Feels like it's impossible to read at a relatively normal speed, let alone speed read. Thinking of reading one of the prose versions.
Twice. I don‘t even like it.
Nope but I'm also interested in it. What's the best prose adaption?
>>25331421was the joke that it's actually Hell to try and read this mind-numbing shit?
>>25331421Yes. Three times.
>>25331423this, but 1.3 times, soon to be 2.3
>>25331421It's also not all that much text if you read it at normal speed. You're supposed to sit and savor it (granted, some parts are better than others; that Paradiso is the best but it drags in the middle a bit).Of course it takes longer because any decent copy will have notes and commentary as long as to poem or longer (and here I recommend Musa for first time readers, supplemented by Timothy B. Shutt and the Great Courses lectures, and Barolini's commentary for key cantos, found here: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/). Reading it without the notes is going to make you miss a lot. But more to the point, unless you have a graduate level understanding of the classics, medieval philosophy (including the Arabs), medieval theology, and Renaissance history (including local Florentine history) you're going to miss quite a bit. Dante was one of the most learned men alive and is critically underrated as a philosopher in his own right because his literary output outshines his novel philosophical contributions (he is mostly syncretic, but obviously knew the Islamics as well as the key thinkers if the Latin West and some Greek texts, yet he has some genuinely novel and excellent takes in political philosophy and the philosophy of history).I'd highly recommend Moevs' Dante's Metaphysics at some point, the earlier the better, at least the introduction, so one gets a flavor of how very different medieval Christianity was from modern Christianity.The episodes on the Dogs with Torches (a reference to the Dominicans) podcast on Dante are pretty good here; the host gets excellent figures on medieval thought and history to come on, including a bunch of John Deely's students on semiotics interestingly enough.If you're using Libgen, it wouldn't hurt to read Putnam's essay "Virgil's Inferno" in Aeneid: Interpretation and Influenced as well, and at least read Book VI before the Inferno.I'm not saying you need all that to start, but it helps to go along. Shutt's lectures and the Great Courses ones will get you pumped up for it anyhow, and give you enough to orient you.It's the greatest work of literature in history. It isn't meant to be sped through. It's meant to be savored, because you can return to it again and again.
>>25331421>>25331424I read the Charles Eliot Norton prose translation and I have no regrets. The text was mostly clear on its own but the footnotes helped a lot as well. If you're a brainlet like me then this might be for you as well.
>>25331421It's honestly not worth reading. Paradise Lost is a lot better. Just ignore the Arianism heresies and it's groovy.
i read the ciardi translation and it was one of the best things i've ever readas well as the inferno being as entertaining as i'd expected, i was surprisingly invested and blown away by purgatory and paradise. especially all the weird phantasmagorical shit in paradiso where the sheer divine beauty and force is so overwhelming you have a fucking stroke just looking at it until your waifu levels you up to be able to handle it
>>25331421I read through the entirety of The Inferno and maybe halfway through Purgatorio on two separate occasions. Probably because I feel like I'm only liable to go to either Hell or Purgatory so I don't need to bother reading Paradiso.They're fine books, I don't have any issues reading them or understanding them, I guess I just have other shit that I'd rather be reading.
>>25331421Read more. It's way easier to read than most of Shakespeare.
>>25331424I'm looking at the Carlyle or David Bruce. Bruce seems like I could read it very fast. The typography on the Carlyle version stresses me out.
I'm reading Ciardis translation and like it a lot, but I'm pretty ignorant to the biblical and social shit, so I'm just letting the imagery wash over me
I've only read The Inferno (the John Ciardi translation from Signet Classics. My copy included all of the footnotes giving explanations and backgrounds of all of the individuals Dante mentions in the text) and I loved it. It was funny how he talked mad shit about his local enemies in Florence by placing them in different circles of hell. I always told myself that I'd read Purgatorio and Paradisio, but I never got around to it. Dante's imagination and poetic creativity was incredible.
Why is Achilles in Hell when he got murdered by Paris?
>>25332552Being murdered doesn't make you a martyr.
>>25332561But he dindu nuffin>but he le went to war for some CleopatussyThere is literally no man on earth, past, present or future, that wouldn't do the same thing
>>25332585It's amazing that you can somehow understand there is a work on the four last things yet completely disregard one of them(judgement).
What's the rhythm of the poem? I can't get into poems that I can't get a rhythm of
>>25331421>Be honest: have you read Dante's Divine Comedy?Yeah. I would say it's overrated, but its hard to rate when I didn't read it in the original language. But I liked Faust and that was written in German. Maybe Dante is just overrated.
>>25331424Anthony Esolen
>>25332680It depends on the translation. This substack compares several translations and tells you the meter of each one whypstopher.substack.com/p/dantes-gates-of-hell-translation
>>25332585>Achilles>Cleopatussygoober. Even then imagine being Julius Caesar's right hand man and then you go to war over his sloppy seconds like Antony, blegh.
