's Divine Comedy. Now, I am finishing the Divine Comedy for the 3rd time. I've read Pinsky's translation of the Inferno. I've read Ciardi. I've flirted with Mandelbaum and danced with Hollander, but from Canto 1 of Inferno/Hell to Canto XXXIII of Paradiso/Heaven, I can't say I've read a better version than the Clive ...more

flag 76 likes · Like · see review

Nov 14, 2018 Luís C. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reading-the-world, poetry, italy, 14th-century, favourites, on-my-own, quetzal

The Divine Comedy is so divine (I pass the redundancy) that we can bring some of Dante's narration to our day, without necessarily dividing our moments in stages, and we do not even have to die to see the stages we have passed. Nowadays humanity, so sordid and unmasked, acts, treating one another personally, as if it had a particular Heaven of false power, knowing that it actually lives a real Hell. Worse still is not to reach out to the next, pushing them to innumerable Purgatorys at once, ...more

flag 72 likes · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2014 Liz Janet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

There is no much one can say about this marvelous poem that has not been said before. One of the greatest epic poems to have been written, “Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

There is no much one can say about this marvelous poem that has not been said before. One of the greatest epic poems to have been written, ever. The book is divided into three books, Inferno, meaning hell; Purgatorio, meaning purgatory; and Paradiso, meaning heaven. My favourite has always been Inferno, but Paradiso is highly underrated, as underrated as this brilliant work can possibly be.

“The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.”

description

This is a basic view of the world as Dante knew it back in the 14th century, a human’s soul journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven.

This poem mixes religion and science, everything from the most basic Christian Dogma to early Islamic astronomy, with a lot of his political views mixed in. At the time this work was being written, Dante was living in exile, he uses this work as a way to show his enemies and what he thought not only of figures of his time, but of historical figures in general, including Plato, Aesop, Alejandro Magno, Mary as well as legendary people, such as Abel, Diana, and Isaac. If one does not wish to read this simply because it is a long poem, read it for the historical view, so many interesting characters for history buffs. My favourite thing perhaps, was how he used his work to slam the people that harmed him, including Pope Boniface VIII, the man who exiled him. Basically, apart from this being a religious work, and a historical work, it is a big “F-you” to everyone he disagreed with him, or harmed him in any way, those parts were hilarious to me. I have a horrible sense of humour.

description

Basically, read this poem, there is: Satan, angels, the circles of hell, philosophers in Tartarus, a reference to the Muslim conquest as “Dragon,” “the bird of Jove” attacking a church, a bunch of symbolism for “Reason,” unnecessary invocation of the Muses, Tristan and Isolde, many interesting murderers and a bunch of other cool stuff. ...more

flag 62 likes · Like · see review

Aug 02, 2012 MJ Nicholls marked it as sampled · review of another edition

I propose an extra level in the Inferno for procrastinators and abandoners. I was planning to write a novel where three protagonists commit suicide and end up in Scottish Hell. Since overcrowding has plagued the old Scottish Hell HQ, the protagonists are forced to queue up for weeks on end before arriving at the building for processing. Upon their arrival, their sins are assessed by an administrator to determine which circle of Hell is appropriate for them. But due to cutbacks and financial ...more

flag 59 likes · Like · see review

Aug 15, 2013 Wendy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-translation, blooms-western-canon, classics, poetry

I finished it! Someone, bring me my medal...

the Inferno is Hieronymus Bosch with words

A few caveats to this review: I am not a theologian, philosopher, medieval historian, Dante expert, nor astrologist. I am, however, a reader who wants to read "all of teh books" and I appreciate vivid imagery and interesting human interactions in fiction. I tackled the recent Clive James version of Dante's Divine Comedy--no footnotes or canto introductions here--because I just wanted to let the story wash over me, to see how much I could "get" on my own without knowing why Dante's father's baker's frenemy's ex-lover's dog-handler was sitting upside-down in the burning pitch in Hell. And when it comes to vivid imagery, the Inferno delivers. Surprisingly (to me), the Purgatorio was also fairly easy to follow, as Dante and Virgil continue up a ceaseless barren slope past the singing, self-flagellating sinners who do their time for various sins and, each time an angel wipes an ash-mark from their foreheads, become one level closer to heaven.

From reading the inferno in high school I had recalled Dante as a sniveling, swooning sissy--but on this re-read found myself very much liking his sensitivity and sense of empathy, especially to many of the sinners in hell (well, as long as they are classical figures. If he knows them, he's more likely to go stomp on their heads). Guide Virgil has to chastise him numerous times to keep him from getting (understandably) emotionally mired in the horrors he witnesses. My favorite parts, besides perhaps the insult-throwing trident-wielding demons, were the back-and-forths between Dante and Virgil.

