Writing a short review of La Divina Commedia is almost a futile effort, first, because the work reviewed is too grand to be reviewed in brief, and second, because so much ink has already been spilled in its analysis and review, in many cases by people who have devoted their entire lives to a study of Dante. Even so, I want to memorialize my own thoughts upon reading Dante in the original Italian, and perhaps someone will enjoy the result.

Modern readers have problems with Dante. His references are hopelessly tied to political disputes in Medieval Italy that are often difficult to explain to non-specialists. He is the reflection of a world that was desperately trying to marry classical thought with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the work that he wrote was entirely in verse, and poetry is notoriously impervious to effective translation. The result, more often than not, is a work that is heavily footnoted, or endnoted (or worse, both), along with introductions to each of the 100 cantos of La Divina Commedia. These distractions slow the reader and detract from the flow of the poem.

Despite these difficulties, Dante’s opus remains one of the pinnacles of world literature, and with good reason. His verse is brilliant, and he adheres to an almost impossible rhyme scheme (three lines of hendecasyllables following a pattern of A-B-A, where the middle line also rhymes with the first and third line of the next three-verse set). While he borrows very liberally from Virgil, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Bible and other sources known to Medieval authors, so much so that some might be tempted to accuse him of outright plagiarism at times, the work that he created is very much his own.

I read Dante’s immortal work twice in English, once in high school and again in 2004. However, finding myself approaching (but hopefully not having quite reached) the mezzo del cammin di nostra vita and in the midst of a foray into the Italian language and literature, I took up the formidable Mondadori editions of Dante, which splits the poem into three books of roughly 1000 pages each. While I skipped some of the footnotes when I was familiar with the history, I read more of them than I had anticipated because the critical apparatus was brilliant. Full citations in Latin of relevant passages of the Bible, the Aeneid or Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas provided an incredible window into the choice of words for even the most seemingly insignificant of passages. I was fascinated by the explanations of linguistic oddities (like when u ended up inserted before o in the transition from Latin to Italian, or that the proper article was lo not only when used in modern Italian, but also if the previous word ended in-r).

Although La Divina Commedia speaks to timeless themes, there is still a sense that he speaks from the shadows of a world that has long since passed. He lived in a world where art was expected to mirror the harmony of God’s Creation, with classical and Christian symbolism in number, color, time and form. The notion that there was a harmony and wisdom underlying everything helped the Medieval mind cope with the uncertainty of life in a grim and unenlightened era. The only source of hope was God, and God was understood through the prism of feudal society. God, seen as Christ the King upon His Throne of Judgment, dispensed justice with a harsh but fair hand, and the Virgin Mary, who had been crowned Queen of Heaven, could be moved to compassion by the prayers of supplicants to stay the hand of God’s divine justice, interceding to spare the unworthy sinner. Intercession of the Virgin was the basis of the adoration of Mary, the notions of chivalry and courtly love, and a great many other ideas that have slowly been eroded by the Reformation, the Enlightenment and modern society.

There are several major themes that encompass the whole of La Divina Commedia. One of the first encountered by the reader is the figure of Beatrice Portinari, his muse. The idealized and formalistic way in which he pined for her was typical of the stil novo of Italian poetry, something it had borrowed from the troubadours of Aquitaine and their courtly love tradition. Following the custom of the movement, Beatrice was more of an abstraction of love itself, or a symbol of beauty, and Dante never considered actually attempting to consummate his love (and his dutiful wife Gemma would certainly not have liked that, either). Indeed, once, when he ran into Beatrice at a wedding reception, he was too flustered and embarrassed to say anything to her. Still, when she died young, Dante was devastated. She remains for Dante a guiding star and is ostensibly the person who, from Heaven, sets in motion the journey described in the poem.

