In these straitened times it looks as if a great many more hours of most people’s days will have to be spent waiting in queues.
In these straitened times it looks as if a great many more hours of most people’s days will have to be spent waiting in queues. The perfect companion for such a penitential exercise is the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Should you be able to read Italian, get hold of the pocket version known as the Dante Minuscolo Hoepliano, originally issued in 1904 by the enterprising Milanese publisher Ulrico Hoepli, with excellent notes by Professor Raffaello Fornaciari of Florence University and now in its umpteenth printing. The complete text, together with a biography of the poet and some professorial wisdom cencerning the ‘senso allegoric-morale del Poema’, comes in at just under 600 pages and offers a snugly fitting antidote to the gloom and fretfulness induced by underground platforms, hospital reception areas and airport lounges.
Mooching about occupied much of Dante’s time in the course of a generally unsatisfying existence.
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