The Portable Dante: Revised Edition (Viking Portable Library)

Not only do you get all of the Divine Comedy, La Vita Nouva, and a good translation, it contains the best feature for any student trying to read Dante: Footnotes on the bottoms of the pages! No other version that I have seen has this feature and believe me, it's really nice not to have to flip to the back and look up a number every time a new name or concept comes up (and believe me, it is a lot). This feature alone (plus that fact that it contains all the Dante you'll ever need) makes it THE edition to buy.

Dante's "Divine Comedy" has been something I wanted to read for a very long time, but never quite got around to until recently. I haven't yet compiled anything like a Top Ten list of favorite books, but if I did, the Comedy would surely find a place on the list. Dante's vision of the ethereal, and his vivid descriptions of the travels he supposedly undertook were stunning and tremendously descriptive. I've read that many of Dante's contemporaries fully believed, after reading his accounts, that he did indeed travel to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise (indeed, some of Dante's contemporaries swear that he had singe marks on his face as a result of his travels in Hell). I'm not surprised--the story is told with such a painstaking attention to detail that it is hard to believe it could have been imagined.
The overarching message of the Comedy appealed to me--in order to overcome sin and evil, man must first encounter and understand it fully. This Dante does, traveling through Hell and Purgatory to intellectually comprehend the various and manifold degrees of sin and fault. Through the patience and teaching of his guides: Virgil, Beatrice and finally St. Bernard, Dante is exposed to sin and accounts of human frailty, without actually succumbing to that frailty himself. It is, in many ways, the best of both worlds. And with each lesson--and the corresponding conquest of sinful desire associated with the lesson--Dante further prepares himself for his ascent to Paradise, and for his glimpse into the Mind of God, whom Dante, in the last canto of "Il Paradiso," unforgettably portrays as an Unmoved Mover of the sun and the stars. Dante's exploration of the ethereal--and his corresponding self-exploration--is profoundly intellectual in nature, and yet, it captures very effectively the full range of emotions a pilgrim would feel if he undertook the extraordinary journey that Dante purports to have taken--emotions which include shock, horror, terror, pity, sadness, and ultimately ecstatic joy.
Of course, there are a large number of political motivations behind the writing of "The Divine Comedy." It seems that just about every canto has at least one character condemning--often in violent terms--the state of the Catholic Church in Dante's time. As an opponent of the Church at the time of the writing of the Comedy, Dante likely benefited from employing this argument in his work. Dante also has an interesting habit of placing the souls of friends, comrades and family members in Paradise, or at least Purgatory where they have a chance for redemption--while Dante's enemies find themselves in Hell. Additionally, Dante ensures that characters in the Comedy make very self-serving statements about the conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines--a conflict which caused Dante, as a White Guelph, to be exiled from his beloved city of Florence. I was amused at the fact that many of the characters--indeed, a vast majority of them--were of Italian origin (at times, one cannot help but wonder whether Hell, Purgatory or Paradise are in any way multicultural melting pots). And while individual Jewish figures of great import--such as the prophets--are treated well in the Comedy, at times, Dante makes disturbing statements about how Jews were supposedly responsible for the death of Jesus (though to be fair, this was not an uncommon sentiment in the early 14th century).
However, the self-serving aspects of the Comedy aside, it is a wonderful and fascinating read--one that engenders a large number of emotions. At times, one cannot help but laugh out loud at some of the more hilarious descriptions in the story (whether those descriptions involve a sinner in Hell literally giving the finger to God in the Italian fashion by placing his thumb in between his forefinger and middle finger, or whether they involve the . . . um . . . gaseous emissions of a demon from an orifice that is not his mouth). Others are quite horrifying and disgusting in their gruesome nature--causing me either to turn away momentarily in slight disgust, or to worry about my own fate in some vague and uncertain way. And then, of course, there are images of surpassing beauty described in the Comedy; the radiant beauty of Beatrice, the awesome nature of Paradise, its many spheres, and the characters found there, the complex intellectual design of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and the carefully constructed explanations for various physical and spiritual phenomena. "The Divine Comedy" succeeds not only as an epic tale, it succeeds as well as a lucid and serious philosophical text. Indeed, it is one of the best works of literature I have come across in its ability to combine philosophical pedagogy with the clever and compelling relation of an epic tale.
In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I imagine that I will return to the Comedy for re-readings many a time in the future. And I hope and expect to delight in the story just as much, if not more than I did the first time I read it.

