Review
In trying to begin this review, I would love to state that I have actually read Inferno when I was in high school. It was so long ago that I cannot seem to recall any details aside from the morbid torturous parts—yeah, it kinda says a lot about me, I know.
Listening to the audiobook, though, made me realize how important it is to first digest this story in written form. It may be true that the older times offered stories in similar fashion and not in paper, but the poetry is such a complicated style of writing that it requires—at least for me—strong attention. A large portion of the story was lost in my train of thoughts as my mind tried to fight at grasping the lyrical narration over the mundane task that I was doing while listening.
It could have been a whole different experience if I sat there and listened to the audiobook exclusively—really processing the moments, taking pausing to get a grip on the nuances of the events. But no, I went through it in such a breeze that I felt like I got ahead of Dante to Paradiso without him even noticing.
The narration, I believe, is sublime. It took me to a whole different world and it was effective in delivering the story with great emotion and vigor. There were parts that I would have liked to be different, but it was a good experience in general.
I would like for you to take my review with a grain of salt, as I have already stated, it took so much to keep everything intact—and yet, everything fell apart still. There will, surely, come a time when I will pick up the book themselves and provide a more concrete review of the writing and the story. But for now, this is my experience with the audiobook version of The Divine Comedy.
About the Author
Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (May 14/June 13 1265 – September 13/14, 1321), is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the comic story-teller Boccaccio and the poet Petrarch, he forms the classic trio of Italian authors. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. He first saw the woman, or rather the child, who was to become the poetic love of his life when he was almost nine years old and she was some months younger. In fact, Beatrice married another man, Simone di’ Bardi, and died when Dante was 25, so their relationship existed almost entirely in Dante’s imagination, but she nonetheless plays an extremely important role in his poetry. Dante attributed all the heavenly virtues to her soul and imagined, in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, that she was his guardian angel who alternately berated and encouraged him on his search for salvation.
Politics as well as love deeply influenced Dante’s literary and emotional life. Renaissance Florence was a thriving, but not a peaceful city: different opposing factions continually struggled for dominance there. The Guelfs and the Ghibellines were the two major factions, and in fact that division was important in all of Italy and other countries as well. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor were political rivals for much of this time period, and in general the Guelfs were in favor of the Pope, while the Ghibellines supported Imperial power. By 1289 in the battle of Campaldino the Ghibellines largely disappeared from Florence. Peace, however, did not insue. Instead, the Guelf party divided between the Whites and the Blacks (Dante was a White Guelf). The Whites were more opposed to Papal power than the Blacks, and tended to favor the emperor, so in fact the preoccupations of the White Guelfs were much like those of the defeated Ghibellines. In this divisive atmosphere Dante rose to a position of leadership. in 1302, while he was in Rome on a diplomatic mission to the Pope, the Blacks in Florence seized power with the help of the French (and pro-Pope) Charles of Valois. The Blacks exiled Dante, confiscating his goods and condemning him to be burned if he should return to Florence.
Dante never returned to Florence. He wandered from city to city, depending on noble patrons there. Between 1302 and 1304 some attempts were made by the exiled Whites to retrieve their position in Florence, but none of these succeeded and Dante contented himself with hoping for the appearance of a new powerful Holy Roman Emperor who would unite the country and banish strife. Henry VII was elected Emperor in 1308, and indeed laid seige to Florence in 1312, but was defeated, and he died a year later, destroying Dante’s hopes. Dante passed from court to court, writing passionate political and moral epistles and finishing his Divine Comedy, which contains the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. He finally died in Ravenna in 1321.
