Dante Reading Group (Session 12)

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 reading 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.

Paradiso 11-20

At this reading, we shall resume in the heaven of the Sun with Aquinas, the great theologian who warns against judging from appearances. He, a Dominican, speaks to Dante of Francis, while Bonaventure, a Franciscan, speaks of Dominic. The founders of the two major orders are presented as collaborators, their tasks are complementary, Francis symbolising love, Dominic preaching Truth. In the (seeming) movement towards the fifth heaven, that of Mars, wherein those who fought in defence of the faith, Dante has a vison of the cross and of Christ. He will meet an ancestor, the crusader Cacciaguida (12^th century). The central cantos, 15 to 17, are the most important in the Commedia for the pilgrim Dante: cryptic intimations that he would be exiled had come to him, but now Cacciaguida will spell out clearly his suffering in exile, and Dante must report fearlessly what he has seen, no matter how unacceptable to those on earth. Cantos 18 to 20: we are in the heaven of Jupiter with the souls of those outstanding for their justice and pietas, ‘giusti e pii’, who speak as one voice as they form an eagle. Importantly, Dante questions the (in)justice of excluding from heaven those who have not encountered the faith in their earthly lives but have otherwise lived honourably; he is severely answered, and this is followed by seeing two pagans glorified for their exemplary justice on earth, Trojan Ripheus and Roman Emperor Trajan.

We shall supply a map as a reminder of where we are, and we shall use the illustrations of Monika Beisner and Liam Ó Broin to help us to visualise each area.

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