The Divine Comedy, composed in the 1300s by Italian exile Dante Alighieri is a three part epic poem in quest of divine truth, spanning Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. This review deals with the first part (or cantica) only; Inferno, translated by Robin Kirkpatrick. Inferno is the section most people are familiar with and I have yet to meet anybody who has so much as picked up a copy of Purgatorio or Paradiso. The contemporary mind has no appetite for such subjects as light, truth and providential goodness, which is perhaps part of the reason why, despite being components of a complete work, the canticas are usually published separately. However, the joke is ultimately on the reader, for as Kirkpatrick points out in his rather exhaustive introduction, Dante's representation of evil as embodied by the eternally chewing heads of Lucifer at the climax of the book is 'sheer banality and tedium...' He insists that there is nothing glamorous or interesting about the agents of evil, yet despite this dismissal, Inferno undoubtedly remains by large the most popular portion of the Commedia. Personally, I would have preferred the entirety of the poem in one volume so I could have judged for myself.
Inferno is divided into thirty-four cantos, marking Dante's descent through the nine circles of Hell. The poem begins with Dante lost in a dark wood, symbolising a crisis at the midway point of life, namely exile from his beloved Florence. He encounters the Roman poet Virgil, who has been sent to guide and protect him on the path towards God. Their spiritual journey begins in Hell, where sin must be confronted in all its terrible forms. Dante's concentric plan of Hell is the most imaginative ever realised, with each ring delegated to a specific type of suffering. Starting with the minor crimes in Limbo, the sins and related punishments increase in severity the deeper they descend. Early levels represent sins of incontinence such as lust, gluttony, greed and wrath, whilst lower down are condemned the souls guilty of violence, inhumanity and deceit. A frequent misconception of Dante's vision is that the punishments are all contrapasso; on the contrary, many of the punishments bear little to no reflection on the sins they condemn. Another thing that struck me about the poem was its relatively short length. I was surprised to find myself skimming through Hell at an almost breakneck speed; more like a ghost train than the laborious descent I'd previously imagined.
The highlight of Inferno is beyond question its sheer imaginative and fantastic content. Drawing from every classical source, Dante populates Hell with all manner of famous characters and mythical creatures. The numerous sufferings undergone by Hell's inhabitants are as equally varied, sadistic enough even by the standards of our current torture porn obsessed culture. Sinners are burned, buffeted, frozen, boiled, chewed, skewered, crushed, whipped, mutilated and metamorphosed in a vertiginous range of weird and unspeakable ways: a torture factory of unrivalled scope. Dante, writing in the vernacular of his native language, fluctuates from a high epic strain, to a low and sometimes farcical style. His work is experimental, playful and extraordinarily ambitious for its time, but the average reader may be put off by the overabundance of references to unfamiliar personages connected to Florentine politics of the fourteenth century. It is this stumbling block that makes Inferno almost unreadable to those without some background knowledge of the world Dante critiques. The commentaries and notes included with the Penguin edition go some way towards ensuring that the casual reader can appreciate Dante's humour to its full capacity.
As far as translations go, Kirkpatrick's is not the worst out there, if one can excuse the horrific mangling of the eternal 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here' with 'Surrender as you enter every hope you have.' Another complaint of mine was the translation of the 'Malebolge' to 'Rottenpockets'; a minor gripe to be sure but one I could have done without. As if in recompense for questionable alterations, the translated text is displayed page by page alongside the original Italian, but since I neither know nor have a desire to learn the language, I remained at the mercy of creative license. Translation issues aside, one aspect of Inferno which continued to vex me was Dante's rather materialistic stance towards possessions. It seems that those blameworthy of avaricious tendencies receive far lesser punishments than those who indulge in more natural impulses; a case of Dante's partiality towards material goods to be sure. Nonetheless, Dante's grossly unjust model of Hell still provides a highly entertaining encounter with the carnivalesque and a stimulating philosophical ride into the darkest cavities of depravity. I would recommend this nightmarish journey to all who revel in the bleaker side of human nature.
Rating: 3/5
Inferno is divided into thirty-four cantos, marking Dante's descent through the nine circles of Hell. The poem begins with Dante lost in a dark wood, symbolising a crisis at the midway point of life, namely exile from his beloved Florence. He encounters the Roman poet Virgil, who has been sent to guide and protect him on the path towards God. Their spiritual journey begins in Hell, where sin must be confronted in all its terrible forms. Dante's concentric plan of Hell is the most imaginative ever realised, with each ring delegated to a specific type of suffering. Starting with the minor crimes in Limbo, the sins and related punishments increase in severity the deeper they descend. Early levels represent sins of incontinence such as lust, gluttony, greed and wrath, whilst lower down are condemned the souls guilty of violence, inhumanity and deceit. A frequent misconception of Dante's vision is that the punishments are all contrapasso; on the contrary, many of the punishments bear little to no reflection on the sins they condemn. Another thing that struck me about the poem was its relatively short length. I was surprised to find myself skimming through Hell at an almost breakneck speed; more like a ghost train than the laborious descent I'd previously imagined.
The highlight of Inferno is beyond question its sheer imaginative and fantastic content. Drawing from every classical source, Dante populates Hell with all manner of famous characters and mythical creatures. The numerous sufferings undergone by Hell's inhabitants are as equally varied, sadistic enough even by the standards of our current torture porn obsessed culture. Sinners are burned, buffeted, frozen, boiled, chewed, skewered, crushed, whipped, mutilated and metamorphosed in a vertiginous range of weird and unspeakable ways: a torture factory of unrivalled scope. Dante, writing in the vernacular of his native language, fluctuates from a high epic strain, to a low and sometimes farcical style. His work is experimental, playful and extraordinarily ambitious for its time, but the average reader may be put off by the overabundance of references to unfamiliar personages connected to Florentine politics of the fourteenth century. It is this stumbling block that makes Inferno almost unreadable to those without some background knowledge of the world Dante critiques. The commentaries and notes included with the Penguin edition go some way towards ensuring that the casual reader can appreciate Dante's humour to its full capacity.
As far as translations go, Kirkpatrick's is not the worst out there, if one can excuse the horrific mangling of the eternal 'Abandon hope all ye who enter here' with 'Surrender as you enter every hope you have.' Another complaint of mine was the translation of the 'Malebolge' to 'Rottenpockets'; a minor gripe to be sure but one I could have done without. As if in recompense for questionable alterations, the translated text is displayed page by page alongside the original Italian, but since I neither know nor have a desire to learn the language, I remained at the mercy of creative license. Translation issues aside, one aspect of Inferno which continued to vex me was Dante's rather materialistic stance towards possessions. It seems that those blameworthy of avaricious tendencies receive far lesser punishments than those who indulge in more natural impulses; a case of Dante's partiality towards material goods to be sure. Nonetheless, Dante's grossly unjust model of Hell still provides a highly entertaining encounter with the carnivalesque and a stimulating philosophical ride into the darkest cavities of depravity. I would recommend this nightmarish journey to all who revel in the bleaker side of human nature.
Rating: 3/5
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