Try this on for a Holy Week discipline: Arrive at your parish at 9 p.m. Maundy Thursday and stay there until 10 a.m. Good Friday. Fill those hours with 30-minute segments of silence, music, silence, minimal light ”” and listening to a live reading of Dante’s Inferno.
St. Philip’s in the Hills Church in Tucson, Ariz., has done this for three years running, and the program grows in popularity each year, says the Rev. Greg Foraker, a transitional deacon and assistant to the rector.
This year the service involved 59 volunteers and drew 150 people. People come and go during the overnight service.
“Some people do come and stay the entire night,” Foraker said. “Some stay for two or three hours.”
They read the Inferno, but not the Purgatorio or the Paradiso? Sadly typical … several of my (college) students have read the first; virtually none of them have read the second or the third. In fact, when I mention that those who have read the Inferno have only read one-third of the entire poem, my students frequently say that they thought the Inferno was all there was.
I wonder what the rationale is for omitting certain cantos. Time constraints, I imagine. They don’t do Canto 4 (the righteous pagans), Canto 9 (the heretics), Canto 11 (some explication of what’s coming up), Cantos 19 & 20 (simony and sorcery), and Canto 27 (fraudulent speech).
I should add that it sounds like a cool way to spend the evening. But then, I reread the Comedy every couple of years. It’s always moving.
Anglicanum — what’s your preferred translation? I’ve only read it through in the Dorothy Sayers version, which I liked; but I don’t know how it’s considered to compare to other translations.
#1 — I’m just guessing but they probably don’t read the other sections because Purgatory isn’t an Anglican doctrine and the timing (Maundy Thursday) would be premature to ponder Paradiso. Religiously, we’re in the thick of the Passion narratives at that time.
I think this is an awesome idea! Wonder if my parish would be up for it? 🙂
I actually loved Paradiso the best of the three.
#3 As you may know, Sayers only completed a portion of “her” translation before her death; I think it was Barbara Reynolds who completed it. I’ve found it to be one of the more challenging translations to get through — it seems deliberately archaising in places, and I don’t think that’s true to Dante’s Italian.
I’d be interested to hear which translations others prefer. Myself, I use the Singleton translations (in the Bollingen eds., w. their excellent notes). But I keep returning to the first translations I ever read of the Divine Comedy, those of Ciardi and the Wicksteed-Okey-Carlyle one (both these are available on i-tunes!) — the former for its clarity and the latter for its availability.
A challenge involved with a live reading is that people unfamiliar with the text are unlikely to get the numerous allusions — unless you’re quite familiar with the Inferno, you might need a scorecard.
But what a great idea.
Ross: I love Robert Durling’s translation. I have several versions, including Sayers’, but Durling’s is the one I’ve been returning to recently. I’ve even considered learning renaissance Italian so I can read it in the original … but it seemed easier to buy Singleton’s annotated edition, so I did that instead. :+)