Review

Inferno

I read Inferno a couple of years ago. I recall generally enjoying it, though not too many specifics. I think what I enjoyed most was just the level of detail that Alighieri had gone into in designing his Hell. It does scratch the sort of itch of the bureaucratic afterlife imagined by many, that I tend to enjoy. (To give some far lower brow examples: Beetlejuice, the Good Place) I have no doubt that the Divine Comedy in many ways serves as a general inspiration for said examples.

But anyway, I did read Inferno and then subsequently dropped it, not bothering with Purgatorio or Paradiso. I am perfectly sure that I am not alone in that. Hell's fun, who wants to hear about good people going to heaven and loving God? But I do intend on reading the rest of it at some point.

Purgatorio

Something interesting about Purgatorio in relation to Inferno (or at least my recollection of Inferno) is that the physical layout of things is a lot less clear. I've noticed we tend to be a lot more metaphorical and floating. Not a bad thing per se, just something I've noticed. Has made things a little confusing sometimes. I find myself having to stop and think "Wait, where are we and who is speaking?" I would imagine if this is an actual change in the prose from Inferno to Purgatorio, it'll probably only increase in Paradiso.

Overall, it's fine. Not as interesting as Inferno, but the actual poetry of the thing is good. I enjoy catching far more references to the various classical epics having now actually read them. It's nice to be more cultured! I quite liked the Earthly Paradise section. The weird procession happening there. Very strange. Sad seeing our friend Virgil get booted so unceremoniously. Guess you have to go back to Limbo now. Eternal punishments suck. Stop worshiping deities that dole them out. Get out of that abusive relationship. You can do better, I assure you.

Horribly low-brow aside. I was always disappointed that they never made another one of those Dante God of War clone games. I did not myself even play it and I know that it wasn't like...good. But I thought it was sort of an interesting idea doing Christian theology stuff as a backdrop for a video game as opposed to the Greek, Norse, etc stuff we always see. I can imagine doing Purgatorio and Paradiso is rather a lot more difficult than Inferno. But just something I occasionally think of.

Paradiso

Least interesting one for me personally. We're at the most abstract of Dante's little comedies. There's parts that I enjoy. But I should say through all of this my footnotes were not working. 99% of my reading is done via ebook. I do prefer the feel of a real book, but the convenience of being able read every book in my library from anywhere is too much to pass up. And while my copy of Divine Comedy did have the footnotes, it would not jump to the correct section (or jump back to the original position). So I just stopped bothering and went raw commedia. No idea if that's the specific ebook copy or just my ereader software. I can't say I really ever look at footnotes.

This didn't really come up as an issue in my earlier western canon readings as a lot of the references being made were specific namedrops (which can be easily looked up when not know). Dante's doing a lot of referencing in his work, often indirectly. So there's just a lot being missed. This was less of a problem in Inferno and Purgatorio because I feel the physical events of the story are more concrete and direct. So I felt little need to even bother looking at the footnotes. Paradiso ain't that. Paradiso is our soul ascending through the celestial spheres and being imbued with divine mystic knowledge. There's rather little to hang onto. So there were some extended sequences where I'm sitting here wondering what on earth we're even talking about. What's being referenced. What anything is.

I will say that I genuinely appreciate the poetry. That's not really a genre I ever care for, but I did find myself slowing down and taking it in more as we neared the end of our journey.