Dante Reading Group (Session 6)

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 heard of Dante, you may even have tried to read his 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 session you would like to attend. You can find all the sessions, 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 31-34

Canto 31: the poets reach the well around which the giants stand, visible from the waist up. They may represent force that without intelligence and goodness is rendered powerless. Antaeus takes them with one hand and drops them gently at the bottom on the lake of Cocytus: the 9^th Circle is entirely frozen, all milk of human kindness has vanished; here are the traitors of kindred, country, guests, benefactors and at the very centre is Lucifer, named bearer of light but now Satan. There are three major encounters: with Bocca degli Abati, the traitor of the Florentine Guelfs at the battle of Montaperti, with Count Ugolino who was starved to death with his four male children by the man he had betrayed, Archbishop Ruggeri (no honour amongst traitors), and Frate Alberigo with reference to Branca Doria who is in hell but really still alive as a devil has taken possession of his body on earth. The final canto, 34, can be divided into two parts: the poets face Lucifer, three-headed, devouring three traitors, Judas, Brutus and Cassius. They are at the centre of gravity, they walk on Lucifer, and gradually climb beyond him, through a narrow passage and they exit to see the stars, ‘e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle’. In the last part of our reading we move towards the stars and reach Purgatory, where there is light and time and … a lot more.

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