/lit/ - Literature

>>5167645
Nothing. Except maybe that Dante is a self-righteous asshat. Keep reading and watch him condemn everything, it's funny.

i think Divine Comedy is supposed to be like Screwtape letters for his time.

we're supposed to read it, not take it literally, but more or less get a sense of what it's like to be in the presence of these divine and demonic forces.

>>5167645
Learn to read Italian.

>>5167645
1. Italian please
2. Learn relevant history, references and circumstances
3. Keep in mind it is sort of a satire

>>5167645
>Dante isn't witty,
>he has no great insights.
>he can't turn a phrase.

gr8 b8

The cadence of the terza rima is truly impressive and regrettably lost in translation. However, in reading Dante, three things are worth taking note of and pleasure in: the theme of intelletto (intelligence but also gnosis, or divine enlightenment); the triumvirate thematic development of writing, travelling and virtue; and the linguistic record of his lexicon, i.e. geomancer, or la notte privata (perhaps an untranslatable, semantically opaque metaphor for a starless night). Of course the geography, politics and fantastical elements are noteworthy, I hope I was able to provide some uncommon insight.

>>5167725
This

Inferno has some funny moments
Purgatorio made me cry
And the work as a whole is peppered with gems of insight.

>>5168033
I can just picture a precious, spoiled, over-educated in crap college student crying over Dante and being proud of it.

>>5168067
>weeps prolifically
>it's just so beautiful
>where is my

>>5168067
>I can just picture a precious, spoiled, over-educated in crap college student crying over Dante and being proud of it.

m8 I don't even go to college

>>5167645
Maybe your translation is shitty.

>>5168067
I can just picture someone so smugly jaded that they automatically associate any mention of emotion with pretense

>>5170152
I can just picture your smug ignorance of reading comprehension.

>>5167645
>pretty much every popular poet from the nineteenth century onwards
I'm sure you haven't, faggot

>>5170162
You were BTFO. Terrible damage control.

>>5170166
I kinda have

>>5167725
Feel free to post your favorite quotes from the DC and prove me wrong

>>5167682
jesus brautigan looks like such a perv there

how were you NOT impressed in the Lust circle of hell when he fucking fainted after hearing the story of the joined lovers?

THINK ABOUT IT. Dante was basically saying that it was fucked up to condemn true love based on the idea that they had sex before marriage. That is so fucking ahead of the times that it's insightful as fuck. He recognized that true love was stronger than any religious devotion, yet due to the nature of the church you were doomed to adhere to its principals.

thats just one of countless other moments of insight, but if you honestly can't see them then the work isn't for you.

I started reading this OP's post last night, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be impressed by. OP isn't witty, he has no great insights. he can't turn a phrase.

I've read a lot of chinese cartoon image boards, pretty much every popular forum from the nineteenth century onwards, but OP does nothing for me. What's going over my head?

Nothing. Except maybe that OP is a self-righteous asshat. Keep reading and watch him condemn everything, it's funny.

>>5171545

Learn to read shit-posting.

>>5171545
You think you're funny I bet

>>5171527
"lo maggior corno della fiamma antica cominciò a crollarsi mormorando"
I've read it maybe ten times and it still gives me the strongest chills a book has ever gave me.
also i know you're a bait but i just wanted to express my love for dante

>>5168033
>lol look at this faggot who feels feelings

>>5171548
using the term asshat.
gtfo john green

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you

>>5167645
>reading Divine Comedy without learning history first
>complains "Dante does nothing for me"

OP is a fagger

>>5171856
That's not about Dante lol

>translations

>>5171543
>That is so fucking ahead of the times
No it wasn't, you fucking moron.
>He recognized that true love was stronger than any religious devotion
'Religious devotion'?? The reason sex before marriage was condemned by the church is because they had no paternity tests back in the day. (Note: I said 'sex before marriage', not 'promiscuity'. 'Sex before marriage' assumes there's a marriage after the sex.)

>>5172465
>it wasn't, you fucking moron.

It's the first "I"-novel in europe, so it kinda is..

OP:
>>I've read a lot of poetry, pretty much every popular poet from the nineteenth century onwards, but Dante does nothing for me

lol'd

>>5171856
>mfw reading this

>>5167736
>notte privata
I like how you write anon, tell me more.

E però sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa, per legame musaico armonizzata, si può dalla sua loquela in altra trasmutare, sanza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e armonia

>>5171856
Tangled Up In Beatrice

>>5171719
Sounds like Dante is only impressive to Italians

>>5173483
That's because his Italian was and still is impressive, his Italian was beyond god tier. I guess you can read his translated work but the beauty gets completely lost in the translation.

