12/09/2025
EXISTENTIALIST SOCIETY - Melbourne, Australia - Online via Zoom.
"Dante's Dare and Clive James' Flair". Saturday 4th October 2025 at 2pm to 6pm. AEST. GMT+10.
Richard Volpato will present the topic and lead the discussion.
A realist reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy:
In 1320, Dante’s dare was to fuse, in a new way, the Hellenic search for Truth with the Judaic search for Destiny - so as to release the Judaic-Hellenic heritage of that time from the grip of dogmatic policing by the Church and also the secular self-indulgences of petty city-state politics. His poem aimed to be prophetic – a Gospel!
Dante wrote sets of pages (canti) in serial fashion for over 10 years, before finally being printed and bound volume a century later. In so far as those earlier unbound pages were eagerly circulated and meticulously copied or memorised, the binding of the poem's words came from the heart of readers, rather than the stitching of publishers (printing did not exist then).
The Divine Comedy today offers ways to sense where people are living - within a Hell, a Heaven, or trying to release the grip of Hell through Purgatory. The poem is not about an ‘after-life’ to our life - but a projection of a vast array of how to live (a para-life of worthy destinies - we too easily dismiss as unimaginable!).
Clive James’ translation re-animates Dante’s Italian poem to again discombobulate the reader into feeling the lure and grip of vices (in Hell) - to thus become inoculated to their pull; revive the social resonances and support to counter vices (Purgatory) that then enable us to hear (and heed) the richness of traditions of virtues (Paradise). His translation works because he has captured the verve of the poem, absorbed 'footnotes' that clutter translations into the body of the text and given it the 'pace' and 'punch' that comes across in the original Florentine language.
This talk will outline the structure and poetic cunning of this massive, overwhelming poem that has cascaded across languages and historical epochs. It will also point out how to re-render the poem into a modern secular idiom.
A good introduction to Clive James' translation is David B. Hart “Dante De-cluttered” First Things, Nov. 2013. (Inspired by this translation, Hart ventured into a similarly provocative translation of the Gospels)
All viewpoints welcome. Enquiries: [email protected]
Existentialist Society: http://www.existentialistmelbourne.org/
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ZOOM Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89428603351?pwd=M2RS0QtH7u2CaapkutAMyOPF8qOYNf.1
Meeting ID: 894 2860 3351 - - Passcode: 582804
**The Existentialist Society** is for those who question whether life has a meaning and a purpose. And for those who despairingly ponder whether one can live without self-deception or without hedonistic escapism. Yet who, despite the anguish of life's futility and meaninglessness, still seek purpose
