Customer Reviews

Dante's Divine Comedy: Boxed Set

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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I read the originals a long time ago and although I liked them, it was a very tough read. With this version, the modernistic settings, the captivating artwork, and the use of modern English language all help to make this a much more enjoyable story without losing any of the meaning from the original.

Initially, when I sought out Dante I wanted to read the original works suitably translated. Instead I found this box set which was very well presented. It wasn't until I received it that I realized that the text had been modernized, a process which I usually avoid.

Yet, upon completing Inferno, I found that a lot of the modernization made the read a lot more approachable when discussing such a heavy topic. Dante takes the reader on a journey through the depths of Hell in Inferno and finds familiar people whom he knew from 12th century Florence. Not knowing who these people were could make a better understanding of Dante's intent difficult. Instead, the authors of this edition substitute some of these Italian personalities and vulgarities, that perhaps not many know, with modern ones that are well known. By bringing the work out of the dark ages, I could understand better what Dante was getting at.

That being said, the authors themselves state that they didn't intend this book to be someones sole window into Dante and that people should really read a faithful translation as well as their modernized version. I believe this is the best course of action and one I intend to follow.

The presentation of the whole set is superb with color prints of all illustrations included separately should you wish to frame them. Some of the drawings are amazing and tie in well with the modernized text.

I would thoroughly recommend this set as a fresh look at the work of Dante which for its time was groundbreaking.

I just received the set today and will update the review after I have read the books, but I feel the need to point out that amazon.com lists the set as a hardcover set. This is not accurate. The box that the books are in is very sturdy, but the books have non-rigid covers. It's a quality higher than paperback, but not what you would expect with amazon saying that it's a hardcover.

UPDATE: I have finished Inferno and have started on Purgatorio. I feel that commenting on the manner of translation and interpretation is more important for this set than the story itself since you can find summaries of the story all over and the reputation of the story can speak for it's quality.

With that said, this translation is very enjoyable. I had decided to read this story on my own (not within a class or a book club) and trying to trudge through the Longfellow version was difficult and ultimately felt like a waste of time. I think it was so difficult because the wording was not fluent at all. I picked up this version and noticed serveral things intrinsic to the storyline that I had not picked up before. It reads quite easily due to the modernized language. The main liberties taken by the authors are the sometimes awkward use of common English, the presence of things not available in the 14th century that are present in the illustrations (cars, helicopters, fire hydrants, etc.) and the insertion of figures not born before the writting of the Divine Comedy--some of which are still alive today. For the most part I felt these taken liberties were easy to spot making it easier to appreciate what value the authors thought it had to offer the story. All the same meanings of the Divine Comedy are there.


PROS:
Much, much easier to read with modernized language that isn't traslated word for word.
Accompanied by drawings that mock those by Dore. Very interesting and well done.
Use of characters from more recent history that help illustrate the deed being recognized.
Original content and meaning is still present.

CONS:
Authors' liberties are sometimes awkward and can usually be spotted quite easily.
Not a hardcover set as listed which is certainly what I had been hoping for with a set originally marked at $100.

Closing Comments:
I would strongly recommend this version to anyone trying to take on the Divine Comedy alone. I would also recommend this set to anyone who really enjoyed the Divine Comedy and are looking for another take on the storyline. In any case, I think the Divine Comedy is one that has also become necessary for cultural literacy these days and this set is a very easy and rather quick read.

This collection is amazing. I also purchased the book of illustrations and that does not disappoint either. I bought both for my son, an artist and writer, and it was the ideal gift for his collection.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history. Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation. "The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand. Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante. Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity). This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical). The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction. The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it. Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God. Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul. That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others. This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things). It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.