"The ideal way of reading The Divine Comedy would be to start at the first line and go straight through to the end, surrendering to the vigour of the story-telling and the swift movement of the verse, and not bothering about any historical allusions or theological explanations which do not occur in the text itself." [...]
Longfellow Poems 5 & 6
Here are the last two of Longfellow's six sonnets about Dante. Remember, Longfellow wasn't Catholic, he was a Unitarian. Then read Sonnet V right to its lovely end. Sonnet VI might be pointing to Italian history of the 1800's but I don't know for sure. I do know that there is lots of commentary about [...]
Earth’s evil twin?
I read an article the other day about Venus where it was called Earth's evil twin. In the same article runaway global warming was mentioned as the reason for the incredibly horrible, windy, acidic, hot surface of the planet. Now look at Venus. It has no magnetic field. It has no oceans. It has no [...]
Longfellow: Dante sonnets 3 & 4
Longfellow was not Catholic. I don't know how he felt about Catholicism but his translation of Dante, and these sonnets, amazing meditations on confession, are evidence of a sympathy at least. He was friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne whose daughter Rose became a Catholic nun. She is currently listed as a Servant of God. He also [...]
City states or cities
Cities in Medieval times were strange creatures. They were often governed from afar by a king or emperor and as long as his representative was satisfied no-one else was fully able to intervene in their affairs. If a noble family was in charge of a city then it functioned slightly differently. This immensely complicated topic [...]
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