Sadly, though, Virgil is barred from entering heaven, and in the third book Paradiso we are stuck with the so-nauseatingly-lovely-and-perfect-that-you-just-want-to-smack-her Beatrice. Regardless of this new guide, I found Dante's heaven as impenetrable as listening to someone describe an acid-trip. It struck me as a sort of renaissance-era Yellow Submarine (complete with its own Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds) though the incessant choral music wasn't quite as catchy.

Dante waves to his Lucy--I mean Beatrice

Dante waves to his Lucy--I mean Beatrice

Lucy in the sky with Dante

Seriously, I'm amazed at how similar this clip from Yellow Submarine is to the Paradiso! Watch it!

*EDIT* Sorry, it looks like the Submarine link keeps breaking, so my apologies if it doesn't work. If I notice a problem, I will fix it! Should be working now, anyway. ...more

flag 58 likes · Like · see review

Feb 26, 2009 James Capp rated it it was amazing

I first read this poem four years ago as part of a dare. And by “dare,” I mean a professor listed it on the syllabus and I had to read it and then write papers about it. The next summer, I wanted to read it again on account of the graphic imagery of Inferno and Purgatorio. The punishments/reparations are mindblowing, scary, and beautiful. Everyone should at the very least skim Inferno. Particularly in Inferno, the political references are funny and provocative, and the historical significance of ...more

flag 51 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2015 Steven Walle rated it it was amazing

This is one of the best epic poems ever! I highly recommend everyone reads this, Homer's works, and Virgil's works. This was a great translation and a wonder forward and glossery.
5 huge stars!
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond

flag 49 likes · Like · see review

Jul 19, 2018 HBalikov rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I am back reading another version of The Divine Comedy. This translation by Australian poet Clive James is the most lyrical that I have read. It is as if I was reading it for the first time and with all that joy of discovery.

This review is based on the first book of this trilogy.

"Had I the bitter, grating rhymes to fit
This grim hole on which all the other rocks
Bear down, I’d do a better job of it
When pressing out my thought’s sap.
But what blocks
The flow is just that:
my soft, childish ...more

flag 42 likes · Like · see review

Sep 18, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, favorites

I must confess that so much was beyond my comprehension; but I think that is the mark of a great work of art...it allows you to take what you can from it from where you are. I was so happy when I finished this book!

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

Aug 07, 2017 Brent Weeks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Dante? Awesome! I’ve always wanted Brent to review a game from the Devil May Cry series! Which one did you play?

Er… well, let me explain. I wanted a space with my new website design to talk about video games—I love them. But I also want to, from time to time, engage with other media. “What I’m Playing?” fits in a shorter space than “What form of media is Brent playing or reading or watching, and what particular title currently, and what is his take on that?”

So, uh, really this sidebar is “Brent’ ...more

flag 35 likes · Like · see review

Nov 28, 2015 فؤاد rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: صد-کتاب-برتر-گاردین, اساطیر-ادیان

ریویوی دوزخ:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

ریویوی برزخ:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

ریویوی بهشت:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

flag 32 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2011 Marvin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Written for the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament

(sung to the tune of "Minnie The Moocher")

Folks, heres a story about Winnie the Pooh-cher
He was a chubby Pooh-chie-koocher
He was fat and loved his honey
but he was sweet and his heart was sunny

(chorus)
Hunny-Hunny-Hunny-hi
Hundee-hundee-hunndee-ho
Pigletee-pigletee-hee
Tiggery-Tiggery--Ho

He met a dude whose name was Virgil
who hung around in hellish circles.
He took the bear to hell for a match
where he planned to kick Pooh's ass.

{chorus)

Pooh saw ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

May 19, 2011 Sue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, poetry, read-2014, italy, my-own-books

I am so glad for the Divine Comedy and Decameron group for providing the structure and encouragement which provided the impetus for my finally reading this classic! I am also very pleased that I decided to read John Ciardi's translation as his synopsis and notes added immeasurably to my reading.

While personally I found Dante's travel's through Hell occasionally difficult, the Purgatorio and Paradiso (except for the first few scholarly cantos) flowed with beautiful poetry. And through it all, ...more

flag 29 likes · Like · see review

Oct 29, 2011 Manny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: celebrity-death-match, life-is-dante, science-fiction, transcendent-experiences, why-not-call-it-poetry

For the Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament, The Divine Comedy versus 1984

Gabriel, Michael and Raphael
Celestial Architects
Eternity

Dear Mr. O'Brien,

Thank you for your response to our recent tender. After due deliberation, we must regretfully inform you that we have decided not to implement your interesting plan for restructuring and downsizing the afterlife.

