What must it have been like writing The Comedy? I can't even comprehend the profundity of the experience...

I imagine it must have been like every other toddler so scared of undefinable entities that storytime rules his life.

Hollander

How anyone gets the feeling of "divinity" or "profundity" from Dante is beyond me. His personal and political interest in everything is utterly blatant.

It was probably divine.

He was bored so he decided to write.

Heh

no

I wonder what drugs he was on XD

I don't get how anyone can read this book and internalize it. I read it, and yes, it is beautiful. I love the imagery. But it is also a critic of 14th century Italy. ABSOLUTELY NOBODY, unless you are a 14th century Italian scholar, can identify with this book that deeply.

I wonder if Gustav Dore was in the same state of wind while he made his prints for the Divine Comedy? Would it be closer to the modern appreciation?

OH DESIRE

yes

Hamlet was right after the death of his son, Hamnet. It was likely a time where everything crashed around him and he did some deep thinking into human subjectivity and existence itself, which are both prevalent in Hamlet. The play is also very bare to the extent of being meta (the play-within-a-play, the opening line that addresses the audience, the relative lack of politics, etc) which goes along with the idea that everything fell apart around him.

I honestly don't think anyone can properly direct/play Hamlet without firsthand experiencing grief themselves. The famous incident of Daniel Day-Lewis running off the stage after seeing his own father as the Ghost is an example of this, though to an unfortunate result (I believe that was the last time Day-Lewis did any stage acting).

MacBeth was one of his bloody works and was for King James, who was king of Scotland and had a fascination with witches. Not sure what Shakespeare was like during that time, though. Probably pretty intense.

The hikikomori knows his own even over the breadth of seven hundred years.
You cannot understand our brotherhood.

It was probably like an egg sandwich without the bread

>hikikomori

what does Dante have to do with being a NEET?

Hikki in form if not in matter.

God and hell and whatever else don't exist, so I don't really see what's so great about this work. It has the benefit of many, many years of work put into translation and refinement, which the original author did not do. So I fail to see the merit here.

Lonely people who cant relate to the current world latch on to artifacts of the past

You're so enlightened :^)

what astonished me about the divine comedy was how underplayed everything was. Unlike in Milton, where there is terrible storm and fury about everything, Dante is almost Kafkaesque in his little details... like when he doesn't recognize his teacher in the sodomy circle because the man's face is so covered in soot, or when he ascends the hill in the beginning keeping one foot constantly in front of the other, step by step... or when Virgil reaches over and covers Dante's eyes so that the furies don't see him... there is a fascinating synthesis of the extremely fantastic with extremely realistic, specific details that I don't see anywhere else but in Kafka

But how many of those details were in the original text?

inb4
>actually I read it in its entirety in its original archaic italian i am a vatican scholar, AMA

I recommend the book How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher.

All those details come from the original text, as far as I can tell. I don't think translators are so liberal that they would be willing to insert entire details lol. At least the translation I was reading (Hollander) was very sticklerian in its keeping to the original text.

Can't recommend Hollander enough
Amazing commentary, dense as fuck and with a lot of sources for alternative interpretations, and usually if the translation of something is disputed he'll give you the other interpretations as well. Amazing addition.

How can you be so sure?
The reason the poem seems so ahead of its time and so rich is that it's been translated by countless writers who have been influenced by the writers who came after Dante and they find new themes and possible interpretations in his work.

Why? Because that's the only one you've read and the only one you know? fuck off

It's an important commentary on and look into human morality
If you're a Nietzschean "dude morality is dead" fag then I don't know what to tell you

>Amazing commentary, dense as fuck and with a lot of sources for alternative interpretations

This is actually a good reason not to go with Hollander, at least not at first. The commentary can be overwhelming for a first time reader.

wouldnt this be true of any text that was translated from that time... why did they feel an urge to translate Dante specifically over and over again? they obviously saw s o m e t h i n g ahead-of-its-time in that work

That... or it became a meme in academic literary circles and people started translating it to get out of phD programs.

Have you read Epistle of Forgiveness? Or are you just hating on the West? Can't find any use of contrapasso in it

I went with it for my first read and it helped immensely, if I didn't catch a reference to something it helped me understand it better.

>it became a meme
why? just randomly?

Yes, user, love, honoring your mentors, and forgiveness are only relevant to 14th century Italy.

Some say the world will end with fire,
Some say with ice.

is this bait? do you actually think that translators change what happens in the poem? i'm reading the original btw and the things that user posted are there

Dante puts the worst sinners and worst parts of hell encased in ice and bitter cold for a reason

That's kind of what I was referring to
The imagery of Lucifer flapping his wings is what keeps me going when I feel depressed

Laurance Grant White's translation for New York Pantheon Books (1948).

My family is direct Latin decent and my grandfather spoke the language fluently, he gave me the book which he brought from Europe 20 years ago (long story for how he got it) and said it was the best translation there is.

Every time I read others, I compare it line by line and I do agree with him. my particular copy is large, leather bound with a fabric spine and the cover is engraved only with "DANTE"

The spine says divine comedy. I have to handle it with gloves and can't touch it a lot because it is so old and precious to me, but I'm sure you could pick up a cheap reprint to mark up, just make sure the original translator is who I said above

Oh so you know every Politician he speaks of and their role?

I did research most of them, yes
But I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel connected to the rest of the characters (like Ulysses and Satan)

>Alighieri texting his friends in 14th century Italy
>lol guys life sucks so bad rn i'd rather be writing virgil fanfiction

idk if the english editions are any different, but in every italian edition of the divine comedy i've put my hands on there are extensive notes that explain everything and every character

This. Although, it's been ages since I read it, I was under the impression that rather than being about "ultimate things," it was mostly a social and political commentary about 14th century Florence.

>Florence

More like Italy as a whole (which was far from being so, torn apart by the she-wolf of strife.)
But the horrible state Italy was in just heightens the Messianic message

Carson one is quite good, has a similar vibe to heaney's interpretation of beowulf

I can't unsee Sylvester Stallone in that portrait.

"Yo, I was dis middle aged fighter, you know, and I'm like all dese trees, I think I might be lost in duh woods. You know?"

...

"At least I'm better off than Abelard was at this age."

Holy shit

Your post was really unfunny till I looked at the picture

I mean it's still unfunny but nice catch