The Divine Comedy [2 Bd.e]. Inferno: Text / Commentary - Translated, with a commentary, by Charles S. Singleton (Bollingen Series LXXX).

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - Charles S. Singleton: A final remark on what I would term a reader�s respect for the unfolding form of this great structure, and on the way in which I have sought to observe that respect. Take the case of the three beasts, the wolf, the lion, the leopard, which come to beset the wayfarer in the very first canto. We glimpse the possible significance of this famous trio, but glimpse it only dimly in the rapid narrative at this point; but retrospectively, as the poem develops, we see less dimly what the full meaning of the three beasts can be. Now, shall the commentator attempt to tell the reader at this point, in Canto I, all that he is finally to understand about the beasts when he has finished his thoughtful reading of the whole poem? Surely that would be a sad mistake in exegesis, would even defeat the proper reading of this (or many another) poetic structure. The experience of poetry which this Comedy holds potentially, for every reader who will make the effort, is precisely the experience of a gradual revelation of meaning, an unveiling (which happens to be the literal meaning of revelatio). Emerging meanings build on to what has gone before, and when this happens, then it is the commentator�s duty to note it, but not before. Dante built his structure to contain its �mystery,� to be big with mystery, until such time, such times within the poem, as it may be delivered of those meanings. It is the proper business of a commentator to respect that principle and to observe those times of delivery. -- Many a problem in understanding awaits reader and commentator down the long unfolding line of this poem, hard problems indeed, in allegory, in symbolism, in patterns of meaning broad in nature and visible only from great pivotal points in this journey to God. Solutions to such problems will be attempted only in a supplementary volume which may well bear the title Essays and Excursuses. Meanwhile the reader will have to bear with patience an ever-growing burden of unresolved meanings until he himself has won to the vantage ground of a fuller experience of the whole and to those vistas in retrospect through which a full, or a fuller, understanding of the total meaning may be had. ISBN 9780691018966