Our accounting department confirms your statement that it would be more cost-effective only to retain Hell and wind up operations in ...more

flag 26 likes · Like · see review

Feb 01, 2014 Teresa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

How in the World (or Inferno or Purgatorio or Paradiso) am I supposed to review this work?

I could review the edition and translator, though I have nothing else to compare them against. Ciardi's notes at the end of each canto are always illuminating, sometimes funny and occasionally self-deprecating. I chuckled at Ciardi's humor and was appreciative of his honesty whenever he used a rhyme-forced addition, as well as the instance or two when he asked the reader to forgive his less-than-perfect ...more

flag 24 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2014 Debra rated it it was amazing

4.5 stars

This was my second attempt to read "The Divine Comedy". The first time, I did not care for the English translation of the book I had selected. I found Mandelbaum's translation in this book to be more readable. Another plus of reading this translation, is this book had wonderful Botticelli illustrations of Dante. I thought the illustrations really enhanced my reading experience as they helped me visualize several of the scenes in the book.

This was not a book that I could read fast, ...more

flag 26 likes · Like · see review

Aug 13, 2018 samantha (books-are-my-life20) rated it really liked it

While a little hard to read at times but this is still a classic and a good read.

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Jul 24, 2015 poncho rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2015, favorites

What can one say about The Divine Comedy that hasn't been said? An analysis? Many scholars have already done that — and quite outstandingly, I must say, to a degree that I would never achieve. A funny meta review of sorts? It's already been done. So I guess it's like Solomon said and there's no new thing under the sun about this masterpiece: it needs no explanations about its grandeur and it does itself justice.

My only remaining words would be an endorsement upon this edition published by Oxford ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Sep 24, 2007 Solomon rated it liked it

Sure--why not write a trite, pithy review of one of the great works of Western Literature? Fuck it! Yes, it's beautifully poetic, but Dante is also intolerably self-righteous and hilariously bitter in it, skewering, roasting, and tearing to pieces (quite literally) his detractors, enemies, and some people that he maybe just didn't like much. The tortures are sometimes hilarious and in no way biblical...it is disturbing to think that people used to believe a lot of this silliness...oh, and that ...more

flag 21 likes · Like · see review

Mar 22, 2018 Henry Martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: permanent-collection

I've been slowly chewing my way through this one for a while. There are already so many reviews that what I have to add seems unimportant.

In crux - the writing is wonderful, the theme relevant today as much as when it was written (minus the contemporary Florentine politics, which are noted throughout the work) and the journey of soul towards transcendence all-encompassing.

It's not an easy work to read, but then again, none of the great ones are. Should everyone read it? Everyone should at ...more

flag 24 likes · Like · see review

Sep 23, 2017 Shyam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

Everything it is to be a human being is brought to form and consequence within a single structure that makes The Divine Comedy the most massive metaphor of western culture." —From the Introduction

"Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood . . ."
—Inferno, Canto I, 1-3

I first heard those words from Don Draper in the trailer for the opening episode of Mad Men*'s sixth Season, when it first aired in 2013 . . .

Fast forward 4 years.

...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

Aug 19, 2008 Ben rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have travelled a goodly distance since I last read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and what a long strange trip its been. So, it was with an introspective bit of drollness that I embarked on this reread.

I was fascinated with Inferno as a teenager and between Dante Alighieri and Robert Smith/Rimbaud it is, frankly, nothing short of a miracle that I didn't put enough reasons together to wind-up as a fleshy tree with harpies perched in my branches somewhere in the lower circles of hell--if I have travelled a goodly distance since I last read the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and what a long strange trip its been. So, it was with an introspective bit of drollness that I embarked on this reread.

I was fascinated with Inferno as a teenager and between Dante Alighieri and Robert Smith/Rimbaud it is, frankly, nothing short of a miracle that I didn't put enough reasons together to wind-up as a fleshy tree with harpies perched in my branches somewhere in the lower circles of hell--if you catch my drift. Yeah, I was one tortured soul...

Now, I seem to have arrived in the dread "Existance Age" of my life. In evidence, I need only cite my thinning hair, second mortgage, life insurance, and All American guilt complex. This is also why it's taking me longer than necessary to read Richard Ford's Independence Day--each line just seems like something I'm thinking, and it's hard to be objective with the reading and view it simply as a book. And, it may very well explain why, as I listened to The Divine Comedy with this audiobook edition, I found Purgatorio so fascinating--when as a teenager I couldn't skim through it fast enough.

The Divine Comedy is more of a journey than a book, and as a journey it has stages and waypoints... also its not a trip everyone needs to take. I, for one, never plan on visiting Meca or for that matter, the Mormon General Conference; they're just not my kinds of trips. But, having grow-up in a Televangelist Supercult, The Divine Comedy is just the right kind of retrospective for me. Reasons are abundant but are typified by the way the book helps me look objectively at my spiritual life.

