Dante - The Divine Comedy

Dante The Divine Comedy - translated by Clive James

I saw a TV special on Clive James in early 2014 in which he talked about his long term project of providing a modern translation to Dante's Divine Comedy, a task that took him 10 years off and on. I had an unused book voucher for Dymock's Bookstore so immediately went out and bought the newly published book and set to read.

Definitely not an easy read, an epic poem of 99 cantos or chapters and over 500 pages, but one of those books you must say you have read (or at least tried to read). I did the entire read in June 2014 but it was an effort and I feel I only absorbed a small amount of the complex story and even more complex philosophical discussions that take place between Dante and the various shades he meets along the way through Hell, Purgatory and finally Heaven.

The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. Written somewhere between 1308 and his death in 1321, it is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

I did especially like the words inscribed above the gates to Hell

TO ENTER THE LOST CITY, GO THROUGH ME.
THROUGH ME YOU GO TO MEET A SUFFERING
UNCEASING AND ETERNAL. YOU WILL BE
WITH PEOPLE WHO, THROUGH ME, LOST EVERYTHING

MY MAKER, MOVED BY JUSTICE, LIVES ABOVE,
THROUGH HIM, THE HOLY POWER, I WAS MADE -
MADE BY THE HEIGHT OF WISDOM AND FIRST LOVE,
WHOSE LAWS ALL THOSE IN HERE ONCE DISOBEYED

FROM NOW ON, EVERY DAY FEELS LIKE YOUR LAST
FOREVER. LET THAT BE YOUR GREATEST FEAR
YOUR FUTURE NOW IS TO REGRET THE PAST,
FORGET YOUR HOPES, THEY WERE WHAT BROUGHT YOU HERE.

The fact that it is still such a well known and widely read book some 700 years after it was written speaks strongly for its literary value and ongoing place amongst the world's great books.

Clive James is of course well known to all Australians as one of our living treasures. I have a number of book by him, including the following

North Face of Soho: Unreliable Memoirs - Volume IV
The Meaning of Recognition: New Essays 2001-2005

More on Clive James below.

Inferno by Dan Brown

Either before or after struggling through Dante's 'The Divine Comedy', you must also read this book which has Dante's Inferno as one of its central themes. I had read it in 2013 and that actually inspired me to find out more about the original book.

NGV - William Blake watercolours

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) owns thirty-six of the 102 watercolours that English painter William Blake executed in the 1820s to illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy, which are regarded as among the artist’s finest and most impressive creations.  As luck would have it, NGV put on an exhibition in 2014 of Blake's work, including the Divine Comedy prints (see http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/exhibitions/william-blake) so I went to see it once I had finished The Divine Comedy.

Talk about coincidence working to a plan!

Finally, the terminally ill Australian author, critic and raconteur Clive James, who was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010 and is battling terminal emphysema, has detailed his revelations of life and death in an emotional poem.

The poem Japanese Maple was published by The New Yorker this week (Thurs 18 Sept 2014) and is being lauded as James' last work. In it, James predicts his death is "near now" but will be "of an easy sort" as "so slow a fading out brings no real pain".

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:
Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?
Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.