Reading Dante in english like reading Shakespeare sonnets in Spanish.

>>5175286
okay bud. keep deluding yourself. he's only notable for his pointless rhyme scheme and that ain't much of an accomplishment in italian. there isn't much to dante's language or style.

>>5175298
>there isn't much to dante's language or style.

No...just no.

>>5175298
He gets a ton of credit for essentially inventing the Italian language, which was fragmented before he unified it in the Divine Comedy. Not that that means the work is any good, necessarily, but he's certainly notable for more than just his rhyme scheme.

>>5175298
Bait

>>5173483
He impresses me and I'm not Italian. Also, baiting is easy, just show us a passage and explain why it's bad.

>inb4 burden of proof
When you make such a controversial assertion the burden on proof is on you.

>>5175380
Don't get so mad, it's a matter of personal taste
"lo maggior corno della fiamma antica cominciò a crollarsi mormorando"
Let's translate it in english
"Then of the antique flame the greater horn,
Murmuring, began to wave itself about"
Hm looks like he made a very basic description about a very basic object to describe what the object is going to do, that's the kind of writing you'd find in any poem. Maybe the english language destroys any sense given to an italian sentence, let's see what it gives in french
"La plus grande corne de l’antique flamme commença à s’agiter, murmurant:"
There's nothing remarkable at all in that verse. Unless you're italian.

>inb4 this isn't a verse I like either
le burden of proof meme

>>5175885
no m8 google translate destroys the sense you uni-lingual pseudo intellectual clown

>>5175900
>google translate
Those translations were all made by human translators
Fuck off

>>5167645
Try Joss Whedon. He's more your style.

>>5167736
>>5172488
The full truth is that I need to reread La Divina Commedia because I was reading Finnegans Wake during the same summer and suffer insomnia; then drinking so bad I wound up in the drunk tank that summer. I finished reading it when I went back to university in September. In short, I didn't know how to read properly at that time.

Nevertheless, there are a number of modern commentators who are educated enough to be considered dantistas, if they were only less sensible and thorough in their knowledge of other literature, but in their wisdom overcome the banality of such single-minded scholars: Umberto Eco, George Steiner, and Alberto Manguel are worth checking out.

>Want to read Russian lit
>Have to learn Russian (and French)
>Want to read a single Italian book
>Have to learn Italian

>>5175885

Actually the french translation is pretty good in my opinion. The english one is terrible.

>>5167645
Ladies, please, make way.

Real italian native speaker here.

We read the Divine Comedy for years in school. In high school, we spent 3 goddamn years on it.

The verdict:
>IT'S BULLSHIT.
From the plot to the characters to the idea of hell and heaven to literally everything else.

IT
IS
SHIT

Just read some other book that wasn't written by a sexually frustrated, close minded, bigot, religious fanatic onanist that wanted to imagine all his enemies suffer horribly in some supposedly ironic way.
Seriously, it's shit.

Vaffanculo, Dante. Ridammi i tre anni che professori imbecilli quanto te mi hanno fatto sprecare sulle tue cagate!
Ma non esistevano le puttane nella tua epoca?

>>5176528
Vergognati, imecille. This is all I truly wish to say to you. Not only did you fail to appreciate the magnificence of Dante's works, but you're also encouraging, people who still haven't got a chance to read them, not to.

I can understand someone saying that they didn't enjoy La Divina Commedia, but claiming that one of the most beautiful and complete works of the western literature is "shit" is not something you should be saying. If you think that studying Dante for 3 years was a "waste" then what are you doing on 4chan and more specifically on /lit/? You had the fortune to be born in the same country as Dante, yet because of your immaturity and ignorance, you failed to see anything of value in his works.

I bet you're one of those students that thought studying Kant was a chore and nothing more. Please, leave /lit/ forever. You don't belong here.

Just dumping.

>>5176605
that's cool wonder if it is on SNES

>>5176605
why do the IRA get it so easy?

Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore;
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'.

He basically invented a whole new way of expressing poetry.
Just think about numerology:
3, 33, 100 are all "magical numbers";
Just think about the variety of information he can use for just explaining a sunset;
in a part of Inferno he even shows us a "bestiarium" of that time.
Plus, he was an eager reader of the classics(cfr. every Pagan mythologic reference, as Fetonte, or Briareo).

Shakespeare is undoubtely master of theathre, Dante is the master of Italian poetry, even better than Petrarch.

>>5176648
Each language has it's own master.