Another powerful and overwhelming motif, particularly in Purgatorio, is the theme of exile. Dante wrote from exile, having been forced to flee his native Florence for political reasons. In the battle between the Guelphs (supporters of Papal authority who originally rallied around the anti-Hohenstaufen Welfs of Bavaria, a name Italianized as Guelphs) and Ghibellines (supporters of the Holy Roman Empire’s assertion of power over Italy, so called because the Hohenstaufen emperors’ residence in Weiblingen, the name of which was also Italianized), the Guelphs were winning. However, in Italy allegiances shifted as any side became too powerful, and so the Guelphs of Florence split into the White Guelphs (anti-Papalists and nouveaux riches under the leadership of Vieri dei Cerchi) and the Black Guelphs (pro-Papalists and old money, under the leadership of Corso Donati). Although (or perhaps because) Dante’s wife’s family were prominent in the Black Guelphs, Dante sided with the White Guelphs, who seized and then lost power. The White Guelphs ultimately became crypto-Ghibellines because they allied themselves with many of the landed nobles of the region and with the Holy Roman Emperor. When many of the White Guelphs were extended amnesty several years later by a new Florentine government, those with suspected Ghibelline sympathies, including Dante, were excluded from the amnesty. Dante ended by fully supporting the cause of Empire, holding out great hopes for Emperor Henry (Arrigo in Italian) VII of Luxembourg, hopes that never materialized. Dante died in exile, but at the time when he wrote La Divina Commedia he still held out hope that Henry VII or later, his local ally, Cangrande della Scala, could restore order to Italy and end party politics.

Dante therefore expressed the hope in his epic poem that a restored Empire would inaugurate Christ’s reign on earth and lift Italy from its current state of misery. Each part of the poem widens the scope of Dante’s attention, with Inferno most concerned about Florence, Dante’s home city. Then, in Purgatorio, the whole of Italy is examined, and finally in Paradiso the whole of Western Christendom is in focus.

Although the poem is definitely a unified whole, everyone divides it into its three constituent parts when discussing it, and many never read Purgatorio or Paradiso. Although it may be more interesting from an entertainment standpoint to read about the souls in Hell, from an aesthetic standpoint the entire poem is a masterpiece, and not merely the first third.

Inferno
Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate. - Canto III, Inferno

Abandon all hope, ye who enter. Most people remember the inscription of the Gates of Hell, and, because so many people only end up reading the Inferno, the beginning to Canto III of Dante’s poem has penetrated popular culture in a way the rest of the poem has not.

Of the three parts of the poem, Inferno is the portion that has the most “ancient” feel to it, primarily because Dante liberally populates Hell with mythological figures and the great figures of the pre-Christian (pagan) past. Charon, Medusa, the giants and titans, Ulysses, the Seven against Thebes, the ancient rivers of the underworld, and a division of Hell based on Aristotelian, rather than Christian, principles, betrays this sense of antiquity. Lines from the Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid, which depicts Aeneas’ descent into Avernus ( facilis descensus Averno / noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis is one of the most stirring lines from the Aeneid), are paraphrased, and the themes used in Virgil’s epic are reprised in Dante’s own poem. This classical ambience serves to reinforce the feeling that the Christian God, and the love of that God for His creation, is totally absent from Hell. The very words “God”, “Christ” and “Heaven” are not directly spoken in Hell, but referred to obliquely.

The three Christian virtues – faith, hope and love – are totally absent from Hell. The condemned in Hell are as a result uniformly concerned about their reputations back in the world of the living, and some only tell their stories to Dante because they believe that he, too, is a shade and cannot return to the world above. This is seen most notably in the story of Guido da Montefeltro, who was believed to have died in a state of grace but whose spirit recounts how the demons tore him from St.Francis, who had arrived to collect his soul, and took him to Hell.

In Hell, unlike in Purgatory, all that remains for the damned is the memory on earth of their deeds. This concept of memory and reputation is also a pre-Christian concept. In line with Christian theology, Hell includes not only those being affirmatively punished, but also illustrious pagans and non-believers, who are punished passively in Limbo. Virgil, Dante’s guide, resides there, along with Plato, Aristotle, Saladin, Caesar and other great men who either lived before Christ or refused to accept the message of Christianity.

