Monday, March 1, 2021

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Rating: WARTY!

In Italian, Divina Commedia or originally just Comedia, this is a poetic work describing a descent into hell by Dante, and everything he sees there, but the real hell was actually having to listen to this audiobook. It is sooo boring and so pretentious that I gave up on it after about a quarter of it.

It was not holding my attention. It was saying nothing of interest. The story was stupid and primitive, and tedious. How this can be described as the greatest work in Italian is a complete mystery to me. Note that in Dante's time, the word 'comedy' meant something with a happy ending - it did not necessarily mean it was funny, and there's nothing funny - not even unintentionally, in this work.

The real oddity here though is that all the while that Dante is vaunting the Catholic church, he's also extolling the Greeks who were multi-theists and certainly did not subscribe to Catholicism! The guy is very confused, and his name-dropping is both tedious and laughable. Almost as laughable as his nine circles of hell:

  1. Limbo
  2. Lust
  3. Gluttony
  4. Greed
  5. Wrath
  6. Heresy
  7. Violence
  8. Fraud
  9. Treachery

Heresy isn't the worst thing? Neither is violence? This is the system Dante invented out of whole cloth. He made it all up and people at the time believed it. Many still do. If you're a flatterer, you end up in the eighth circle of hell, but if you're a murderer, you only get sent down to the seventh circle? There's actually no story here, just a litany of offences and vile punishments that no god calling itself merciful would actually countenance - an eternity of suffering and a loving god are irreconcilable. And Dante was a moron.