(no subject)

[darchildre]

Good things about today:

- I slept much better last night so today I am just normal-for-summer tired instead of so exhausted that I feel sick. It is an improvement.

- Due to a shift change, I narrowly avoided interacting with my least favorite patron and did not have to speak to him at all.

- I have been neglecting Dante for the past few days but went back to my audiobook on my dinner break tonight and have reached the suicide forest. The suicide forest is such a good, weird image - it's dreadful but I'm weirdly fond of it.

Comments

[bladespark]

One of these days I really should read Dante. It's on a long list of "I know what's in it because I hang in those circles, but never actually seen/read/listened." Along with things like Dr. Who and about half the Marvel canon.

[darchildre]

I mean, I am a fan, but I can really only recommend it if you a) really like weird Christian mythology fanfic or b) are easily amused by the petty grudges/crushes of dorky 13th century Italian dudes, because that is essentially the entire poem.

[bladespark]

Mythology, YES, all the YES. Easily amused in general also yes, so probably. :D

[darchildre]

Then, by all means, you should try it. Dante (and, y'know, Milton) is a huge influence on the way we think about the geography of Hell, and his conception of Purgatory and Heaven is also really interesting, iirc. (I haven't gotten to those in this reread and it's been a while since I first read them.) Plus, his version of Hell has this whole weird melding of Christian and Greco-Roman, so you get weird things like a group of centaurs who just kinda work in Hell but aren't demons and you're left to reconcile that yourself, which is fun.

Also, there are so many people in Hell that Dante is, like, personally angry at and I love that very much.

I like the Hollander translation, for preference, but the Musa one is also quite good. (By this I mean that I found them enjoyable to read. I do not speak Italian and thus cannot speak to the accuracy of the translation.)

[bladespark]

<3 That is a good place to start. Not knowing what translations are good is part of why I haven't dived in by now, tbh.