There are, however, plenty of baptized Christians in Hell, not simply because they sinned, but because of the unrepentant nature of the sin. The sins of those in Purgatory are just as great, or in some cases even greater, than those in Hell, but the souls in Purgatory managed to repent and change their ways. Dante’s message on this point is in line with the Church’s teachings: not by deeds, but by faith alone and the grace of God, comes salvation.

This recognition – the notion that “there, but for the grace of God, go I” – is reinforced by Dante’s profound feelings of sympathy for most of the damned. There is a humanity to the souls in torment expressed in the first cantica of Dante’s poem. When Dante talks to Francesca da Rimini, for example, it is hard not to feel true affection for her and her sad fate. Later on, the compelling picture of humanity that Dante provides reaches its apogee when he meets his former teacher, Brunetto Latini (or Latino, as it is sometimes written). The compassion and affection he displays for his deceased mentor is profound, and the liveliness of their conversation, which seems to take place on the streets of Florence and not in the depths of Hell, is in striking contrast to the poet’s revulsion and contempt for thieves, heretics and schismatics. Dante then encounters Ugolino della Gherardesca bound in the ice of Ptolemea and gnawing at the head of Cardinal Ruggieri, the man who made Ugolino and his sons starve to death. Though Ugolino was a reviled figure whom Dante and Italian society in general found reprehensible, Dante has Ugolino tell the sad story of his death with such moving pathos and humanity that he altered posterity’s perception of the man.

Because many of the characters in Hell are so sympathetic, the categorical statements which Dante puts in Virgil’s mouth regarding the permanency of their fate seem unnaturally harsh. The pity that Dante the poet feels for many of the damned is at odds with the rancor felt by Dante the exile, who sought to punish with his pen the political enemies he could not punish in a more meaningful and direct way. Inferno is, after all, primarily focused on Dante’s native Florence, and the factional fighting between the White and Black Guelphs that led to his exile. This parochialism is perhaps to blame for the discouragement that many modern readers have when starting La Divina Commedia. The modern reader expects more accessible work, with more famous historical figures and fewer obscure references.

The reader who is willing to wade through some of the factionalism and see the common humanity of the souls in Hell will soon come to see that Dante is profoundly bitter about his exile and raging with an unfulfilled sense of vendetta against Florence. He compares his Fiorenza with ancient Thebes in Greece, the fountain of all impurity and unholiness, and he populates his Hell liberally with Florentine celebrities as a means of showing the base iniquity of the city from which he had been exiled. It is Thebes, it is Sodom, it is Babylon. Florence is really nothing less than Hell itself. Dante’s exile, seen in this light, is almost salvation. The reader gets a sense of this when Dante, who was officially forced to flee on the charge of selling political offices while the White Guelphs were running Florence, feels an undue level of anxiety in the bolgia (one of the ten pits, or bolge, of the Eight Circle of Hell, in which fraud is punished) of the barattieri, the sellers of political offices. The demons in charge of that particular bolgia, which is filled with boiling pitch submersing the souls of the damned, try to capture Dante, and eventually he and Virgil are forced to flee them, despite the fact that every other demonic menace in all of Hell is met with Virgil’s warning that Dante’s path is blessed from above.

Purgatorio
O frate mio, ciascuna è cittadina
d’una vera città; ma tu vuo’ dire
che vivesse in Italia peregrina. - Canto XIII

The theme of Purgatorio is that of exile. Dante’s exile, which in the previous cantica led to his invective against his native city, now stands as an allegory for the state of the soul on earth. The living soul is in exile because it has been driven from Paradise by God as a result of sin, and this exile continues, in a more bittersweet and intense fashion, in Purgatory. The souls here are still exiled, but they feel more acutely the presence of Heaven directly above them, a place they cannot yet reach. They are in a temporary state of penance in a place that will pass away with the Last Judgment. They are in exile. This notion should become clear when, upon arrival, Dante hears the words of the Salve Regina: ad te clamamus, exsules filii Hevae....

