Review by Dennis D. McDonald

A while back, I felt the urge to read more classics. I’m not sure why, but I settled on Dante—perhaps inspired by our family trip to Italy last year, where we admired Italian art masterpieces in Rome and Florence.

I consulted a friendly medieval scholar here in the U.S. and received several recommendations for Dante translations. I ultimately chose Musa’s The Portable Dante and ordered a copy from eBay.

I began reading one or two cantos from INFERNO per night. Wow. No wonder this is a classic. What a powerful work of imagination! The idea of populating hell with real people—including a pope—must have seemed scandalous at the time. Knowing a little about Italian history now, I can appreciate how vividly Dante exposes the political rivalries of his era. The hatred, competition, and personal animosities he describes are all too familiar, as are the graphic depictions of the consequences of doing evil.

I’m not sure what the Church was teaching about the afterlife during Dante’s time, but his vivid portrayals of eternal torment for different categories of sin are at times fiendish and at other times grimly amusing. Without further study, I can’t say how Dante’s vision of hell compares to those in Greek, Roman, or Asian mythology, but it seems carefully designed and purposefully created as allegories for his fundamental beliefs.

These beliefs may not perfectly align with the religious doctrines of his time, but they strike me as reflecting the mind of a mature, creative artist willing to debate and expand upon his own ideas. Even from a time so distant from his, this quality of intellectual exploration stands out as an enduring example of artistic brilliance. Will creative works from our own time endure as Dante’s has? I can’t help but wonder!

Review copyright 2024 by Dennis D. McDonald.

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