The Divine Comedy
What is there to say about one of the most analyzed and commented upon pieces of writing of all time? I'm no scholar so I undertook this epic with a companion piece that guided me through some of the trickier bits. I certainly would've been oblivious to much of the historical context and internal connections had it not been for the companion guide, but I think the most important function of the companion guide was to give me a sense for just how much detail and structure was put into this work. A cathedral looks impressive from a kilometer away, but if you get up close you can see the detail of all the carvings and all the stained glass. The companion piece was like a little plaque that explained the meaning of a few of the carvings and some of the stained glass windows, the meaning of those particular carvings aren't as important as knowing to look up and see how much effort and how much story has been crammed into every square inch in the whole building. The companion guide invited me to look very closely and see that the structure was much more intricate than I would've noticed from afar.
The structure of the Comedy is really astounding. The three sections have threads that tie them together at particular points, the same canto in each might mention familial obligation or political orientation, and in this we can see the sections as reflections of each other. In the description of the trinity, the three circles that intertwine and are at the same time one circle is a metaphorical description of the poem itself, as earlier in the poem art is described as being a reflection of the divine. Even the very finely granular structure of the poem is impressive, having a rhyming structure that ties each triplet to the next for fifteen thousand lines of poetry. The poem taken as a whole is like listening to a canon by Bach, mathematically perfect symmetries and reiterations of a theme layered together to make a complete piece.
The Comedy is still a relevant and wondrous work to this day. The narrative structure of a pilgrim seeking his own salvation while meeting people along the way and being regaled by their stories is an almost perfect structure to deliver numerous parables about various moral failings to the reader. If Dante wants the reader to reflect on corruption, tribalism or authority, he has but to put a new character in the pilgrim's path who will beg to explain his moral failings in those regards. In the Purgatorio, Dante and Virgil meet Statius who read Virgil's poetry and was inspired by it. He tells Virgil that even the author of a work of art doesn't know the value and the meaning it will give readers in future generations. I don't know if that is prophetic or if Dante had some self awareness that his work would take on new meaning for readers in the following centuries, meaning that Dante couldn't ever have foreseen.
The Divine Comedy isn't light reading, it isn't easy, and isn't like any other work. Reading it is like climbing a Himalayan mountain to find a guru who will bestow upon you some ancient wisdom, but after all the work of climbing the only thing you find is a Rorschach ink blot. It's a lot of work to get through it, but there's enough in it that you may find out something about yourself along the way.