A Biography of Dante's "Divine Comedy"

I first read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in 1977. I read the translation by American poet and translator John Ciardi (I still have the book), who had undertaken the work from 1954 to 1970. He used Dante’s terza rimaform, an arrangement of tercets or three-line stanzas that use an interlocking rhyming scheme. Ciardi’s translation is considered defective today (who knew?), but it’s still widely read.  

The Divine Comedy has been translated into English alone scores of times since 1782. Some translators attempt the tera rima form; others choose blank verse, prose, quatrains, six-line stanzas, irregular rhyme, and just about every other imaginable form. The first complete American translation, one still read today, was by none other than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1867, who is credited with a kind of American renaissance of Dante that continues today. (Longfellow employed blank tercets, if you want to know.) In fact, more translations of The Divine Comedy exist in English than in any other language.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Behind Each Number, One Beloved Face – poem by Malcom Guite.

 

“Of Elizabeth Bishop” and “Tribute to Roethke” – poems by Julian Woodruff at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“One Art,” poem by Elizabeth Bishop – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“The Man with the Hoe,” poem by Edwin Markham – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“Van Gogh’s Ear” by Bernadette Murphy

Last fall, we attended the opening of the “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” exhibition at the National Gallery in London. It was the Gallery’s 200^th anniversary year, and the exhibition lived up to the pre-event publicity, and then some. The show included almost every painting Van Gogh (1853-1890) did while he was in the south of France from February 1888 to May 1890. The sheer size of the show was staggering, and it included many of Van Gogh’s most iconic works – the Sunflower series, The Yellow House, The Bedroom, The Starry Night, Irises, and so many more. 

On of the concierges at our hotel heard us waxing eloquent, and he suggested a book about Van Gogh’s ear, published in 2017. I wasn’t quite sold; a book devoted to the artist cutting off his ear? But my wife surprised me with it as a Christmas present.

 

It’s an incredible story that reads almost like a detective novel. 

 

Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story, written by Bernadette Murphy, covers the last two-and-a-half years of the artist’s life. It’s the period of his incredible productivity, the short but significant relationship with Paul Gauguin, his confinement at a nearby asylum, his return to his yellow house, his subsequent confinements amid his rapidly disintegrating mental state, and eventually his death in July of 1890. And it includes the story of his ear.

 

In fact, it was the ear that started Murphy on her Van Gogh quest. She was living not far from Arles, and she became interested in the story of Van Gogh reportedly cutting off his ear, or by the time she started her research, the story that had become cutting off just the lobe. 

 

Bernadette Murphy

The research she undertook was more than impressive; it was mind-blowing. She assembled a data base of people who were living in Van Gogh’s neighborhood in Arles at the time he lived there. She searched what medical records were available and census data. She traveled to Marseilles and Amsterdam. She followed every lead over the course of years. Eventually, she would find the answer to the question about the ear in library archives in California, of all places.

 

In the process, she discovered far more. She learned the identity of the “Rachel” with whom Van Gogh left the grisly remains wrapped in newspaper. She traced back the history of mental illness in his family. She learned what precisely happened “the night of the ear.” She discovered the errors and mistakes other biographers and art historians had made. Given that this was her first book, I can’t imagine the art critics establishment was particularly pleased. But she found answers to questions many had had in the past and had tried but failed to answer or answer incompletely. What’s clear is that her dogged determination and ability to research served her – and her readers – ultimately very well indeed.

 

Our concierge said the book might bring us to tears at points. Surprisingly, he was right. This artist, so misunderstood and often ridiculed during his life, became one of the greatest painters ever in his death. 

 

Related:

 

The National Gallery exhibition catalog, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, is available at Amazon and other booksellers.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

From Out-of-Print to Global Hit: The Surprising Resurgence of Michael McDowell’s Blackwater Novels – Julia Steiner at CrimeReads.

 

Tides – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Lost Boys: State of the Nation (Britain) – Centre for Social Justice.

 

3 Reasons Your Art Might Fail (and how to ensure it doesn’t) – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe? – Jeannette Cooperman at The Common Reader.

Be humble

After I Peter 5:5-7 

It's countercultural.

In a time and place

when we celebrate,

elevate, venerate

youth, dismissing

the aged as over

and done, they’ve

had their day,

confining them

in homes with

their own, safely

put away, out

of harm’s way,

out of our way, 

out of sight, it’s

countercultural

to say, to think,

to act like elders

not only matter

but that we should

also be subject

to them. But that’s

the command: be

subject to them.

 

Photograph by Joshua Hanks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

The Myth of the Easy Answer – Justin Poythress. 

 

Grow Deep: A Word to Young Men – Greg Morse at Desiring God.

 

March 7 - The Official Day of Rest: Constantine’s Powerful Sunday Mandate – Jason Clark at This Is the Day. 

