Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Dante can be understood only within the context of Italian thought, and Faust would be unthinkable if divorced from its German background; but both are part of our common cultural heritage.
Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.
Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.
'The Dante Club' was one of America's most important book clubs, as their Wednesday night meetings ultimately led to our country's first exposure to Dante's poetry on a wide scale.
We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? - Is he in hell? That damned, elusive Pimpernel?
All the plots of hell and commotions on earth have not so much as shaken God's hand to spoil one letter or line he has been drawing.
There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.
He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil.
To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.
The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul.