It was 700 years ago, many scholars believe\u201d\u201din the 12th year of Dante\u2019s exile from Florence\u201d\u201dthat the Inferno first saw the light of day. Thirteen fourteen: the year has a sprightly sound, hinting at upcoming sequels, and the Italian l\u2019anno mille trecento quattordici has just the right number of syllables (11) to form the first line of a Dantean tercet. I imagine a second year following and a third year rhyming until, year by year, carried along by Dante\u2019s ingenious interlocking terza rima, we are brought to the present moment, duemila quattordici, still marveling at a poem that from link to link makes paradise rhyme with hell.<\/p>\n
But does paradise rhyme with hell? Setting aside the clich\u00c3\u00a9 about the Inferno being more interesting than the Paradiso, any serious reader will find a deep unity of theme running throughout the hundred-canto trilogy, from Dante\u2019s promise \u201cto treat of the good that I found there\u201d\u009d (Inferno 1:8) to the final canto, which T. S. Eliot deemed \u201cthe highest point that poetry has ever reached or ever can reach.\u201d\u009d Eliot has yet to be proven wrong; the poem deserves its canonical status on a shelf below the Bible and above the ranks of merely literary classics. To borrow a word from Dante, the Divine Comedy, if we are willing to read it whole, imparadises the mind.<\/p>\n
Though the poem has a deep unity, the tradition of its interpretation does not; and to read the Divine Comedy in English\u201d\u201dideally with the Italian close at hand\u201d\u201dis to step into a stream roiled by rival literary and religious movements.<\/p>\n