Clayton Collier-Cartaino
13 January 2011
Reading Response I

	In truth, the question of why the Inferno is so highly regarded and considered important has baffled me since long before I read it, from secondhand accounts. I had hoped that reading it myself might shed some light upon this question, and perhaps it has. It is certainly an artfully written work—or, at least if the translation can be taken as an indicator of the quality of the original, which I will assume it can be. Aside from mere beauty, there are a hundred things in it which can be interpreted as having deeper meaning, which potentially allows it to appeal to a wide audience. However, the knowledge required to understand many of them is not common in the average reader of this time period, nor can I imagine that it has been for some time, so I cannot imagine that to be the only reason.
	Although our scholarship and general knowledge is admittedly rather limited today, even in the more learned people such as those in our class, this is hardly a new problem. Another possibility that suggests itself is that it has become important to know this text because, over time, many other texts of importance have referenced it, and perhaps it has simply become a fixture of being learned to know it? In my readings of Voltaire, this seemed to be his opinion in that he said that Dante is only still considered good because no one actually reads him. That is an opinion I agree with to some degree, in truth.
	That is to say, despite the artistic styles that are appealing, the work, taken by itself, is of little interest. It amounts to a rather petty and personal view of who should be damned, and not a particularly well-informed one. The presence of Caesar in the ranks of virtuous nonbelievers alone is proof of that; having just finished a class on the Roman Republic, I am aware that he was not only quite violent in his Gallic Wars and lustful in his liaisons with the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra, but in his life beyond that. Yet Dante places him in virtue, whilst damning Ulysses, more commonly known as Odysseus, whose journey, though far from entirely flawless, is far more noble than suggested if one should read the Odyssey, is condemned to suffer, and described in a very inaccurate fashion—albeit one that sounds rather Roman. It is unsurprising to find it in a student of Virgil, given that, but the point remains that the account is entirely influenced by personal and regional biases, though it is undeniably Italian, and in and of itself I cannot see why it would be of interest to anyone for content, given that anyone could compile a similar list if historical accuracy is no object. Thus, I can only imagine that its value comes from one of the aforementioned reasons, or some other which I am not able to fathom.