Other editions of book The Divine Comedy

Excerpt from The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3: ParadiseThe glory of the Lord Who all things sways, Down throughout all our universe descendeth; Here more, here less, it gives its glowing rays.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three canticas (Italian plural cantiche) – Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) – each consisting of 33 cantos (Italian plural canti). An initial canto, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, brings the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three canticas. On the surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents, allegorically, the soul's journey towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse".

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Excerpt from The Divine ComedySo has one Guido from the other taken The glory of our tongue, and he perchance Is born who from their nest shall chase them both.The Palazzo Vecchio was built when Dante was twenty-four years old. Five years later the builders were at work on the Baptistery and Cathedral and Dante was but in his thirty-fifth year when there were cast for the Baptistery those brazen gates which Michael Angelo declared worthy to be the gates of heaven. Then also to these works the building of the city walls was added and for the towers and barricades of factious chiefs within the town, which were ordered to be reduced or abolished, there were set up fortress-walls for the shelter of a working common wealth. Outside the walls an active race of husbandmen, fearless possessors of the goods they earned, tilled the ground, formed canals, and raised embankments against floods, with capital borrowed from the townspeople, who shared the harvests and paid all the land-tax.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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The Divine Comedy, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity. Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.

Paradiso is the third and final part of The Divine Comedy, Dante's epic poem describing man's progress from hell to salvation. In it, the author progresses through nine concentric spheres of heaven. Corresponding with medieval astronomy, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn deal with the four cardinal virtues Prudence, Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance. The remaining two spheres are the fixed stars and the Primum Mobile, containing the purely virtuous and the angels, followed by the Empyrean, or God itself, continuing the 9+1 theme that runs throughout the poem. The Paradiso is more theological in nature than the Inferno and the Purgatorio, features encounters with several great saints, and finishes with the author's soul becoming aligned with God's love.

Here are, among laments of pain and anger, the "people who lived without glory or infamy", mixed with angels who did not rebel against God, but not out of loyalty, but to avoid the consequences of taking sides in the fight Between good and bad. Heaven rejects them because they did nothing good and hell also, because they did nothing wrong. Their torment is that no one remembers them, they have no hope of dying and they have nothing to do in their poor life, scorned both by justice and by compassion. Dante is condemning here, in particular, his compatriots who, unlike him, avoided taking sides in the political conflicts of their time, putting their well-being before the good of their city.Hell is a huge conical valley and is divided into nine levels or circles, each deeper and narrower than the last. To get there, you have to cross the Aqueronte river, and the souls do it in Charon's boat.