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. One of the most poignant utterances in the ‘Paradiso’ section of the Divine Comedy is the prophecy of an ancestor regarding the poet’s long period of exile. ‘You will learn how wretched it is to go up and down other people’s staircases, and how tough and salty their bread tastes.’ In view of this, not the least among the poem’s delights is how often it manages to raise a smile. Dante’s laughter may be sardonic, but its phosphorescent gleam plays around even his most tragic episodes. Behind the whole complex achievement we feel a triumphant joy, resilient under the hard knocks.
As James Burge’s Dante’s Invention points out, everything began so promisingly for this sprig of medieval Florence’s lesser nobility.
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