 

Story of the Seasons: The Countryman’s Notebooks of Adrian Bell – Richard Hawking at Front Porch Republic.

Saturday Good Reads - March 8, 2025

Of the estimated 15.7 Jewish people in the world, some 7.2 million live in Israel and 6.3 million in the United States. In the U.S., the geography of the Jewish people is shifting. Increasingly, writes Joel Kotkin at Sapir, Jews are headed south, to places long considered to be bastions of Christianity. One reason: it’s a more welcoming, safer environment. 

We first visited the United Kingdom in 1983. We returned in 2012, the first of seven visits. And one thing we’ve clearly seen is that the country is changing, and fairly rapidly. And it’s not only the U.K. Ross Clark at The Spectator says that the Europe of Americans’ imaginations no longer exists.

 

Madeleine Rowley at The Free Press has more on the famous “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” story, in which an EPA official was filmed while he was laughing about how much movie was being shoved out the door before Administrations changed. A fund was included in the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce greenhouse gases while revitalizing communities that had been historically left behind. But the funds landed in very different places. Regardless of what you think of Elon Musk, this is worse than outrageous. 

 

More Good Reads

 

British Stuff

 

The last days of Eric Liddell – Bethel McGrew at The Critic Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

The Jefferson Bible – Michael Aubrecht at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Lincoln Goes to Hollywood – Tom Elmore at Emerging Civil War.

 

250 Years Ago: The Boston Massacre Oration: March 6, 1775 – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Life and Culture

 

“Ordo Amoris” and ending Burnout Culture – Dennis Uhlman at Front Porch Republic.

 

An Art Form Dies – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

The depletion of culture – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at The New Criterion.

 

Faith

 

The Fractals Declare the Glory of God – Spencer Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

“On the Incarnation” & the Fresh Breath of Style – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Realism and Resurrection – Seth Lewis.

 

On “Middle” Evangelicalism – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

 

“Virtues Gone Mad”: When Christian Ideals Mutate – Jonathan Threlfall. 

 

Poetry

 

How Goes a Soul – J.A. Cooper at An Unexpected Journal.

 

Lent with Van Gogh, Part 1 – Megan Willome at Poetry for Life.

 

Ashes – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles. 

 

Dalliance – Chris Wheeler at Rabbit Room Poetry.

"Grief," poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

News Media

 

Five Key Insights into Americans’ Views of the News Media – Megan Brenan and Lydia Saad at Gallup News.

 

TV Stars Who No Longer Shine – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Stravinsky: Suite Italienne – Anastasia Kobelinka & Luka Okros

 Painting: The Reader, oil on canvas by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). 

How to lead

After I Peter 5:1-4 

Shepherd the people given

you to lead; be watchmen,

not tyrants. Don’t lead

because you think you’re

forced to, but with the willing

spirit God has given you.

Leadership is not about

personal gain or enrichment,

a shameful thing. But with

an eager, serving spirit and

desire to serve, lead 

by example, by being what 

you want your flock to be.

Walk with your flock,

guide your flock, love

you flock, the chosen ones.

Do this, and the crown

of glory is yours.

 

Photograph by Biegun Wschodni via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

Good to Go! – Mark Daniels.

Genuflection – poem by Gilbert Luis R. Centina III at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

The Holy Art of the Edit – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

Your Son Got in Trouble at School: A Case Study in Tribalism – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

The Good News About Being a Sheep – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

10 Great Resources for Teaching the Civil War

I was drafting and researching what would become my historical novel Brookhaven, and I looked at the census records for Pike County, Mississippi. I’d been having trouble finding my ancestor Samuel Young listed anywhere in Confederate rosters. The only one clue I’d previously found was a listing for S.F. Young, who joined a Mississippi rifles unit late in the Civil War and was sent to Texas. And I thought the census record might have another name by which he was known.

I found the list of Youngs. And the family I’m looking for. There he – Samuel F. Young, age 13. My eye travels up the list to his father, Franklin. And the occupation listed was farmer. The same occupation was listed for Samuel’s two older brothers. 

Something was wrong. My father always insisted we came from a long line of shopkeepers, that the family had never owned slaves. Yet here they were, listed as farmers. I checked the census for 1870 and 1880 and found Samuel listed as – a farmer.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: The 1885 (first) edition of The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, published by Mark Twain's publishing firm.

Some Thursday Readings

The Unofficial Inking: Dorothy Sayers’ Influence in C.S. Lewis’s Imaginative Apologetics – Andrea Glover at An Unexpected Journal.

A Deep Longing: On embracing Romanticism – Andrew at The Saxon Cross.

