I’ve been thinking about hell a lot lately (and not just because it would be warmer there than it is here in Minnesota). In part, it’s because I have been working my way through Dante’s Inferno for the past few weeks.

Normally, I choose books to read based on friend recommendations, intriguing jacket descriptions, stellar reviews I might have read–even, on occasion, to vet them before I allow my children to read them (for example, the entire Twilight series, which I finished over the holidays, and which may explain to puzzled friends and colleagues why I am now reading Dante.  Ahhh, we understand now.)

I’m the first to admit it: my literary background has some gaps in it. Placing out of college English seemed like a good thing when I was a senior in high school, but as time passes, I’m finding that I missed out on a lot of really good books. So I make it a point to regularly pick up ones that I missed, and this time, it happened to be Dante.

It’s a hit-or-miss endeavor, truly. Sometimes, I pick up a classic, and I am thunderstruck by it, swept away, enchanted. Sometimes, I pick one up and I feel as though I’d rather be having my fingernails ripped out by the roots than read another page. And then there’s Dante.  Where does he fit?

I wasn’t sure how I would fare with this, given that, number one, it’s written in verse; number two, it’s an English translation, and as a polyglot, I have a firm conviction that  it’s nearly impossible to capture the original essence of any literary work through a translated version of it; and three, when I told my book club  “I want to read Dante’s Inferno as our next selection,”  I was met with stunned silence and blank stares.

But, in spite of that, I plunged into hell, and so far, it’s been surprisingly tolerable. It helps that I’m reading a very old copy that belonged to my mother, and which still bears her college notes and doodles throughout. It also helps that each Canto is preceded by a mini-synopsis and followed by relevant historical and cultural notes. I’m not sure if I would have kept going without them, but I’m glad I’m doing it–I somehow feel like doing this is good for my brain, if not exactly good for the nightmares it conjures up when I fall asleep reading it.

I am currently in the Eight Circle of hell (not to be confused with the software class I’ll be attending later today), and this passage contains some pretty gruesome stuff that I bet the writers of Saw might even have found too gory to use. The surprising thing is that there was a stanza in Canto XXVII that actually made me laugh out loud, causing my husband, I’m sure, to wonder if I’d crossed over to the Dark Side. (Just between you and me, that happened a long time ago.)

“Later, when I was dead, St. Francis came

to claim my soul, but one of the Black Angels

said: ‘Leave him. Do not wrong me. This one’s name

went into my book the moment he resolved

to give false counsel…’

Miserable me! with what contrition

I shuddered when he lifted me, saying: ‘Perhaps

you hadn’t heard that I was a logician.'”

What a riot that guy was! A logician!

?

Not laughing?

Okay…maybe I have crossed over, but if you really want to have some fun with Dante, you could try the second thing that’s been making me laugh my way through Hell: figuring out which of Hell’s Circles to place different people in–now that’s a parlor game I can get behind…