-Patricio, why is the Divine Comedy a classic?
–All questions that have to do with nuclear elements of the human condition are eternal, and the classics, in one way or another, seek to answer those things. And evidently they achieve it, because generations pass and we continue reading them.
Author: Dante Alighieri. Original title: Commedia. Genre: narrative poem. Original language: Tuscan Italian. Years of composition: between 1308 and 1321, until shortly before Dante’s death. First printing: 1472. Structure: three parts: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Number of songs: 100 in total: 33 for each part, plus an initial introductory one in Hell. It usually has between 500 and 800 pages in Spanish editions, but can greatly exceed 1,900 pages in critical, bilingual and annotated editions.
The Divine Comedy It is one of the greatest and most transcendent texts in the history of humanity. Reading it for the first time, having it in front of our eyes, implies decision. Some tenacity. Patricio Di Nuccigraduated in Letters and Theology, explains in his essay “The uselessness of art and God”, some tips for affront with pleasure this situation.
Tips for reading the Divine Comedy for the first time
Di Nucci comments in conversation with Clarín that, for the passive reader, the Divine Comedy is a text with «particularities», therefore it is advisable to «take some elements into consideration» before reading it.
The first: do not try to do a straight reading. It can end up “overwhelming” mainly because it handles “a language code and a cultural context” that are not close to ours. A «huge» number of characters from the time appear on stage who may seem completely unknown to many.
The second: not read it by song, but by thematic unit. What does this mean? This is how the specialist explains it: «At first a canto-a thematic unit coincide; later they do not: many times Dante begins with the development of a sin and ends it in the middle of the next canto or two cantos later, or several cantos are used in the development of that sin. Then, the thematic unit is begin and end narrative development of that circumstance. It allows us to have a unifying element that does not confuse us when moving on to another sin or leaving it halfway.”
The third: have an edition with explanatory notessince they provide two or three fundamental references, such as the identity and role of the characters and the political circumstances that Dante experienced in the process of narrating the poem.
A classic that raises fundamental questions
In a rough summary, the Divine Comedy narrates Dante’s journey through the realms of the afterlife, Hell, Purgatory and Paradisein search of the understanding of the soul and its own destiny. It touches on universal themes such as guilt, regret or love. And from there arise the questions that specialists like the interviewee consider “fundamentals” for humanity.
«There are certain questions in human beings that are always the same. Man changes in his customs and ways of living. However, there are certain questions that I could call fundamental anthropological questions. Those that a human being asks, formally or not, in the course of life: What is the meaning of my life? What is the meaning of my decisions? What is the meaning of following this career?, etc.», explains Di Nucci when talking about literary classics.
And he continues: «We can feel how there are texts that, beyond the fact that all these processes have occurred, continue to exist as a frequent reading or as a reading attended by men of later generations. That is, if we, after 2,500, 3,000 years, continue reading those texts, it means that These texts meet a series of conditions that are not modified by the circumstances that do modify the cultural environment in which a man’s life develops.»
-Why is a classic like the Divine Comedy important today?
–Because it is still a response to certain conditions that man needs to give himself from the moment he is situated in life, because time passes, but man remains the same. Dante gives answers to that human condition, apart from that aesthetic particularity that the poem of the Divine Comedy has, which is an element in no way supplementary, but which as a classic can come in second place with respect to the original meaning of the answers that the work has to the human being of always.
-Can a nueva Divine Comedy?
–I think not. There cannot be a version of another nature of the Divine Comedy. Although, obviously, there were great writers after her, right?
