This is a challenging piece of fiction, mainly because its about hell, anguish, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. Not only that but because the original work was written in Italian, its can be tough to get a great English translation. But I think my copy from the library was pretty good. If you don't see the book as horrifying and/or an evil grip on your literary senses, you can see the book the way I do, as a fantastical tale, albeit a much darker one.
The writing itself is written in cantos, in which is a form called terza rima, where every three lines rhyme. Getting that literary rhythmic sensibility has been a challenge for every translator that puts it from Italian into English. But once you start reading the book every day and don't stop, you get a sense of the physicality and repetition of the poetry, its rhythmic sensibility.
The lines are quite difficult to get used to at first. I was sort of easing myself into these epics. I started out reading a little bit of the Illiad and then I started reading Milton's Paradise Lost, and then I went ahead and finished Inferno after that, after I had a taste of epic poetry. Its not for everybody. But at the same time its not just for college lit majors either. I think of myself as someone who is intellectually stimulated by these sorts of archaic, classical works. They enrich my literary palette. I have to look up words online, learn ancient slogans, and really move up to speed, learning much along the way. I would say its all worth it.
Inferno is emotionally gripping but that's the reason why I couldn't put it down. It was exciting, human drama. It literally doesn't get more terrifying than Satan at the bottom of a frozen lake, with three heads, of which are Judas Iscariot, Brutius, and Cassiaus, accusers who got Jesus Christ crucified. It was kind of exciting that Achilles' teacher, the centaur Chiron was in hell, leading a brigade of centaurs that shoot arrows at sinners, a sort of mythology religious hybridization.
Most of the people Dante meets in hell are political celebs of that era, people everyone of that time period would have heard of and known about. There's devils torturing humans, and at the bottom of hell there's a frozen lake where people are chewing on each other for eternity, zombies anyone?
Certainly Alighieri is a religious man, a schooled religious man. His ideas on church and government are heard here in sections. Dante makes a note of it that religion is for spiritual purpose and that the state/monarchy's role was primarily secular order, and that the two complemented each other.
The work shows that Hell is a horrible place for sinners, full of real fire and brimstone. As this is only the first part of a trilogy, I'll be reading Purgatorio and Paradiso when I find the time.
Read this if you like classics and poetry
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