Leading Dante from Shadow into City in “Dante” – Chicago Review of Books

Leading Dante from Shadow into City in “Dante” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] There is an inarguable ephemerality about Dante Alighieri, the author of the Divine Comedy (in Italian, Commedia—the “Divine” was a publisher’s later addition). C.S. Lewis put it well in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966): “There is a curious feeling that [the Commedia] is writing itself, or at most, that the tiny figure … Read more

Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell in Dante Alighieri’s “Purgatorio,” Translated by Mary Jo Bang – Chicago Review of Books

Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell in Dante Alighieri’s “Purgatorio,” Translated by Mary Jo Bang – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Reading the poet Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio, I thought of a widely-circulated photograph from the COVID pandemic. An Italian doctor in a surgical gown and two face masks holds a sign reading, “When this hell ends:/…And then we emerged again to see the stars.” The quote is from the … Read more