read Dante's divine comedy

I am 33% done, and loving it. It is a fascinating and beautiful imagination of what it takes for a soul to be right with God. If nothing else, the book is encouraging me to think about the fact that all of my actions have weight, and that God is intimately involved in every one of our lives.

I just signed up for Dante’s Divine Comedy over email through DailyLit which I believe I have Mary Hawkins as I think she was the one that I learned about the site from.

“All adventures, especially into new territories, are scary.”
- Sally Ride

Such was the side-of-the-page quote before starting Book Two: Purgatorio. I didn’t feel much like starting it, but I was tired of the goal sitting there unattended, and the evening was sitting open with nothing particular needing to be accomplished.

From the introduction to the Birk text I’ve been using for this goal:

Birk’s Divine Comedy may be the first “translation” in which the same artist produced both texts and drawings, conceiving and creating them together as an integrated complementary whole. It is also possibly the first to embody a critique of Dante’s religious views while simultaneously honoring his genius and the contemporary relevance of his moral distinctions and political observations. It is probably the first to build on Dante’s sense of humor and sociopolitical satire, and the result is a complex, provocative, multilayered work, rich with internal contradictions, profound ironies, and contemporary resonance.

New territory, indeed.

i am going to read frist time

Hmm..Beatrice….

I like Mark Musa’s translation. There’s more at my site – Dante Explorer – www.davelafferty.com

I found a parallel Italian/English version of Inferno. This way I can pretend to read it in Italian. What’s really good about this is that I managed to find this gem in the used book store near home, which is usually pretty well full of romance novels. Clearly, a sign.

It’s one of my all-time favorites. We read the John Ciardi translation back in high school, and so I’d like to read his translations of Purgatorio and Paradiso as well.

Next time I hit the bookstore, I’ll keep my eyes peeled. This seems like a good way to kick off my summer reading!

Now that the school and boy situations have sorted themselves out, I finally feel like I can get back to doing things for the fufillment of them. Tonight I finally go an oppertunity to sit down with the last ten cantos of the divine comedy.

Interesting… I knew that Dante’s hell was frozen. But definitely fascinating to read, given that many Americans, with our puritain roots, very much grow up on a Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God conception of hell. (Would you like a little brimstone with your fire?)

Overall, I am still a fairly strong fan of Birk’s text. Having read through the first of the series, I’m definitely looking forward to his take on the other two. That said, I’m actually finding this a really good introduction to the italian text, and now look forward to someday going back and reading it in much closer translation. I don’t think I’ll walk away from this experience with any sort of strong knowledge about what Dante wrote. But Birk’s work is worthwhile in it’s own right, and, if—as I suspect—my exposure to it will ease my understanding of the original, than it has done me more good than it was under any obligation to supply.

Do you have to complete it to check it off?