Dante Reading Group (Session 10)

Our Dante Reading Group is free and open to all. We will be guided through a number of cantos from The Commedia by Dante scholar and Fellow Emeritus, Corinna Salvadori Lonergan of Trinity College Dublin.

Our readings are taking place over several months and will 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 dates, here. No prior knowledge of Dante or Italian is required, and 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 shall refer to the published illustrations of Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin, in addition to the illustrations of one of our readers, John Kubiak, to help us to visualise each area.

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.

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.

Purgatorio 27-33

It’s encouraging to know that we are on the last lap and will exit from Purgatory ready, like Dante, for Paradise, the last experience of the Commedia, a story with a constant focus on our society but in a transcendental perspective.

Dante now faces a major challenge: lust, he needs to pass through scorching flames to be fully cleansed, he fears greatly, but finally Virgil convinces him, and he emerges invigorated; sadly, Virgil must now leave him (C 27).

In the Earthly Paradise we meet a beautiful lady, Matelda, on the far side of a stream, gathering flowers; two rivers – Lethe washes away memory of sin, Eunoë restores one’s recall of good done. Heavenly pageant begins (C 29): Beatrice appears (C 30) and reprimands Dante so sternly for straying from the true path that he faints (C 31 – recalls Inferno 5: end of Francesca episode). Matelda drags Dante across the river and he drinks directly of the water. In canto 32 Dante is given his mission as a poet, he must write his journey 'in pro del mondo che mal vive', ‘to aid the world that lives all wrong’ [R.K.]. In the last canto Beatrice stresses the difference between earthly and divine, Dante drinks of the waters of Eunoë and, renewed, is ready for the stars.

We hope this ‘map’ helps, and that our stops en route will give you poetic excerpts to enjoy, aided by our artists, Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin.

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