A.N. Wilson

A divine guide to Dante

A review of Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity, by Prue Shaw. This companion to the life and work of the Italian genius will make you blink in wonder

Portrait of Dante by Domenico di Michelino [the bridgeman art library] 
issue 28 June 2014

Reading Dante is an experience of a lifetime. You never come to the end of it. But,  like Dante himself, at large in the frightening wood, you need a companion for the journey, and it is difficult to imagine one more enlightening than Prue Shaw.

The Emeritus Reader in Italian at the University of London, she has been lighting up the genius of Dante for us all her professional life, especially his politics. But this book is just as accessible to a general reader as it would be a source of wonder and envy to scholars. It is mainly concerned with the Comedy, but it expounds much of Dante’s other work. On page after page, it makes us — if we are first-time readers — blink in wonder, or — if we are old hands who thought we knew Dante — feel as though we are understanding him for the first time.

She quotes Seamus Heaney: ‘Poetry is language in orbit… it runs on its own energy circuit.’

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