Dante's "Divine Comedy" has been something I wanted to read for a very long time, but never quite got around to until recently. I haven't yet compiled anything like a Top Ten list of favorite books, but if I did, the Comedy would surely find a place on the list. Dante's vision of the ethereal, and his vivid descriptions of the travels he supposedly undertook were stunning and tremendously descriptive. I've read that many of Dante's contemporaries fully believed, after reading his accounts, that he did indeed travel to Hell, Purgatory and Paradise (indeed, some of Dante's contemporaries swear that he had singe marks on his face as a result of his travels in Hell). I'm not surprised--the story is told with such a painstaking attention to detail that it is hard to believe it could have been imagined.
The overarching message of the Comedy appealed to me--in order to overcome sin and evil, man must first encounter and understand it fully. This Dante does, traveling through Hell and Purgatory to intellectually comprehend the various and manifold degrees of sin and fault. Through the patience and teaching of his guides: Virgil, Beatrice and finally St. Bernard, Dante is exposed to sin and accounts of human frailty, without actually succumbing to that frailty himself. It is, in many ways, the best of both worlds. And with each lesson--and the corresponding conquest of sinful desire associated with the lesson--Dante further prepares himself for his ascent to Paradise, and for his glimpse into the Mind of God, whom Dante, in the last canto of "Il Paradiso," unforgettably portrays as an Unmoved Mover of the sun and the stars. Dante's exploration of the ethereal--and his corresponding self-exploration--is profoundly intellectual in nature, and yet, it captures very effectively the full range of emotions a pilgrim would feel if he undertook the extraordinary journey that Dante purports to have taken--emotions which include shock, horror, terror, pity, sadness, and ultimately ecstatic joy.
Of course, there are a large number of political motivations behind the writing of "The Divine Comedy." It seems that just about every canto has at least one character condemning--often in violent terms--the state of the Catholic Church in Dante's time. As an opponent of the Church at the time of the writing of the Comedy, Dante likely benefited from employing this argument in his work. Dante also has an interesting habit of placing the souls of friends, comrades and family members in Paradise, or at least Purgatory where they have a chance for redemption--while Dante's enemies find themselves in Hell. Additionally, Dante ensures that characters in the Comedy make very self-serving statements about the conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines--a conflict which caused Dante, as a White Guelph, to be exiled from his beloved city of Florence. I was amused at the fact that many of the characters--indeed, a vast majority of them--were of Italian origin (at times, one cannot help but wonder whether Hell, Purgatory or Paradise are in any way multicultural melting pots). And while individual Jewish figures of great import--such as the prophets--are treated well in the Comedy, at times, Dante makes disturbing statements about how Jews were supposedly responsible for the death of Jesus (though to be fair, this was not an uncommon sentiment in the early 14th century).
However, the self-serving aspects of the Comedy aside, it is a wonderful and fascinating read--one that engenders a large number of emotions. At times, one cannot help but laugh out loud at some of the more hilarious descriptions in the story (whether those descriptions involve a sinner in Hell literally giving the finger to God in the Italian fashion by placing his thumb in between his forefinger and middle finger, or whether they involve the . . . um . . . gaseous emissions of a demon from an orifice that is not his mouth). Others are quite horrifying and disgusting in their gruesome nature--causing me either to turn away momentarily in slight disgust, or to worry about my own fate in some vague and uncertain way. And then, of course, there are images of surpassing beauty described in the Comedy; the radiant beauty of Beatrice, the awesome nature of Paradise, its many spheres, and the characters found there, the complex intellectual design of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, and the carefully constructed explanations for various physical and spiritual phenomena. "The Divine Comedy" succeeds not only as an epic tale, it succeeds as well as a lucid and serious philosophical text. Indeed, it is one of the best works of literature I have come across in its ability to combine philosophical pedagogy with the clever and compelling relation of an epic tale.
In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I imagine that I will return to the Comedy for re-readings many a time in the future. And I hope and expect to delight in the story just as much, if not more than I did the first time I read it.