On Books (Part Four)

I've decided that this semester shall be devoted to reading the Classics—Homer, Virgil, Aeschylus, Dante, Plato, etc.

It started out pretty well, I thought, with a dive into the Divine Comedy. But less than halfway through Inferno, I got horribly, sickeningly bored. To put it mildly, I find Dante's religious misconceptions very depressing. Usually something like that isn't enough to keep me from reading just to experience the foreignness of thought and world-view. I like to compare and contrast my own outlook with those of other people, particularly as I read. There was something about it, though. I don't feel comfortable with the consignation of all his enemies to the inner circles of hell; even less do I feel comfortable with the eternal torment of unbaptized babies.

I admit, I gave up. I gave up in favor of Virgil, and I'm glad I did. I've just finished Book I of the Aeneid, and I love it. It's a slightly sad fact that I don't remember if I've read it before or not. But even if I did, it was in my History of Civilization, Humanities class, which covered everything from the beginning up until the 1500s, so there was so much material that whatever we did read was skimmed, discussed in a cursory way in class, then conveniently forgotten. I should remember, but I don't. Oh, well.

Perhaps when I finish with Virgil and some of the others, I'll find a translation of Dante that has kept the verse and still sounds decent. The one I was reading was prose, which I mistakenly thought a good thing at the time—I figured there's no way to successfully imitate the terza rima in English, so why attempt a verse translation at all? Well, any verses must be better than the prose I waded through 26 plodding pages of.

This doesn't exactly bring me back to the original reason I started this post, but I'll have to get to it sooner or later. I titled them "On Books" in imitation of Michel de Montaigne, whom I love. His essay "On Books" was what made me a fan of ancient literature in the first place. I can't wait to read more of his stuff soon.