Week 15 Reading: Dante's Inferno Part A


During this final week of school I decided to read one of the most famous works of literature, “Dante’s Inferno”. I have had experience with this story before, so most of it is not new to me. Overall, I love the themes that are explored within the story, alongside how they are described. Doing some research into this, this was one of the first stories to depict Hell as such a place. Differing levels, with a guide leading him have captured imaginations everywhere. Today, there are so many different stories about Hell, or the people that go there, or even about the devil himself. They each describe Hell in their unique way, but all have one thing in common – suffering. I mean, what else is there to have within Hell? I love the way that Dante described what it was like when he first heard the sounds of Hell, “Here sighs, complaints and deep groans sounded through the starless air, so that it made me weep at first. Many tongues, a terrible crying, words of sadness, accents of anger…” All of this combines together to give the reader a tremendously strong image of what Dante is going through while walking through this part of Hell – it is exactly what us as  readers are expecting, but the way that he describes it gives us a true meaning of horror. People like the unexplained to be written out for them. Hell is no different. We naturally want to know what happens to us when we die, so this type of story grasps the attention and gives us a cautionary warning about what we do during this life. The idea of having different circles of Hell is a masterclass in writing and imagination. I absolutely love the way that it is described, showing me exactly why this story is as famous as it is.



"Dante e Virgílio nos portões do Inferno"
Translated to "Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell"
Painted by William Blake

"Dante's Divine Comedy" translated by Tony Kline (2002)

Comments

  1. Shivani PatelDecember 4, 2019 at 4:10 PM

    Hi Andrew! I also read Inferno for this last week's reading. If you go down the blog stream, you see quite a bit of "reading notes: dante's inferno" posts because quite a lot of people decided to read that this week which I think is kinda funny. Like you, I had also read this before so I had the gist of it but I enjoyed being able to read it all over again.

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