"Why Every Person in the World Should Read Dante's Commedia" Professor Bill Cook The Breyer Center for Overseas Studies in Florence Bing Overseas Studies Program Stanford University
Not only one of the best lectures on Dante, One of the best downloads on You Tube. So refreshing to hear someone that actually knows what he’s talking about.
Ive been fascinated with The Divine Comedy since I was 13 and came upon a book in the library of Gustav Dore's illustrations. But I've come to believe it's 'lessons' are only relevant for deeply believing Catholics, and those who believe in eternal fire and punishments. Virgil himself would not have believed in much of this concept of afterlife and hellish retributions.
Dante chosen Virgilio just because he came from a previous culture, because that's the meaning of humanism and renaissance. The medieval christian culture is fundamental to understand, likewise many other aspects. But the lesson is universal, because it's more about human sentiments and philosophy. For example he mentioned Mohamed, and he was 'forced' to put it in the inferno part, but Dante still recognizes his value. And, among the others, there's also a scientific layer of interpretation, because Dante used references without even knowing. The journey is obviously spiritual, but it's not a simple religious path, it's the story of our life, from the afterlife perspective. When they say it's universal, trust that: in the end of the Comedy, there's love as the god, not god as the love. Even if we don't care about religion, we can relate, because Dante's critics is toward everything, even religious hypocrisy.
great lecture and insight. I have been reading " Comedia" with a friend, whose great research adds alot to all the characters we encountered in Inferno, Purgatorio, and now in Paradiso. We have about 20 cantos left to finish the great poem. I reccomend reading with a friend. Thank you professor Cook for a great lecture.
Ou, I bumped into this while beeing half way through the Inferno.. and I find this tremendously helpful already. Thank you sire, I hope you are very well.
Excellent talk and a great insight of Dante’s work. I came here after reading the English translation of a Spanish book by Miguel Asin - “Asín Palacios, Islam and the "Divine Comedy", translated and abridged by Harold Sunderland (London: John Murray, 1926); reprint 1968, Frank Cass, London.”
This was a very nice lecture that shed light over a really challenging piece of literature that I thought was going to be easy to read because apparently everyone had read Inferno 😂nonetheless, I’m glad I read it & I’m still trying to make sense of it in my life. Congrats to Professor Cook for a wonderfully explained piece of mind on this!! 👏🏼💯
I think Beatrice only works if she is basically his anima, an abstract idea of the perfect projected onto the projector screen of a person he only knew in part, someone he doesn't know in 360, flaws and all. She had to be someone barely human, someone who exists mainly in his mind.
not many people these days believe in a literal hell afterlife. The Comedy can still surely be appreciated today even in secular societies. However, I think, only, if we are open-minded and also if we accept the deep psychological/spiritual challenges we all face.
In fact it seems many people today are very close to the original apostles, if you read the second chapter of Acts they were all speaking in tongues. People have been doing that for the last 130 years. They weren't doing that as much before.
Dante is visionary and real; soul, city, cosmos; the spiritual battle. He knew Christianity is substantially true through hard experience. If there is a spiritual world, there is a hell, but it is probably not the brutal Roman Imperial vision of Dante, the wretched dungeon and torture. Its more like a chaos of Bosch or older depictions, demonic fools in all their folly running amock in torment. Remember, Inferno is cheerful and merciful compared to the auspices of authority and living punishment in his day. Brutality considered unimaginable in Europe nowadays was simply how criminals, traitors, enemies were tortured and punished then.
23:00.....with no ‘proper’ educational schooling, I understand, directions degrees dimensions for/from within all are given to receive, show-shine free will to believe , through fear will grieve to accept and relieve.. eventually event invent a new u through duality in unity -you will see, all life living harmoniously naturally ... eventually invent unity intentionally collectively universally ascending consciously 💗🙏🏼💫☯️🍀
10:00 - im glad this professor, Bill Cook, bashed Dante: Inferno. Horrible game, but its what got me interested in buying all 3 novels in 1 book from Barnes N Noble.
@Gatto chissà da dove ti viene questa idea. Probabilmente dai ricordi del liceo. Ma come hai appreso tu chi fossero il Conte Ugolino, Paolo e Francesca, Virgilio etc, lo possono apprendere tutti, indipendentemente dalla lingua. Le varie traduzioni non seguono la sublime rima poetica, certo, ma il potente immaginario rimane.
