Sample Chapter from Italian Pride: 101 Reasons to be Proud You're Italian
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52. Dante (Cont.)
The poetry of The Divine Comedy is unparalleled in world literature. Translators have particular difficulty with the verse form-a highly disciplined terza rima, or interlocking rhymed three-line stanzas. Some translators abandon any attempt to imitate the form of the poem-others merely approximate it. From the opening lines of the Inferno (the journey through Hell) the reader finds himself connected to and identifying with this narrator, who has lost his way in life and is searching for the right path:
Midway on our life's journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost.Though Dante's Hell is a literal place, the writing is so brilliant that it speaks to us in a modern voice. Hell becomes a state of mind, and Dante's echoing phrase tells us exactly what it feels like:
Abandon all hope, you who enter here.
Or
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