On Being Lost: Dante's Inferno

A lecture on the opening of Dante's Inferno — Canto I and Canto II, the ground the entire Commedia is built on. We begin in the dark wood, the condition of a life lived without attention rather than the result of any single failure. From there we follow Dante's attempt to climb toward the light unaided, the three beasts that turn him back, and the appearance of Virgil, a guide who can walk him through Hell and Purgatory but not into Heaven. At the centre of it all is fear: Dante's hesitation before the journey even begins, his conviction that he is not worthy of it, set against the chain of intercession, from Beatrice down through Lucia to Virgil, that answers his fear before he has done anything to earn it. Along the way I compare two translations six centuries apart, Robin Kirkpatrick's modern Penguin edition and James Romans Sibbald's Victorian rhymed translation, and look at what each preserves and loses of the original. A lecture for anyone who has always meant to read Dante and never quite known where to start, and for anyone who already loves him and wants to go deeper. Runtime: 9 min – The Hallett Review — thehallettreview.com