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Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

Dante's words on the gates to hell; almost always translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".

However, Clive James (yes, that Clive James), translated it much better as:

"Forget your hopes. They are what brought you here."

An utterly unforgettable bloke to all those who met him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_James

It's an interesting translation but it's adding a layer that most certainly wasn't there.

The original almost literally translates to the most common English translation:

Lasciate = leave behind

ogne = every

speranza = hope

voi = you

ch' = who

intrate = enter

Ch’ could be chi or che, who or what. It is at least an interesting insight if Dante intended the ambiguity.
Italian doesn't work that way, "voi chi" is a syntax error. The elided letter cannot be anything but an "e".
It should be noted that Clive James was translating the text into quatrain poetry (with an ABAB rhyming scheme). He was not going for a literal translation. You can search for the line here in context: https://www.clivejames.com/hell---cantos-1-3.html
The clive james one is a mistranslation, no matter how much nicer it sounds. In italian, the usual translation is correct.
It would be an interesting reference to Pandora's Box: is hope a counterbalance to all troubles and misfortunes, or the greatest of them all?
Clive James is wrong. The Italian is very straightforward, and the traditional translation is right.
>> Forget your hopes. They are what brought you here.

Very funny. That's deep, dark humor. I see why it's called a comedy.

Apart from the fact that it's a mistranslation as others said, it should be pointed out that the medieval comedy is just a generic term for play or story, and not necessarily funny. The term defines the intellectual level of the language as "midrange", as opposed to the more complex tragedy or the simple elegy; and it roughly indicates a positive ending, again as opposed to tragedy. We have letters in which Dante himself explains this. Humour should not be expected, although there is some satire to be found in the Inferno (which is only one third of the Comedy).
If you're interested in Divine Comedy here's one I cannot recommend enough:

Walking with Dante by Mark Scarbrough: https://walkingwithdante.captivate.fm

It's slow and immensely comprehensive, but also very accessible and so much fun! His love for the subject and enthusiasm are contagious.

Sharing this because thanks to HN I learned about some of my other favourite podcasts: Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur and The History of Rome by Marc Duncan. I finished THoR twice and I listen to Isaac's podcast every week. I keep coming back to Dante.

    ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne:
    se non che la mia mente fu percossa
    da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.
    A l'alta fantasia qui mancò possa
    ma già volgeva il mio disio e 'l velle
    sì come rota ch'igualmente è mossa,
    l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.
----

    And my own wings were far too weak for that.
    But then my mind was struck by light that flashed
    and, with this light, received what it had asked.
    Here force failed my high fantasy 
    but my desire and will were moved already —
    like a wheel revolving uniformly — by
    the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
I traded wicker.com for a 1544 edition of La Comedia.
Ok I need to hear the full version of this story.
I loved the Dead Milkmen. I bought the wicker.com domain for reasons. The guy who does the thing wanted this to be the way his wife wanted it to be
This introduced more questions than answers when Dead Milkmen entered the scene.
Have been going through The Divine Comedy this year as a part of https://100daysofdante.com, cannot recommend enough!
An often overlooked fact of the Comedy, is that it actually makes some novel theological arguments and sometimes puts itself in contrast withe Church. This goes agains the common knowledge that in the "Dark Ages" the Church was tyrannical and oppressive. In fact, the Church of the Middle Ages had an extraordinary tolerance and interest towards discussions, criticism, and contradictions. Counter-intuitively, the later Church of a more "enlightened" age began turning into the intolerant regime we all know about
>Counter-intuitively,

or intuitively, it is when you start to lose influence and power that you become more crazy and aggressive about maintaining what you have, like the truism that really tough guys don't act all macho, a truly dominant church does not mind the small theological disputations.

... Dante was exiled from the Pope and, if captured, the order was to burn him at the stake

    Alighieri Dante è condannato per baratteria, frode, falsità, dolo, malizia, inique pratiche estortive, proventi illeciti, pederastia, e lo si condanna a 5000 fiorini di multa, interdizione perpetua dai pubblici uffici, esilio perpetuo (in contumacia), e se lo si prende, al rogo, così che muoia
    
    (Libro del chiodo - Archivio di Stato di Firenze - 10 marzo 1302)
This was a political exile because his side lost and he was politically active. Very common everywhere and doesn't refute my post
Everything except pederasty seems political, that one seems iffy
Why did you reply to this singular issue where you have a defensible position in theory but not the longer one which absolutely nuked your position from orbit?
"Let’s accept every excuse we’re given and accept the Church never burned anybody just for researching science. Scientists got in trouble for controversial views on non-scientific subjects like prophecies or the Trinity, or for political missteps. [...]

