Book Recommendations – Talk about the Divine Comedy

Bibliographic introduction

The Divine Comedy was written by Dante, who has been hailed as "the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of the Renaissance".

Dante was not only a poet, but also a politician, linguist, and excellent epistolary. Throughout his life, because he angered the powerful, he was not tolerated by the black and white parties in Italy at that time, and was exiled many times. Lamenting the dim political situation in Europe, he indignantly composed the Divine Comedy, which lasted nearly twenty years.

The book takes the sleepwalking writing method used by medieval writers at that time, takes Dante sleepwalking in hell, purgatory, and heaven as the main line, and sometimes euphemistically and sometimes directly satirizes the religious priests and popes of the religious circles at that time and the various cattle, ghosts, snakes and gods of the people at that time, causing great repercussions, indirectly promoting the emergence of the Renaissance, laying the basic pattern of Italian, and influencing the literary creation of later generations, for which a special discipline - Danteology - was born!

Review

The Divine Comedy was composed by Dante in the Italian colloquial language (in the modern popular sense of Italian). According to the translator, each line of poetry is written strictly according to a certain pattern. Although the translation does not guarantee the original taste of the original poem, it can also be seen that Dante's literary skills are understood.

The poem is divided into three parts. The first is about Dante traveling through hell and seeing many ghosts, and often using some ancient tyrants and mythological figures to metaphorically describe the ugly people, things, and things in society at that time.

The second part tells of Dante's journey through Purgatory. The so-called purgatory is the place where people who have no sins but who were born before Christ and have not converted are located. Things like Socrates, Plato, Caesar and so on are all here. But there are also ways to atone for sins and so on to obtain the qualification to go to heaven. Ostensibly, It was Dante's intention to persuade the pagans to convert to Christ, but more importantly, Dante wanted to use it to keep the church from banning its own books (although it was eventually forbidden) to shut down the mouths of the Yoyos. The artistry of this part is even better than the previous one, and the treatment of the conversations and exchanges of some great philosophers and the poetic interpretation of philosophical views in the poem are like a spring breeze to read.

The third and longest part, Dante travels to heaven together under the guidance of his lover, describing the beautiful heavens, in which the transformation and description of the scenery are moving to read. In these three Psalms, Dante washes his soul step by step, and at the same time steps step by step on the path to God. The whole book is a hundred poems, sublimated step by step, in order to be the last light - God.

At the same time, it is worth noting that Dante's last words in all three Psalms end with stars. Even if it unifies the whole style, it is also Dante's self-congratulatory intention to do the Middle Ages, the dark century, even if it is a small star!

Reasons for recommendation

I recommend the Divine Comedy because it is the only book I have come into contact with that has so far devoted a lot of commentary. Because the Divine Comedy is a huge work involving philosophy, political science, history, theology, mythology, linguistics, rhetoric, etymology, and many other large and small disciplines, and the obscurity of words and the variety of dictionaries at that time were unparalleled. So many people will get bored when they look at this cumbersome comment.

But that's exactly why I'm recommending it, because it reflects the greatness and holiness of the Divine Comedy.

It took me almost a year to read such a work, but it was also very rewarding, and my understanding of the Middle Ages was unprecedentedly extensive. Until now, when I talk to people about the Middle Ages, I have used the knowledge in the commentary here to be very sufficient.

Even if you don't have the purpose of acquiring knowledge, you can buy it to read and read it, and you can cultivate your sentiments, and it is beneficial and harmless!

(Note: The "Divine Comedy" I read was published by Yilin Publishing House, with three volumes and more than 800,000 words)