u/HahaFebruary1

I've recently finished the Divine Comedy a few days ago, and even without my biases, I still think that it is one of, if not the greatest piece of literature ever written by human hand. Some may object, of course, but this is purely my own opinions and conclusions after reading the work.

The Divine Comedy is also an incredibly dense work as Dante makes a multitude references across things from his life, to Greek Mythology, elements of Catholicism and Christianity, other literary works, etc. therefore it's going to be quite difficult to understand and comprehend even with a good translation. In my eyes, it's basically impossible to understand the work without a footnotes section that you can follow and when you're reading it for the first time. It's a work that demands rereads, as I've concluded.

When talking about the Divine Comedy, it's important to talk about the individual parts that it's composed of. Those individual parts are, namely: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Inferno is definitely the most well known part, and that's for good reason. Inferno is the first part of the Divine Comedy and it contains the 9 layers of Hell, and each of those layers are comprised of sinners that are experiencing some form of torture they're currently subject to, and their punishments are detailed excellently by Dante that it makes your imagination runs absolutely wild. It's wild, visceral, and unforgiving. A key part of the Inferno for me is the layer of Violence, Fraud, and Treachery as it houses a lot of my favourite imagery of the entire work, especially Suicide Forest in the second part of the layer of Violence. With that being said, reading only the Inferno would be a bit of a disservice to the work, so I highly implore you to read both Purgatorio and Paradiso as well if you want to truly get the full experience. This is a journey, after all.

Speaking of which, Purgatorio. Purgatorio is definitely my most favorite part of the Divine Comedy. It details the journey of Dante and Vergil on their ascent to Mount Purgatory and into the heavenly paradise. Along the way, they meet various sinners that are in the Mountain for a chance of redemption of their sinful lives. Although their redemption may come in a few centuries, at the very least they can rest easy knowing that this is not eternal, like in Hell, and their process of redemption would come faster the more someone on Earth prays for them. I like Purgatorio the most because it is the most human part of the Divine Comedy. In Inferno it talks about the worst of evils, and Paradiso the best of goodness, Purgatorio is definitely more nuanced in terms of morality.

Additionally, Purgatorio also contains my most favorite cantos, namely Cantos 16, 17, 21, 27, and 31. These Cantos are so "human" to me, it's beautiful, and it would be a bit of a disservice to talk about them here, so I highly suggest you reading it for yourself, especially Canto 16.

Paradiso is the final part of the Divine Comedy, and it's the most unheard part of the work. Where Inferno is the most popular one, and Purgatorio is relatively talked about, I have never really seen people talk about Paradiso, and I kind of get it, in a sense, because it's by far the most difficult part of the Divine Comedy to grasp and comprehend. It's so difficult in fact, that Dante himself warns his readers that Paradiso would be unlike any other thing that they've ever read before, and take that warning into consideration because Paradiso talks a lot about intellectual concepts it just fried my head the first time I read it. Dante talks a lot about astronomy, philosophy, and other fields of sciences as he ascends through the heavenly bodies, and the concepts he discusses are so incredibly archaic and complex, it's going to take a while to get used to them. My main example of this would be the geocentric model of the Solar System that Dante uses a reference to describe the different heavenly bodies. Also, I'm heavily warning y'all about the Sun section of Paradiso, you'll figure it out when you get there.

To conclude, I think that every one should at least read the Divine Comedy once in their lives as it's a beautiful story of penance, even though it was written in 1300s Italy. The amount of things that the Divine Comedy influenced, it's insane, it's genuinely insane, it's not even funny.

Also, when you're reading the work, I highly suggest you to use a good translation like Allen Mandelbaum's version of the Divine Comedy because it's a lot more faithful and understandable compared to Longfellow's translation, which is what I originally read the work in. Although Mandelbaum's translation sacrifices a lot of the poetic rhyme of the original, I still highly recommend it because translating a work of another language to English would always come with a compromise. Terza Rima just doesn't work as well in English because it's not designed for English, it's meant for Italian.

So, final rating? 10/10. My favourite piece of literature ever. And also, I do apologize for the amateurish rating, I'm a lurker in this sub and it's my first time posting.