Reading Group: Dante's Inferno (Jan. 18-March 22)

An invitation to hear the voices in the pages.

Dante’s dream of being transported by a giant eagle occurs in the Purgatorio (not the Inferno). I used it here simply to suggest the ravishing power of the Comedy in general. The illustrator is Gustave Dore whose vivid Romantic style contributed much to Dante’s popularity in the 19th century.

I’ve been reading and occasionally teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy for most of my adult life, starting back in my undergraduate days at UT Austin.

Recently I pitched my friend Samantha Hill on the idea of teaching the Comedy together in one of her wonderful reading groups and she liked the idea.

So we’ll be offering a series of 10 Zoom sessions (Sundays, noon to 1:30 pm EST), starting Sunday, January 18. The course is $333 but we’re offering a “pay what feels right” option so everybody is welcome. You can register for the reading group here.

Sam just posted a notice about the Dante group on her Substack Reflections (recommended!) but I’ll add some thoughts here.

1. Here’s one of the most surprising things about this poem describing a journey to Hell, Purgatory and Heaven—it’s not really about these other worlds. To a surprising degree, it’s about this world, seen from an unearthly perspective.

2. Dante’s Comedy (which is the original name—the adjective “divine” was added many years later) was written over 700 years ago. You would not expect a poem of the Late Middle Ages to offer much in the way of realism in its depictions of human characters. Yet this is exactly the quality Dante brings to his luminous figures like Francesca, Ugolino, Brunetto Latini and others. Their voices break through to us, eager to be heard, before falling silent and then haunting our memories.

3. A poem which is literally about the entire universe naturally invites many different perspectives—theological, historical, sociological, etc. In this reading group, Sam and I will mainly focus on opening up two aspects of the Inferno: 1) the nature of the poetry and 2) the world of the politics (i.e., the socioeconomic background). Just to set expectations!

If you’d like to make a start on the poem, we’ll be using the translation by Robert Pinsky, available here.

And we’ll be sharing a Google folder with recommended readings closer to the Jan. 18 start date.

Happy New Year!

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