Dante Reading Group (Session 4)

Our Dante Reading Group is free and open to anybody to attend as many or as few sessions as they like. Each session, we make our way through several cantos of Dante's Commedia with the expert guidance of Dante scholar and Fellow Emeritus, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan of Trinity College Dublin.

You may have already read, or tried to read, Dante's Divine Comedy and want to know more about it, so now is your opportunity. We welcome all, from beginners to enthusiasts, to our readings in English, interspersed with the sound of his Florentine vernacular, and glances at issues in ‘translation’. You may not have a full two hours to give to the reading, but come at what time you can, when you can. The Comedy is a gripping story, how Dante can grip us still fascinates many of us, and whatever session you can attend will enrich you.

Dante is both poet and traveller, and we join him in his journey which starts in anguish, in a dark wood, but there is a glimmer of sunlight, and he assures us at once that only good will he find at journey’s end. After many encounters and adventures, physical struggle, strange modes of transport like a medieval helicopter, even movement without motion, addressing us, his readers, periodically, to keep us alert and with him, he ends in dazzling sunlight, having moved from darkness to enlightenment – he called it ‘comedy’, a rather miserable start but a happy ending. Dante is a powerful story-teller, with a gift for creating drama in many of his encounters, and it is on these aspects of the work that we shall concentrate as those he meets are so very like us.

Our readings will take place over several sessions. Over the course of our journey we cover Inferno / Hell, Purgatorio, and finally Paradiso. Please be sure to sign up for each reading you would like to attend. You can find all the readings, here.

No prior knowledge of Dante or Italian is required, we will read the poem in English translation, paying close attention to Dante's cultural and historical context as well as to his poetic strategies. Readers of all backgrounds and disciplines are welcome and are encouraged to find and reflect on the poem’s enduring relevance for themselves and for readers in the 21st century.

We are not recommending any particular translation but an accessible and very good book on Dante and his works is by Prue Shaw, Reading Dante from Here to Eternity. A bilingual edition of the text will be presented at each session, and attendees are welcome to bring their own editions.

We shall refer to a map with the ORGANIZATION OF PURGATORY from Dorothy Sayers; it will help you to keep grounded, and we shall use the illustrations of Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin to help you to visualise each area.

Inferno 16-25

Canto 16: Dante dialogues with three Florentine Guelfs, much respected for their commitment to the social good; arrival of the medieval helicopter, Geryon, on which the two poets travel down the ripa discoscesa and reach the 8^thCircle, Malebolge, not before seeing the usurers (Dante superiorly does not recognize any).

This circle is divided into ten sections within which are punished those guilty of fraud/deceit. The entire Commedia is a condemnation of cupiditas, GREED, and in Canto 19 Dante condemns very strongly the simonist popes whom Beatrice also will condemn in her final speech in Paradiso. In Canto 20 Virgil, who symbolizes Dante’s reason, is harshly assertive and he pays tribute to Dante’s knowledge of his tragedìa, the Aeneid. Cantos 21 to 23 are a ludic interlude: the black devils dominate, expose the limitations of Virgil, and there is fierce condemnation of those who use public funds for their own purposes; as Church officials were condemned, now we have city councillors. The poets struggle to proceed: the devils had reassured them there was a bridge over the moat, but they discover they have been deceived (what else can you expect from the father of all lies?). In the 7^th bolgia, cantos 24 and 25, we encounter those who thieved deceptively; Vanni Fucci foretells Dante’s exile and does so, obscenely, in order to hurt him – while Filippo Argenti had tried to assault Dante, Fucci’s evil utterance is a denial of Christian love. The serpents will incinerate Vanni – the metamorphoses of the thieves can be disturbing reading.

If you enjoy events about literary translation, take a look at what else we have planned at the Centre, here.