Dante’s focus has broadened to encompass all of Italy, Italia peregrina. Dante makes it clear that Italy’s disobedience to the Empire, and its internecine warfare, is the cause of its misery. A long and extended invective in Canto VI, starting with “Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello...” expresses this sentiment clearly. The political thought expressed there and elsewhere in Purgatorio was ahead of its time. Dante stressed that Italian unity was necessary, and he (rightly) saw the Papal States as an impediment to this unity. Dante contended that the control of land by the Church was poisoning its spiritual authority, which he declared to be proportionally inverse to its secular dominion.

Although his political thought is thoroughly modern, the rest of the cantica is quite Medieval, and of the three books it does have the most Medieval feel to it. This is quite natural, given that the belief in Purgatory as a state of catharsis for believers became pervasive during the Middle Ages. Additionally, virtually all of the souls encountered are from the Christian era, and the sins atoned for are structured according to Christian, rather than Aristotelian, divisions. Furthermore, many of the great questions about the nature of sin and the nature of mankind which were fodder for the Scholastic thinkers are expounded on in great detail. Dante ponders the limitations of philosophy and reason (of which Virgil is the symbol), the nature of love and the concept of redemption.

At the same time, Dante added much of his own in the very vision of what Purgatory would look like. Prior to La Divina Commedia Purgatory was described or characterized in only the vaguest of terms, and the notion of how it worked was poorly elucidated. Dante envisioned it as a huge mountain, arising from the waters of the half of the world that was covered by water (i.e., assuming that the New World did not exist). It is where Dante places Eden, and straight line runs through the Earth from Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified, down through Hell and then out the other side of the world and up the mountain of Purgatory to the gates of Heaven. The expiation of sin created through the prayers of the living for those in Purgatory was expressly explained by Dante, not as a lifting of the punishment of the souls there, but rather, as a fulfillment of the punishment in a way that was qualitatively different but quantitatively sufficient. Dante managed to build on the theological foundations of Aquinas and others to create an innovative but mostly orthodox vision of the afterlife.

At the same time, the second book of the Divine Comedy flies in the face of many accepted notions about salvation. For example, Cato, the Roman senator who opposed Caesar in the Roman Civil War and killed himself near Utica after seeing his army defeated, greets Dante on the shore of Purgatory. Cato is one of the only pagans to appear in the second cantica, but even so, the choice of Cato in particular seems baffling. He was a pagan, he was a suicide, and he opposed Caesar (who represents the Empire which Dante looks to as the savior of Italy and the Church). How could he be in Purgatory? Dante’s explanation is intended to show just how generous God can be with salvation. Aquinas, Augustine and other Church Fathers had accepted that in some exceptional cases, God may choose to save those who serve Him with a pure and sincere heart. Cato was presumably taken from Hell along with the Hebrew Patriarchs after Christ’s descent into Hell. As for the fact he was a suicide, again Dante is saved by the writings of Aquinas and Augustine, who concluded that certain suicides were inspired by God as a testament to other men. In Cato’s case, his suicide was a means for God to show to men the true value of liberty. Cato’s opposition to the Empire, finally, is irrelevant, because the Empire did not become a force for protecting the Church until it became Christian. Only following the Christianization of the Empire did it permit the liberty of the spirit expressed by the Church.

Another example of Dante’s personal convictions is his placement at the gates of Purgatory those who were excommunicated, stating that Papal decree cannot deny salvation to those who beseech it, merely delay that salvation. Along with the excommunicates are those who waited until their dying breath to repent and beg forgiveness, again showing the depth and breadth of God’s compassion. Reinforcing the Medieval notion of the divine right of kings, the princes of Christendom who failed to live up to their commission are set aside in a beautiful valley from the rest of the penitent souls awaiting entry into Purgatory proper.