Here is the short list: First, according to Dante, pretty much everybody in hell is Italian and Catholic; second, my tattoo fantasies of the illustrations by Gustave Dore; third, the striking absense of a bathroom break; fourth the paragraph-long metaphores which fill each canto in the same way a bazaar of guillemots might fill something bigger than a breadbox but smaller than a dinghy if there was but some form of guillemot filling aparatus or perhaps a working decoy; fifth, placing people I dislike in different levels of hell--BTW I've decided Walter Kirn is my arch-enemy; and sixth (but hardly last) the unanswerable question of why Dante is obsessed with a woman who isn't his wife and figures her in the seat of grace while the woman he's married to is no doubt fixing his meals, cleaning his dishes, and caring for his kids, while he is writing the Divine Comedy (like some kind of Catholic Penthouse Forum Letter) and this is somehow OK because he still makes it to heaven.

I'll be honest, I've never been able to finish The Divine Comedy. I get to wandering around in Paradiso like a redneck in Walmart and keep on loosing my place due to profound boredom (unlike a redneck in Walmart). Afterall, "Heaven is a place," to quote David Byrne, "a place where nothing ever happens." Maybe someday Paradiso will be the part I just can't get enough of, but for now I'm content with my life in purgatory. I kind of like the idea that I can impress people just by casting a shadow and meeting old friends in really uncomfortable situations. ...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

Dec 15, 2013 Antonomasia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: italy, 2013, poetry, medieval-works, religion, ebooks-kindle

[Clive James translation]

At the mid-point of the path through life, I found
Myself lost in a wood so dark, the way
Ahead was blotted out. The keening sound
I still make shows how hard it is to say
How harsh and bitter that place felt to me—
Merely to think of it renews the fear—
So bad that death by only a degree
Could possibly be worse. As you shall hear,
It led to good things too, eventually,
But there and then I saw no sign of those,
And can’t say even now how I had come
To be there, stunned ...more

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Did Dante rip off from a Muslim Work	2	32	Jun 13, 2019 01:26AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Classics

4,898 users

Poetry

2,286 users

Fiction

1,603 users

Literature

548 users

See top shelves…

About Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

3,445 followers

Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/June 13 1265 – September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the comic story-teller Boccaccio and the poet Petrarch, he forms the classic trio of Italian authors. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. He first saw the woman, or rather the child, who was to become the poetic love of his life when he Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/June 13 1265 – September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the comic story-teller Boccaccio and the poet Petrarch, he forms the classic trio of Italian authors. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. He first saw the woman, or rather the child, who was to become the poetic love of his life when he was almost nine years old and she was some months younger. In fact, Beatrice married another man, Simone di' Bardi, and died when Dante was 25, so their relationship existed almost entirely in Dante's imagination, but she nonetheless plays an extremely important role in his poetry. Dante attributed all the heavenly virtues to her soul and imagined, in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, that she was his guardian angel who alternately berated and encouraged him on his search for salvation.

Politics as well as love deeply influenced Dante's literary and emotional life. Renaissance Florence was a thriving, but not a peaceful city: different opposing factions continually struggled for dominance there. The Guelfs and the Ghibellines were the two major factions, and in fact that division was important in all of Italy and other countries as well. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were political rivals for much of this time period, and in general the Guelfs were in favor of the Pope, while the Ghibellines supported Imperial power. By 1289 in the battle of Campaldino the Ghibellines largely disappeared from Florence. Peace, however, did not insue. Instead, the Guelf party divided between the Whites and the Blacks (Dante was a White Guelf). The Whites were more opposed to Papal power than the Blacks, and tended to favor the emperor, so in fact the preoccupations of the White Guelfs were much like those of the defeated Ghibellines. In this divisive atmosphere Dante rose to a position of leadership. in 1302, while he was in Rome on a diplomatic mission to the Pope, the Blacks in Florence seized power with the help of the French (and pro-Pope) Charles of Valois. The Blacks exiled Dante, confiscating his goods and condemning him to be burned if he should return to Florence.

Dante never returned to Florence. He wandered from city to city, depending on noble patrons there. Between 1302 and 1304 some attempts were made by the exiled Whites to retrieve their position in Florence, but none of these succeeded and Dante contented himself with hoping for the appearance of a new powerful Holy Roman Emperor who would unite the country and banish strife. Henry VII was elected Emperor in 1308, and indeed laid seige to Florence in 1312, but was defeated, and he died a year later, destroying Dante's hopes. Dante passed from court to court, writing passionate political and moral epistles and finishing his Divine Comedy, which contains the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. He finally died in Ravenna in 1321. ...more