Did Giordano Bruno die for his astronomical discoveries or his atheism? False dichotomy: you can’t have a mind that questions the stars but never thinks to question the Bible."

- Kolmogorov Complicity And The Parable Of Lightning | Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-...)

This sentence is coming from podestà Cante de' Gabrielli da Gubbio, i.e. the equivalent of the city's government, not from the Pope or a religious authority.
As an academic student of heresy in the Middle Ages, this isn't a defensible position.

The Church of the Middle Ages did not have a tolerance towards discussion, criticism, and contradictions. They had a narrow corridor of discussion that was considered acceptable (i.e. orthodoxy), and if anyone stepped out of line and refused to recant, it was declared a heresy and extirpated. Anyone that did not toe the line of Aristotle, Augustine, and Anselm, were declared heretical and either forced to recant, imprisoned, excommunicated, or executed.

To wit:

Elipandus of Toledo claimed that Jesus was the adoptive Son of God in his human nature. He was condemned at multiple councils, including the Council of Frankfurt (794), with proponents forced to recant or lose their positions.

The Paulicians were a dualist and Gnostic sect originating in Armenia that rejected the material world and Catholic sacraments. They were persecuted by the Byzantine Empire and anathematized by the pre-Schism Church.

Berengarius of Tours (ca. 999–1088) denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, arguing for a symbolic interpretation. He also was condemned at several councils, including the Synod of Rome (1050), and forced to recant under threat of excommunication.

The Cathars also rejected the material world, sacraments, and clerical hierarchy. They were brutally suppressed in the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), followed by the establishment of the Medieval Inquisition.

Arnold of Brescia (ca. 1090–1155) criticized the wealth and corruption of the Church, calling for clerical poverty. He was executed by hanging and burning after condemnation by the Church.

Peter Abelard was accused of heresy for applying logic to theology, as well as arguing against Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement with the arguably more defensible and sensical moral influence theory. He was condemned at the Council of Soissons (1121) and forced to burn his works.

Then there are the Waldensians. A movement founded by Peter Waldo emphasizing poverty, lay preaching, and direct access to the Bible. His followers were declared heretical at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and persecuted throughout Europe.

And even Dante was exiled from Florence at the machinations of the Papacy.

And these are only the most famous cases. There are countless others not notable enough, nor successful enough to be recorded in any great detail.

One example is that of the heretics found in Goslar in what is now modern Germany in 1051:

>The heretics "were finally condemned when one of the bishops, more zealous in his presentation of the case than mindful of the dignity of his rank, presented them with a live chicken and ordered them to wring its neck. They refused to kill the bird, and were deemed beyond hope of redemption. Ignoring the arguments and threats of the assembly, they refused to recant and were hanged upon a gibbet."

>The execution of these heretics, as near as can be determined by modern scholars, was ordered because it was felt that "their attitude implied a dualist-type belief in the transmigration of souls through the animal kingdom" and suggested that they were Manichaeans. The events at Goslar — and this group was not alone among persecuted Christian groups in the eleventh century C.E. in its refusal to kill animals — are often treated by scholars as an important step toward the twelfth century full-blown assault on heresy by the Church linked to the newly proclaimed death penalty for heresy.

The entire point of the Church, throughout its history, is not to have discussions, criticisms, and contradictions. That is what orthodoxy is. Diversity of thought in any fundamental dimension in the Deposit of Faith is schismatic and antithetical to the goals of One, Holy, and Apostolic Church.

The attitude that you hold illustrates what Noam Chomsky pointed out in 1998:

>"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

The Catholic Church throughout its history has exemplified this paternal shepherding attitude. Sure, you can explore Orthodoxy and embellish it all you want, but stray outside of what has been set in stone and refuse to "disagree and commit" and you're branded an outcast and your ability to participate vanishes. Good (nulla salus extra ecclesiam) Catholics will say that this is a Good Thing, which is their right, but please, own it as it's a feature, not a bug, and don't try to cloak the history of the Church.