Purgatorio is the most human of the cantiche, not only because of its theme of life as exile, but also because Dante’s ascent of the mountain is an act of personal penitence. He receives seven “P”s inscribed upon his forehead, each representing one of the seven deadly sins (the “P” is for peccatum), and as he passes each of the levels of Purgatory, one “P” is erased from his forehead. With each “P” that is removed, the way becomes easier and his steps become lighter. Virgil is joined by Statius, a Silver Age Latin poet who imitated Virgil’s style and who, according to Dante (without any historical validation) was baptized before he died, and who only now was released from his Purgatorial punishment after 1200 years of atonement for pretending to remain a pagan.

The three travelers meet the people from Dante’s past and his poetic influences. The poets of the Stil Novo and the troubadours of the courtly love tradition all speak with Dante on his ascent. The poet’s penitential climb ends with his tearful confession to Beatrice in Eden, located at the summit of the mountain, that he fell from the path of the righteous after she died and he began to forget her beauty and grace and, by extension, the beauty and grace of salvation (of which Beatrice is a symbol).

Dante’s artistic debt to the Provençal poets is most evident in that Dante has the poet Arnault Daniel give his testimony in nine lines of the Provençal language, untranslated. Prior to this (and after), everyone, from Ulisse to Ugo Ciapetta (Ulysses to Hugh Capet), has spoken Italian. Latin phrases are encountered from time to time, but the narratives of the departed souls are all in the vernacular of Florence, save Daniel’s.

The book culminates with Dante’s arrival in the Garden of Eden, where Beatrice meets him and Dante is sent back to the shades of Limbo. The dismissal of Virgil upon the arrival of Beatrice in Eden is cruel, and the treatment of his suffering by the powers of Heaven seems unfeeling and unjust. However, because Virgil is a symbol of the limits of philosophy bereft of Christ, Dante the writer must dispense with him. Beatrice, representing salvation and divine love, is the only person who can take him further. It still left me, the reader, highly dissatisfied, especially considering the continual praise and affection that Dante the traveler had showered upon “lo mio duca”.

Paradiso
Or ti riman, lettor, sovra ‘l tuo banco,
dietro pensando a ciò che si preliba,
s’esser vuoi lieto assai prima che stanco. - Canto X

Dante seems to appreciate that the reader may find Paradiso less interesting than the other portions of his poem, even as he promises the reader that the contemplation of the mysteries of Heaven will bring joy, rather than weariness. In part, this may be due to a reticence on his part to take too many liberties with the angels and saints that populate the Christian world. The people he was writing about were the revered founders of powerful monastic orders, had cathedrals named in their honor, and were revered and venerated throughout Christendom as intercessors between mankind and God. To presume too much, to put the wrong words in their mouths, was to court accusations of heresy.

For all that, Paradiso is perhaps the most ambitious of all the parts of La Divina Commedia. Mindful that the Templars had been persecuted in France, Dante did not shrink from the Herculean task of depicting the saints and angels, and, in the culmination of the entire poem, God Himself. The scope of the final cantica has widened to encompass the hopes and dreams of all of Christendom, though in Canto XVI he returns with renewed vehemence to his denunciations of the evils of Florence, when Dante’s crusader ancestor, Cacciaguida, descibes the idyllic life of the Florence of his years and decries the corruption that reigned in Dante’s time.

Dante also does not shy away from directly attacking the Pope, who is directly addressed in Canto XVIII:

Ma tu che sol per cancellare scrivi,
pensa che Pietro e Paulo, che moriro
per la vigna che guasti, ancor son vivi.

The lines cited and those that follow accuse him of being fond of dispensing excommunications, and warn him that he should keep in mind that St. Peter and St. Paul, who died for the Church (la vigna che guasti in Dante’s poetic manner) are actually still alive and ready to punish his corruption.

