The Inferno by Dante Aligheri

 

This not just one of the best 100 books, it is one of the Very Best. I wish I knew Italian, so that I could read it in the language of Dante.

 

I was impressed by the book, even though I had tried reading it before…some 30 years before. There are books which one can’t appreciate when one is young. In my case, I find that I am too old to like some masterpieces.

 

There is one major handicap that I have in reading this chef d’oeuvre I am an atheist, in the newer sense of the word. I have just been reading that in the old sense, atheist meant believing in the wrong God, whereas today it has a different meaning.

My mind wonders to Mitt Romney – I know that many people do not think Mormons are Christians and I do find some of their beliefs rather strange: God created man in its own image…literally. In other words God is just like a man….really??

 

In Dante’s novel, Romney would be found in the first part, towards the last cantos.

Obviously, many of the assertions in The Inferno would not be accepted, were they written nowadays. They would be politically unacceptable: people are sent to hell, because of their sexual orientation or different (from the Christian) religious beliefs.

 

There are plenty of snakes in The Inferno. I found that intriguing, first of all because I like snakes and second of all because I doubt that there is a place where snakes do all these horrible things.

 

Then there is Dante himself, who dislikes one character so much that he, says he would like the snakes from now on, since they prevent this dead soul from talking any more nonsense.

 

The issue of religion is very vast and it wouldn’t be the place to write much about it here. I believe that many of the negative characters who suffer in The Inferno did in fact enjoy fortune, privileges and power, without the side effect of their “sins”.

In the society of today, plenty of people use the religion card just to take advantage in this real and only life that we have. Millions of believers get fooled because they believe they should take anything God sends their way and if they suffer in this life, they will be compensated in the afterlife.

They won’t.

Dante’s Inferno is a wonderful book, with an Imaginary plot, taking place in a fictional world.

Hell, Purgatory and Heaven do not exist.

All we have is this life, with the good and Bad that we get in it.

Comentarii

Trimiteți un comentariu

Postări populare de pe acest blog

In The Fade aka Auf Dem Nichts, written by Hark Bohm and Fatih Akin

  In The Fade aka Auf Dem Nichts, written by Hark Bohm and Fatih Akin In The Fade has won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, although in this cinephile's opinion, Una Mujer Fantastica- which has won the Oscar in the same category- Nelyubov or The Square would have been better choices. Having said that, Auf Dem Nichts is a very good, significant, remarkable feature, that attracts attention to violence against minorities, in this case the Kurdish community in Germany. It is therefore not one sided, we do not have only Muslim lunatics killing innocent "infidels", but also some extreme Europeans murdering the other side. The problem is that, unacceptable, horrifying and vile as these acts are, it appears that the overwhelming majority of atrocities are committed by zealots acting in the name of Islam- radical and unrepresentative as they are for this supposedly peaceful faith, although there are passages in its holy book that seem to insist on a violent jihad and ultimat...
Citiți mai multe

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice written by Larry Tucker and Paul Mazursky, directed by the latter is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list, and Variety has published recently its Top 100 Comedies – or else, I have learned about this lately – where this feature has a top spot, as far as I remember it is higher that the 50th spot – speaking of these pages, you have access to my own more than five thousand notes on films from these and other compilations, together with another five thousand reviews on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites on my blog and You Tube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html you may even subscribe, if you wish

Imagine
  Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice written by Larry Tucker and Paul Mazursky, directed by the latter is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list, and Variety has published recently its Top 100 Comedies – or else, I have learned about this lately – where this feature has a top spot, as far as I remember it is higher that the 50 th spot – speaking of these pages, you have access to my own more than five thousand notes on films from these and other compilations, together with another five thousand reviews on magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other sites on my blog and You Tube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html you may even subscribe, if you wish     9 out of 10   First a correction: I wrote above that this comedy is within the first fifty of Variety’s Top 100, I just saw that it is in fact ranked 90 th , I could have edited the above, but maybe this way I will re...
Citiți mai multe