The Middle Ages is a period roughly spanning a millennia. When considering this, the amount of cases where the Church really got their hands dirty is minuscule wrt what happened in the later centuries. Probing this problem is also made difficult by the fact that the Church held both a religious and temporal power, meaning that some things might have been done because of political reasons, muddying the waters. If some guy disagrees with the Church, fine. But if he incites a rebellion against the state? That's more of a civil matter to be dealt with according to the custom of the times (i.e. death). 4 out of 7 examples you brought did not end in death and some others had a political component to them that makes them tricky to analyze.

The point is that the Middle Ages were way more tolerant and open to discussiim than what we're led to believe, and that the vast majority of the truly bad stuff that the Church did actually happened later.

I don't fundamentally disagree on the overall strategy of the Catholic Church throughout the millennia, but it's also true that its position in the Middle Ages cannot be reduced as a "permanent inquisition". In fact, as you know the Inquisition itself didn't even exist before the XII century. I think the point that we all need to keep in mind is that the Church was fundamentally a temporal power back then, and behaved accordingly to ensure its own survival.

After the end of the Western Roman Empire, the Catholic Church was fundamentally an administrative body tasked with ensuring the continuity and overall coherency of the European way of life. As such, it was culturally conservative and focused on self-preservation, but could also be quite progressive whenever it suited its aims. Theological arguments were fundamentally political arguments, so the acceptance of this or that interpretation was strictly linked to the political needs of this or that time.

In this context, "heretics" were fought mercilessly whenever they became politically dangerous (or worse), but otherwise left alone or even engaged - many of the order-founding saints were "heretics" in all but name, barely paying lip service in terms of obedience to the pope. In modern terms, it was not unlike the ruthless treatment of Black Panthers in the context of a society otherwise focused on accepting increased equality for black people. If a big and strong Germanic tribe showed up with some quirky beliefs, they would be promptly "retconned" into Catholic doctrine if it ensured those tribes would pay their taxes to the Church. If a particular Pope needed to shore up support in this or that matter, he would accept novel interpretations. And so on and so forth - after all, any institution that can survive a thousand years is unlikely to always be consistent on almost anything.

It is true that it was also a brutal organization - they were brutal times, after all. The conquest of Italy by the Longobards enshrined in law the acceptance of revenge killings and bloody family feuds; the ruling classes were defined by their professional mastery of immediate violence; and Europe was the theatre of continuous warfare. Most Church personnel were drafted from the upper classes, bringing with them bellicose beliefs and a muscular approach to the exercise of power. It is somewhat unrealistic to expect modern attitudes to inclusivity from such times. Even the Ottoman Empire, at the time a beacon of tolerance, equality, and social mobility, ended up banning the dangerous printing press.

And yet, even in such difficult times, the Church ensured a level of cultural life survived. They established what were, in context, academic research bodies in a number of areas. Theological debate was not dead and fixed, but actually extremely alive and strong - most modern intellectuals would not survive a month in a medieval context, where the mastery of logic and recall was everything. Yes, you had to play by certain rules, but the skill necessary to do so while arguing against practices observed for centuries was massive.

It's a bit like contemporary China, where scientific and social progress is accepted and encouraged, academic prowess is prized, but you can't make any argument against the primacy of the Party or you get "disappeared". You can still bring about change (the various PCC heads have modified the orthodoxy many times), but you have to do it without threatening to burn down the house.

History is all about complexity, and reducing the role of the Catholic Church to Hollywood stereotypes is ungenerous.

> an academic student of heresy

And I’m a talking porcupine. Your anti-religious screed is pretentious nonsense.

For the math geeks out there:

Dante's Paradise, canto XXXIII, lines 133–135, contain the verse:

As the geometer his mind applies To square the circle, nor for all his wit Finds the right formula, howe'er he tries

Qual è ’l geométra che tutto s’affige per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, pensando, quel principio ond’elli indige,

For anyone who understands Italian, I would recommend Alessandro Barbero's lecture on Dante - which covers his personality and life as well as the historical context. The Comedy can feel like a ponderous, unwieldy work, particularly as it progresses out of the "fun" of Inferno; keeping in mind the man who wrote it can help understanding and, in a way, cutting down some of the pretentiousness.
Le cose ti fier conte quando noi fermerem li nostri passi su la trista riviera d'Acheronte.
Limbus Company
Dante did make the 1st circle sound like a far more interesting destination than any unending praise-singing up above.
Well that's what happens when you exclude every interesting historical person from Paradise.

