Teaser: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

by Donna Huber

I think this year I'm going to try to read (or listen to) books that I never have but maybe should have. I have a list of books that I was suppose to read but didn't get around to (I think we were assigned something like 50 books my senior year). The first book up wasn't one I was assigned to read, but there are often references to it in life. I've been thinking about it since reading Sylvain Reynard's Gabriel's Inferno trilogy. When I saw The Divine Comedy available in audio at my digital library I thought that I would give it a try.

Have you read it?

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I dound me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover'd there.
How first I enter'd it I scarce ca say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd
The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

Buy The Divine Comedy at Amazon

Girl Who Reads is an Amazon advertising affiliate; a small commission is earned when purchases are made at Amazon using any Amazon links on this site. Thank you for supporting Girl Who Reads.