The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Hooray! I’m done with it.
OK, maybe it deserves something better than that.
Hell is inventive. Purgatory is boring. And Heaven is just weird. I wouldn’t live in that heaven for anything. All three places suck, actually.
But never mind the real estate. How was the poetry? Well, when I could understand it, it was OK. My old Modern Library edition had a nice summary at the start of each Canto (chapter) and masses of footnotes throughout. I read the sumamries as it was the only way to tell what Dante was going on about, but I didn’t read most of the footnotes.
What they never tell you about The Divine Comedy is that it’s more a stab at Dante’s enemies than anything. Most of the people you meet suffering in hell, languishing in purgatory, or dancing around as beams of light in heaven are from recent (to Dante) Italian history. This was his way of making sure his real life enemies would “get theirs.” Whoever he considered bad is used as a bad example. The few people he considered good are used as good examples. Occasionally a figure from deeper history (a Saint or a particularly wicked ruler) makes an appearances as well.
There’s tons of references to ancient mythology and you need a fair understanding of how people back-when thought that astronomy worked. In other words, you can’t tell the players without a score card. The Divine Comedy isn’t so much a work of poetry or a religious discussion as it is one big in-your-face at everyone who never thought Dante was a genius. But I guess he had the last laugh.