Eternity in heaven with a bunch of joyless saints and martyrs just sounds like an additional circle of hell.

Reminds me of this post:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qZJBighPrnv9bSqTZ/31-laws-of...

>Beware of packing your Utopia with things you think people should do that aren't actually fun. Again, consider Christian Heaven: singing hymns doesn't sound like loads of endless fun, but you're supposed to enjoy praying, so no one can point this out.

> Eternity in heaven with a bunch of joyless saints and martyrs just sounds like an additional circle of hell.

I don't know if they're in heaven (i.e., are saints), but James Earl Jones, Chris Farley, Bob Newhart, Bing Crosby, Ricardo Montalbán, James Cagney, Gregory Peck, Alec Guinness, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock were all Catholic, so there's some chance you could meet up with them.

That is a straw man heaven. Its supposed to be indescribable and the hymn singing a metaphor for an aspect of it.
Reminds me of the good place show.
If you are comparing Inferno to Paradiso, then this is a poor summary of it.
to those of us who are still stuck in purgatorio, the circle with all the virtuous doesn't sound like a bad spot.
Indeed, and without saying it outright. Show, don't tell.
> Dante is clearly writing in the expectation that his intended audience of learned men will know these references and understand their relevance,

We just replaced the Bible and Homeric texts with Star Wars and marvel. Everybody at the time would know the biblical allusions even if they were illiterate.

> many conditions that nowadays are routinely cured or prevented would have been inevitably fatal; not all of the souls in the Comedy who died in their thirties and forties

Are they confusing average lifespan for typical lifespan? Isn’t this contradicted by the later paragraph in the same article?

I am not sure that "Dante is clearly writing in the expectation that his audience will know these references" as claimed in the article. He put a lot of learning into the work, and maybe he had in mind an ideal reader who could follow the most obscure of references, and appreciate all the allegorical meanings, but it's noticeable that the narrator of the poem is always asking naïve questions and getting rebuked for his ignorance by Virgil and Beatrice. Readers who don't understand everything in the poem can thus feel that they are in a similar position to the narrator.

And as soon as the poem was published, people started writing explanations for the difficult bits. Dante's son Jacopo wrote a commentary in 1322, Graziolo Bambaglioli wrote another in 1324, and by the end of the 14th century there were at least fifteen. This shows that the poem quickly found an audience that was not familiar with all the references.

> This shows that the poem quickly found an audience that was not familiar with all the references.

It think it's a bit of both. Dante moved in high circles, particularly after he was exiled; and as an intellectual at court, he was effectively tasked with being an entertainer to his masters (which he didn't like, but had to accept to survive). In that context, creating work that requires active engagement from the audience, basically quizzing them around historical and literary knowledge, would have been of great value - and of great fun. Imagine people chatting around a fireplace or a banquet table, and Dante reciting a small verse - challenging someone in the audience (particularly other intellectuals he'd be sharing favours with) to go "I know! He's talking about such and such!". And when it came to the then-contemporary popes and rulers, everyone would laugh at the satirical tones, like you would with a stand-up comedian delivering a joke about "the orange man".

Comic book folks might be familiar with "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" by Alan Moore. That follows a similar approach; most people will recognize enough of the main characters to follow the story, but very few will get them all - which is why third-party commentaries and companions exploring them, have been pretty popular.

Good info. But is the difficulty detecting the references? Or interpreting the meaning and metaphor?
I don't see that error being made. What makes you think that? Tons of people died in their 30s and 40s from curable illnesses before modern medicine. Life expectancy of people that reached adulthood was still under 50 during that time period.
I will sound awfully smug, but I tend to understand most of the biblical and homeric references, only some of the star wars ones (those referring to the original trilogy) and absolutely none of those about marvel films of which I haven't seen any. It means I can go enjoy some Dante :)