Resumo de The Divine Comedy

Dante's Divine Comedy is the story of the soul?s journey from the depths of despair to pure enlightenment, and you don't have to be a Catholic or even religious to be awed and inspired by it. If you ignore all the academic dust that has settled on this astounding creation over the seven hundred years since it was written, and imagine it more as an adventure movie with better special effects than The Matrix and with a deeper message than The Seventh Seal, you'll set off on a journey across space and time that you?ll never forget.

The great love of Dante?s life was Beatrice, whom he first glimpsed in Florence in 1274, when she was eight years old and he was nine, and he spent the rest of his life idolising her, long after her marriage and early death. He wrote his La Vita Nuova in praise of her beauty and purity, and it is one of the world?s greatest romantic poems, but he felt that it didn?t do her justice, and he went on to compose the Divine Comedy as his unprecedented and unsurpassed monument to her. He started it when he was 29 years old and finished it just before his death 27 years later, in 1321, and it hasn?t been out of print since.

Dante, approaching middle-age, descends into Hell and is guided through the terrible circles of damned souls by the poet Virgil, and past Satan himself, who stands in ice to his waist, before attaining Purgatory. It is in Purgatory that souls who escaped Hell are cleansed and made ready for promotion to Paradise. At the peak of Mount Purgatory, Virgil ? who lived before the Incarnation and can go no farther ? hands Dante over to Beatrice, and together they make their way to the Godhead. Dante spends eternity with the girl he first saw and fell in love with 47 years earlier.

As well as reading it as homage to Love and the soul?s struggle towards perfection, it is jam-packed with gossip and details about the people and the politics of Florence at the time. Dante is often criticised for peopling Hell with his enemies and Paradise with his friends, but whatever the case he left us with a huge range of vividly drawn characters that really bring those times to life. And naturally the sinners tend to be a lot more fun than the saints. As in the Canterbury Tales, we can recognise these people easily today: the devious politicians, the star-crossed lovers, the dictators and gang bosses, the holier-than-thou brigade and the ones who just couldn?t make up their minds. If human nature has changed at all since Dante, it?s only been for the worse.

This is a book that has exerted an incredible influence down the centuries, especially on artists. If your imagination is a bit jaded, just type ?Dante Durer? into Google to come up with fantastic engravings from the Renaissance master, or ?Dante Blake? to view William Blake?s more restrained and impressionistic but no less powerful impressions. There is no shortage of English translations, either, the best to date being the new one by Robert Pinsky.

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