I don't know, you guys can call me crazy, but I'm so tired of these intellectuals providing so much context and so much explanations and attempts to relate the contents of a book to our personal lives, and talk in all these verbose terms about life, death, destiny, sin... in the end everything has a context and a lecture like all these can be made about anything, really. Probably in 500 years, if there are people still around, there will be guys conceptualizing the metaphysics of guys in the past going to burger king to eat fast food, and the outlook they had on life back then, how they had to fill with fat their lack of purpose, etc. That's what contemporary artists do to sell the shit they create, fill its emptiness with words and concepts that are really not there. I just got extremely disappointed by the Divine Comedy, probably I had too high expectations. I appreciate the way it's written, although it's unnecessarily long and repetitive in my opinion, just to convey a sense of legitimacy by insistence and repetition. It's probably the standards of the time it was written, but to me it's just a demonstration by Dante of his capacity to write metaphors all the time to the point it's unbearable and over the top. Like every other sentence has a metaphor longer than what the sentence could actually be said in regular language. Of course many of you will feel sorry for how uncultivated I am to not appreciate such literary beauty, etc. But I can't avoid thinking that this is just a trick by him to give credibility to what he says by covering in a beautiful envelope, behind which there is not much really. I think the great value of this work is the detailed depiction of these three realms, and how it has influenced our vision of them, since no one had taken the time and effort so far to describe them so thoroughly. And since at the time of writing religion was taken much more seriously by many more people than it is today, it was foreseeable that this work would have a great impact before writing it. That's where I think the real genius by Dante is, in knowing it was going to be a work to be studied for so many people forever, that he used it as a way to criticize and attack people from his time, presenting them as sinners, as well as presenting himself as such a pure being that was allowed to be taken to God's presence while he was still not dead. In this maneuver of propaganda he was self proclaiming himself as a kind of heavenly creature brought to earth, whose biggest sin is at some point to be too innocent to don't understand some intricacies of Heaven and Hell, as well as presenting his (I guess) enemies in life as the worst sinners (what a coincidence that half of Hell is filled with florentines he knew from his lifetime, although people from all eras and all places should be there). I think this was his master move, that thanks to his book he remains like a heavenly hero in the collective unconscious, more than like yet another poet from the ancient times, and his rivals as the worst and most worthless sinners in history. And there is nothing they could do about it, since the only proper reply would require them to write a similar book countering the comedy. Apparently some of the ones mentioned were already dead at the time of writing, some others were still alive. But as for the actual philosophical content in the book, or actual new knowledge, I would say there is nothing there. Just beautiful, creative, and obscure at times, metaphors to hide the lack of substance, and repeating the core concepts of Christianity with his personal touch. I found nice and interesting the brevity with which he describes God at the end of the book. But yeah, anyway, nice lecture. Ok, now you guys can start insulting me.
You missed a thing...he himself invented italian let's say in the "De vulgari eloquentia" you can really tell that he is researching for the best dialect in all italy and so on and on so he and Manzoni are the two people that "created italian" and they were not wrong. I want to give to you a little curiosity...Manzoni used instead of the "giovani" used today in italian he believed that the correct form will be "giovine" it's a staggering one error in all the "promessi sposi".
Hoping that after a year you may have discovered a more accessible, less verbose translation to read. Too many translators (and scholars) are distracted with their own voices. I recommend the Singleton translation in English. It is in plain language and does not attempt to rhyme. I notice from your RU-vid site that Spanish may be your heart's language - there are Spanish translations, but I can't recommend one over another. An audible version in Italian may suit you, as well. Best wishes.
If this video is meant to encapsulate the Divine Comedy's central themes then I have to say that it's not a particularly insightful book from a philosophical point of view. It feels a lot like a propaganda piece. The writing is dense and imaginative but I still find the reading process quite tedious. I definitely don't agree that "every person in the world" should read it.
The Comedy is a universal book, it entails every single piece of religious and philosophical theory available to the Dante's Contemporaries, Plus innovative(not just for the time) poetic and technical insights. Try to read it in the original language, I felt the same about Shakespeare in Italian, i found it repetitive, tedious and overall thematically mediocre, then I read it in English and my perspective changed.
@@giulianoilfilosofo7927 Actually a book that is influenced almost exclusively by Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman thought cannot possibly be "universal". The globe has multiple cultures and worldviews completely ignored by this book. I am sure the original Italian's beauty cannot be preserved in the English translation but the themes remain the same.
@@daesfacetus7184 Frankly, I believe You clearly haven't read it if you found only "judeo christian values in it", or at best you Did not understand it. Besides greco roman thought has influenced cultures from Central Europe to the muslim world and the Indian sub continent, where greek philosophy was translated and discussed for centuries, and the foundations of modernity and humanism lies in different interpretations of the Christian doctrine or even opposing ones, Since the current notion of modernity is a byproduct of Western global Hegemony, at least in cultural terms. Dante was also heavily influenced by the works of several muslim philosophers. I would also like to remind you that a book must not necessarily be written taking into account all global cultures and perspective to be universal. Love is a universal value, usually regarded as positive, friendship, loyalty, curiosity and hunger for discovery and understanding. Les Miserables, Dickens' works, War and Peace, Arab and Persian poetry, Chinese philosophy, everything can be universal Since we are all humans.
@Giuliano il Filosofo I don't know if any of this about Dante's influences is true. Even if it is, it doesn't still take all cultures and worldviews into account so you were wrong when you said that it contains all the religious and philosophical ideas at the time. You didn't clearly explain what you meant by the word "universal" in your original comment. If it means "containing universal values" then that's doesn't make the Divine Comedy special because the vast majority of books written by humanity contain universal values, just like the books you mentioned.
For English, the Singleton translation is very much more understandable than many others. The Commedia really is an insightful book, though understanding it requires work. Dante expected that his readers would know the Greek and Roman history and mythology he referenced - we often don't know it, and have to use whatever notes are available. Greed, violence, and betrayal are certainly familiar to us. Learning to overcome our own evil is also familiar. Best wishes.
