Author: William Torrey Harris

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781330272671

Excerpt from The Spiritual Sense of Dante's Divina Commedia To this essay on the spiritual significance of the "Divina Cornmedia" I prefix a few words, interesting only to the few who study works of literature for spiritual insight. Such insight is of very slow growth, and though I cannot be permitted to claim anything more than a very feeble approach to it in the reflections which I bring forward here, yet I know that the theme dignifies the writer, and that the circumstances of a struggle to attain a high object are worthy of mention, even if the success of the struggle is not great. My first reading in Dante began as early as 1858, and continued at intervals for four years, by which time I had completed only the "Inferno," studying it superficially in the original and using Carlyle's translation as a sort of dictionary and general guide to its meaning - perhaps better described in college slang as a "pony" or "crib." I read also the translations of Wright and Cary of the "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" at this time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.