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Jun. 23rd, 2011 08:38 pmGot my Dante books today! I have now read the first four cantos of the Inferno.
I'd forgotten how much I actually do like reading Dante. Especially now that I can do it for fun and don't have to write papers. The notes in the Hollander editions are fun too, both for my personal nostalgia value (there are things I can still hear my professor saying "I'm not Aeneas! I'm not Paul!") and because Mr Hollander's notes are occasionally dryly funny. There's a great one about Charon and how the commentaries that were written right after Dante published kept trying to find some sort of allegorical meaning for the character. Mr Hollander's note is all "Guys, maybe he's just Charon, y'know?" Only academic.
I also very much enjoyed the notes for the first canto, about how, no, nobody really agrees on what the three animals are supposed to represent but we have a lot of different theories. And no, we don't really know what the greyhound is supposed to be either. (Cangrande?) Just go with it, okay?
I am stupidly excited about reading these.
I'd forgotten how much I actually do like reading Dante. Especially now that I can do it for fun and don't have to write papers. The notes in the Hollander editions are fun too, both for my personal nostalgia value (there are things I can still hear my professor saying "I'm not Aeneas! I'm not Paul!") and because Mr Hollander's notes are occasionally dryly funny. There's a great one about Charon and how the commentaries that were written right after Dante published kept trying to find some sort of allegorical meaning for the character. Mr Hollander's note is all "Guys, maybe he's just Charon, y'know?" Only academic.
I also very much enjoyed the notes for the first canto, about how, no, nobody really agrees on what the three animals are supposed to represent but we have a lot of different theories. And no, we don't really know what the greyhound is supposed to be either. (Cangrande?) Just go with it, okay?
I am stupidly excited about reading these.