Many commentators assume that Dante’s attacks are directed mostly at Boniface VIII, who was Pope in 1300 when the “events”, so to speak, of the poem take place, as well as at Clement V, his successor, as both are mentioned in Inferno. However, most of the accusations leveled at the Pope and the Curia seem particularly appropriate condemnations of the Pope who was sitting when Dante penned Paradiso, John XXII (from Cahors), and in St. Peter’s execration of the Pope in Canto XXVII he is directly mentioned:

Quelli ch’usurpa in terra il luogo mio
il luogo mio, il luogo mio che vaca
ne la presenza del Figliuol di Dio,
fatt’ ha del cimitero mio cloaca
del sangue e de la puzza; onde ‘l perverso
che cadde di qua sù, là giù si placa.

...

Del sangue nostro Caorsini e Guaschi
s’apparecchian di bere: o buon principio,
a chi vil fine convien che tu caschi!

(The passage claims that St. Peter’s grave has been turned into a latrine and that Satan is at home there, and later says that all manner of Cahorsians and Basques are setting their tables with the blood of the saints.)

Unfortunately, even though Dante takes on some of the most ambitious topics in Paradiso - the high calling of the Empire to restore Christendom, the mystery of the Incarnation and Crucifixion, the possible salvation of the unbaptized, the opinions of the angels and saints regarding actions on earth, the corruption of the Church – it must be admitted that long stretches of Paradiso are a bit boring.

The fault lies probably less with Dante than with his choice of subject matter. It is a corollary of the theatrical axiom that without peril, there is no drama. The descriptions are monochromatic – one can only express “brighter than bright” or its equivalent in so many ways – and unlike the other two cantiche, the souls in Heaven are quite simply not that memorable. They are too diaphanous, too happy, too dry, for the reader to really enjoy reading what they have to say. The terrain itself is uniform (shining) and poorly described, and there is very little movement. Heaven is a stationary destination in which nothing happens most of the time. This static nature is reinforced by the way that Dante usually moves from one sphere of Heaven to the next. Without any conscious movement, Dante just blinks and finds himself in a higher realm of heaven.

Additionally, Beatrice, Dante’s guide through the first thirty canti of Paradiso, is singularly uninteresting as a personage, despite Dante’s constant profession of adoration for her, and the way in which her beauty only increases with each passage into a new heavenly sphere. However, she cannot guide Dante for the final verses of the poem, and so she is replaced at the very end by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (or “Chiaravalle” as Dante Italianizes it).

It also does not help that some of the topics addressed are also rather academic and, in some cases, absurd to our modern sensibilities. Science has invalidated much of Dante’s Ptolemaic understanding of how the universe works. The incorrect astronomy would be less bothersome if it were not omnipresent, in some cases taking up dozens of lines with obscure references.

Finally, Dante’s recognition of his limitations in describing the wonders of Heaven, in particular his inability to describe his direct and ultimate encounter with God, draw the reader’s attention to the shortcomings of the final cantica.

However, there are some moving passages and well-constructed arguments to break up the monotony of the descriptions of just how blindingly brilliant everything is in Heaven. His explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation and Crucifixion is well-reasoned and expressed beautifully. The mutual praise by St. Thomas Aquinas (a Dominican) of St. Francis, and of St. Dominic by St. Bonaventura da Bagnoregio (a Franciscan), underscores the lack of competition among the religious orders in paradise. And Canto XXIII contains some of the most beautiful poetry in the whole Commedia.

Paradiso also remains true to the structure and progression that Dante gave to his work, so that there is a perfect harmony between it and the two previous cantiche. When read as a whole, La Divina Commedia remains the pinnacle of expression of the Age of Faith, a Christian epic poem that condenses and refines the meditations of Church philosophers and presents the article of faith in verse so brilliant that it could match the great epics of the pagan era. Paradiso, for all its faults, remains a worthy conclusion to an ambitious undertaking.