The Dante Club

by Matthew Pearl

“Dante’s Hell is part of our world as much as part of the underworld, and shouldn’t be avoided,” Lowell said, “but rather confronted. We sound the depths of Hell very often in this life.”

A sermon which sings and a song which preaches—that is Dante’s Comedy.

Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us know one another.

Did you ever pause to consider why it is that if you kill one person you are a murderer but if you kill a thousand you are a hero, as was Washington?

“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.”