There are two main things that I really enjoy about Dante’s writing. I enjoy his superb imagery and his excellent structure.
Imagery
There are so many examples of Dante’s imagery in the text. He paints such vivid pictures with his words that the reader can imagine hell and all the horrors he describes very easily. There are so many places in the story that Dante shows his skill with words, I thought I would give you a couple of examples that I thought were striking…
· The beginning of the reading for this week paints the picture of the view from the edge of hell’s sixth circle.
“Up on the topmost rim of a deep-cut bank
Formed by a circle of massive, fissured rock
We stood above a pen more cruel. The stink
Thrown up from the abyss had grown so thick
Its excess drove us to shelter in the space
Behind a great tomb’s lid. It bore a plaque
Inscribed: ‘I hold Pope Anastasius
Drawn by Photinus from the proper path.’”
· When Dante and Virgil have descended into ring two of the seventh circle of hell, and they are approaching the wood of suicides.
“…we moved forward into woods unmarked
By any path. The leaves not green, earth-hued;
The boughs not smooth, knotted, and crooked-forked;
No fruit, but poisoned thorns. Of the wild beasts
Near Cecina and Corneto, that hate fields worked
By men with plough and harrow, none infests
Thickets that are as rough or dense as this
Here are the repellent Harpies make their nests,
Who drove the Trojans from Strophades
With dire announcements of the coming woe.
They have broad wings, and a human neck and face,
Clawed feet, and swollen, feathered bellies; they caw
Their lamentations in the eerie trees.”
Structure
The structure in the story makes it easier to follow the timeline of the story, and what is actually going on. It is usually difficult for me to follow the progression of stories that are written such a long time ago, but in Dante’s Inferno the structure of the story lends to the easier reading of the story and the understandability.
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