Divine Comedy Critique - Essay Example

? Dante’s Divine Comedy is both one of the most respected and one of the most mocked works of literature in the past several hundred years. It is well respected for its structure and clever satire while being made fun of because of its religious content. I believe that its main problem is not that it is too religious or that it is too politically insensitive, but rather than a large part of the entertainment value of this work is that it makes fun of the people living at the time. Even though people can “get” the way in which it is clever they will still never enjoy it as much as someone in Dante’s time would have. So while it can be very hard to understand and is probably not as enjoyable as it would have been to Dante’s readers in his own time period and area, it is still important for this The second non-religious blogger shows clearly that it is not in fact religion that makes people not like Dante’s Divine Comedy, but must be something else. This blogger uses the same religious structure as Dante, creating circles of hell which are like the circles in Inferno, but rather than filling them with tortures that would be terrible with anyone he shows how hard it is to live with an atheist in society today. Dante’s structure, based on hell, purgatory and heaven are not a big barrier to people in our modern/postmodern world liking Dante, nor do they make it out of date. Everyone still knows what hell, heaven and so on are, and can understand the structure very well, and as this blogger shows can still make very funny content that fits into that religious structure. The first non-religious blogger talks about the fact that he thinks the Divine Comedy is “the most overrated book in history.” He says that he understands the political situation of the time, understands why people are where he put them and so on. But the problem is that understanding is not the same thing as actually getting the cleverness of work. When someone has to explain a joke to you, you can understand why it is funny after they have explained it but that does not mean that you will ever actually find it funny. For instance, if someone from Italy today made a joke about the prime minister of Italy suffering from the punishment of having to run from one beautiful naked woman to another for all eternity without ever being able to reach them, but still having to make each one of the beautiful women a senator, an Italian person would probably think it was clever or funny because they would know that the Italian Prime Minister has a habit of sleeping with models and making them senators, and would understand immediately why the punishment was clever. To someone from Mexico, however, the joke would not make any sense at first, and once it was explained the person could still understand it but would no longer find it funny or clever. So even though the blogger “gets it” because he kind of understands the political situation and has read short explanations of how each punishment fit each person, he will never truly understand how clever it would have been to the people who lived in Dante’s time. A good example of this problem can be found in Purgatio. In Purgatory, Dante meets a person, Omberto Aldobrandeschi, who is overly proud and that is why he was put in purgatory. He was very proud because of his descent, saying “I was Italian, son of a great Tuscan: / My father was Guiglielmo Aldobrandesco” (Canto XI). For someone today to understand why this is funny or representative, they would have to understand things like the reputation of both Italians and Tuscans, and how much pride they took in their parents and family. Even once this is explained, someone can “get it” without it truly seeming clever still. If, however, one wrote a book today about Paris Hilton being in purgatory because she was too proud of her family history, everyone today would understand it and think it is clever immediately. This type of satire just does not age well, and one must accept while reading it that they will never truly enjoy it in the way it was supposed to be enjoyed, because they are not people living in Florence in the Renaissance. One other problem with understanding it is the language. As someone who did not grow up speaking English I understand how much small details change when translating things, and how some languages just do not have the same words as others and even when they do the words often do not have exactly the same meaning; each word will have a different flavor. Furthermore, a big part of Dante’s effort went into putting the Divine Comedy into a rhyming verse, and would probably be much more beautiful to read in the original Italian from the Renaissance if one had the skill. As it is, the verses do not go together very well and the language is not pretty; in Canto XXVII of Purgatorio one can see the lack of flow and rhyme in English: “in my dream, I seemed to see a woman / both young and fair; along a plain she gathered / flowers[…]” (Dante, Canto XXVII). These lines would have flowed beautifully in the original Italian. I also do not believe that Dante’s Divine Comedy is too politically insensitive or incorrect to study in a modern college classroom. In college a person needs to have the ability to deal with the texts on its own terms, and in the case of the Divine Comedy this means understanding it in its time and place, Florence in the Renaissance. Yes, this book assumes the morality of Italy in that time period, and yes it assumes that Christianity is the only true religion. Likewise it sets up a chain of what is more moral and what is less moral, such as lust being worse because it is in Inferno while Pride is less bad because it is in Purgatorio. But a college level reader needs to be able to understand that this comes from a certain time and place, and to treat it in that context. If we say that this text is too politically incorrect for a college classroom, the one must also agree that The Tales of Huckleberry Finn should never be studied, nor should the writings of Nietzsche and so on. The problem with Dante is not that it is too politically incorrect for a classroom. There are many issues with Dante’s Divine Comedy. It is harder for a modern reader to enjoy because of the fact that the people it talks about are from the distant past, so even if we understand the reasons they are in a certain place we do not get the humor or irony of it except in an academic way. Likewise the language and translation serve as barriers to enjoyment. This book is not too religious for a modern audience, and as one blogger showed by copying its format, can still be understood and enjoyed. This book should continue to be read but people need to perhaps put in a little extra effort to understand it and recognize that they are not getting the exact experience they should from the book. Works Cited Alighieri Dante. Dante's Divine Comedy. Chwast, Seymour Trans. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. Print. Read More