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On Reading Dante I



I remember when I was in high school I became interested in Dante's DIVINE COMEDY.


(For those of you who may be curious, I was reading the Sayers/Reynolds translation, which preserves the terza rima scheme of the original verse.)


This was a matter of some consternation to various kin and neighbors, who thought I could not possibly understand such a book and it could only hurt my lil' teenage mind to try.


One neighbor lady (whom I will shroud in anonymity hereafter -- the initials NL shall be enough) somberly sought to discuss the book with me. The conversation went something like this:


NL: What do you think the book is about?


CF: (staggered a bit at the vastness of the ground a proper answer would cover): Well, Dante was writing at a time when the Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor were engaged in a struggle for power. He used the three afterlife destinations to suggest his own take....


NL:  No no, you're missing the point. His point was the kind of life you make for yourself. People can make a hell on earth, after all.


CF (properly chastised): uh-huh.


End of conversation.


I have to say, 40 years later, it still rankles how I was interrupted for the most jejune, and the most anachronistic, 'interpretation' of Dante's work imaginable. It was a thoroughly trite statement, and very much a mid-20th century triteness too. And I'm willing to offer very good odds and decent money NL has never cracked the covers.


I was not missing the point. There are lots of different "points" one might fairly make about a work of such scale, in response to such an open-ended question, and I was about to make one of them.


Anyway, it was a lesson in the way in which, as William James once put it, people think they are thinking when they are only re-arranging prejudices.


Since this is my blog and no one is in any position to interrupt me here, I'll say something tomorrow about what Dante had to say about Pope and Emperor.



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