A spiritual and poetic synthesis of the Middle Ages, The Divine Comedy is composed of one hundred cantos distributed in a prologue and three cantigas (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise), of thirty-three cantos each. The foundation of this proportion is the number 3, and the canto that serves as prologue to the poem forms with the others the number 100, multiple of 10 and symbol of perfection. The generic title of the poem was originally Commedia, in relation to its content, which in the beginning, sad, ends in a happy ending. 'Divina' is the epithet added later and which was consecrated, as the title of the work, from the edition of Giolito (Venice, 1555). A problem to be solved is that of the date of composition of the poem, but the most probable opinion is that which places its beginning in 1307 and its completion in 1321.
The purpose of this entry is to make a brief summary and to give my opinion of what I found in this book.
The story is told by the protagonist himself, Dante, who finds himself in a dark forest and about to be devoured by three beasts. But at that moment he is found by Virgil who takes him out of that situation and tells him that they must make a long journey through hell, then go through purgatory and finally reach paradise where his beloved Beatrice will be waiting for him, which as you can imagine, Beatrice is dead.
So this is how we begin to enter into this story as graphic as it is dark.
It is impressive how each of the levels of hell are described.
On the door of Hell there is an inscription that reads:
"It is for me that you go to the city of weeping, it is for me that you go to eternal pain and the place where the damned race suffers, I was created by divine power, supreme wisdom and the first love, and there was nothing that existed before me, abandon hope if you enter here."
It is composed of 9 levels
1_ Limbo
2_ Lust
3_ Gluttony
4_ Greed and Prodigality
5_ Anger and Sloth
6_ Heresy
7_Violence
8_ Fraud
9_ Betrayal
The deeper they go, the worse the sins become and therefore the punishment that corresponds to them as well... And our protagonists meet relatives, friends, acquaintances and even famous people such as "Plato or Aristotle".
Passing all these, they enter Purgatory, which also has levels but these are 7, and the fundamental difference with Hell, is that here the souls pay for their sin but with the hope of being forgiven or purified and thus be able to enter Paradise.
The last section is Paradise itself, where Virgil must leave it and Dante meets Jesus, St. Thomas and Beatrice (Dante's lover).
The most curious of all, is that when Dante is at the end of the road, in the most sacred and pure of the universe, a blinding light covers his sight and at that moment he wakes up in the forest. The story ends there.
This story was a little heavy for me, it is difficult to describe it and try to comment on it through this entry, being an epic poem you must pay close attention and process well what you are reading, however I liked it and in the future I will read it again to take all those details that I'm sure I missed.
So I give you a small overview of what is this classic work of Dante Alighieri.
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