I am so happy that you are still doing videos. I don’t know why you’re not more popular and have more subscribers because you’re absolutely amazing. Please never stop.
I’ve always resonated with the sense of dejection and exile that pervades the Commedia. To quote Brunetto Latini’s advice to him in Mandelbaum’s translation: “Among the sour sorbs, the sweet fig is not meant to bear its fruit… Be sure to cleanse yourself of their foul ways.” He consoles himself, and the reader, with the words of his mentor, simultaneously bidding for literary eternity later in the canto. All together, it puts Ovid’s Metamorphoses into different perspective, as he wrote it before his own exile. And surely the commedia would not have been the gnarled and melancholy poem that it is, at least for me, if Dante had become Podesta of Florence. It makes me wish we had another epic poem from Ovid, one written in exile, and likewise with Dante. With his sense of humor, a pre-exile epic seems likely to bear more similarity to Ariosto and Apuleius, which would’ve been rollicking fun from Dante. Though I’m likely just projecting all this; you can see everything in Dante afterall.
I am so happy that you are still doing videos. I don’t know why you’re not more popular and have more subscribers because you’re absolutely amazing. Please never stop.
Great topic. I really enjoyed the video and your enthusiasm. Thanks. Jim
I’ve always resonated with the sense of dejection and exile that pervades the Commedia.
To quote Brunetto Latini’s advice to him in Mandelbaum’s translation: “Among the sour sorbs, the sweet fig is not meant to bear its fruit… Be sure to cleanse yourself of their foul ways.” He consoles himself, and the reader, with the words of his mentor, simultaneously bidding for literary eternity later in the canto.
All together, it puts Ovid’s Metamorphoses into different perspective, as he wrote it before his own exile. And surely the commedia would not have been the gnarled and melancholy poem that it is, at least for me, if Dante had become Podesta of Florence.
It makes me wish we had another epic poem from Ovid, one written in exile, and likewise with Dante. With his sense of humor, a pre-exile epic seems likely to bear more similarity to Ariosto and Apuleius, which would’ve been rollicking fun from Dante. Though I’m likely just projecting all this; you can see everything in Dante afterall.