Poet Laura: The Consequences of Cats – Sandra Fox Murphy at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Another Ash Wednesday – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“In the Wilderness,” poem by Robert Graves – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Some Wednesday Readings

I really didn’t think politicians were giving substantive speeches of ideas anymore, the kind with thesis statements, the marshaling of evidence, and a compelling call to action. Whether you’re a supporter or not, that’s what Vice President J.D. Vance has been doing. He gave two speeches in Europe that are still ricocheting back and forth across the ocean – one at the AI conference in Paris and one at the security conference in Munich. Weeks later, people are still talking about them. Christian Hacking at The Critic Magazine says Vance was right about free speech in Britain; Madeleine Kearns at The Free Press interviews the grandma arrested by Scotland’s speech police. N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval says Vance’s real message to Europe was give up the information war. And he’s continuing to speak; at a recent National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., he said that “foreign misadventures” have sometimes led to the eradication of historic Christian communities. 

Mad Monks and Alchemists – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

Murders for March – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

How Movie Theaters Got Their Start in America – Dave Roos at History.

Data and Social Media Effectiveness – Chris Martin at FYI.

Sewing Kit Save: Clement Evans – Phil Greenwalt at Emerging Civil War.

Civil War Era Themes in Mardi Gras Celebrations, 1880-1940 – Neil Chatelain at Emerging Civil War.

The American West – Writing Advice from John Steinbeck – William Groneman at Cowboy State Daily.

Photograph: John Steinbeck.

Relearning Civil War History to Write a Novel

I was born and grew up in New Orleans, a city saturated with French, Spanish, American, and Black American history and culture. Louisiana law wasn’t based on English common law but Napoleonic Code. Counties are called parishes. Mardi Gras was an official holiday.

The state was, and to some extent still is, three regions, each with a distinct accent. North Louisiana, where my father came from, resembled East Texas and Mississippi, including the southern accent. Southwest Louisiana is Cajun country and where my maternal grandfather was born and raised. And then there was New Orleans, with its own distinct accent that sounds vaguely Brooklynese. My mother and her family were all born there, and that’s where I lived with my two brothers.

If one subject tied and unified the state of Louisiana, it was history, and specifically Civil War history. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A publicity poster for the 1939 film "Gone with the Wind."

Some Tuesday Readings

Songs from the Kayak – poem by David Whyte.

Making & Unmaking Meaning: Interview with Wendy Wisner – Tweetspeak Poetry.

My Kite – poem by Mac Sumner at Story Warren.

“The Owl,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

That Bell in Your Hand – poem by Catherine Abbey Hodges at Every Day Poems.

"Out Walking" by John Leax

 

I’ve read Nightwatch, the young adult novel by John Leax (1943-2924), and I’ve read his collection of short essays on writing, Grace is Where I Live and Remembering Jesus: Sonnets and Songs, one of his poetry collections. And now I’ve figuratively walked with him through the woods and fields, called Remnant Acres, near where he lived in upstate New York.

Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World is a collection of essays first published as columns in the Wellsville (NY) Daily Reporter. It is also a collection of poems on the same natural theme, because Leax found that nature spoke of God and faith and sometimes that discovery could only be expressed in poetry.

The subjects of each essay and poem are simple – a dead squirrel, a heron, stones, salamanders, the kitchen garden (and protecting it against the birds and critters), fishing, watching the moon, and more. Yet in simplicity one often finds clarity and truth, and Leax finds it in abundance. What he finds moves him to praise and prayer.

A prayer for order

Father of all creatures,

whose dwelling extends beyond this world,

let no one trivialize your being.

Let your order prevail.

Let your intentions come to be

for creation and for yourself.

Give us, each day, no more than we need,

and forgive us when we take for ourselves

the well being of others,

as we forgive others who seek to take ours.

Lead us away from our dreams of power

that we might be whole,

satisfied in you.

John Leax

It’s not my imagination that in this poem I find echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament.

From 1968 to 2009, John Leax (1943-2024) was an English professor and poet-in-residence at Houghton College in New York. He was a poet, an essayist, and the author of one novel, Nightwatch. Leax’s poetry collections include “Reaching into Silence,” “The Task of Adam,” “Sonnets and Songs,” and “Country Labors.” His non-fiction writing and essay collections include “Grace Is Where I Live,” “In Season and Out,” “Standing Ground: A Personal Story of Faith and Environmentalism,” “120 Significant Things Men Should Know…but Never Ask About,” and “Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World.”

Out Walking is a quiet, thoughtful, faithful work, a guide to what the natural order can and should mean. It may be a slim volume (140 pages), but it is packed with insight and truth.

Related:

Grace Is Where I Live by John Leax.

Nightwatch by John Leax.

Some Monday Readings

Darker – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Bone Into Stone: On translating Ovid’s Metamorphosis – Jhumpa Lahiri at The Dial.

Not So Close: Two different looks at Henry David Thoreau – Ashley Barnes at Commonweal.

The Importance of Walking a Battlefield – Doug Crenshaw at Emerging Civil War.

The Inflection Point – Michael Oren at Clarity.

If you suffer

After I Peter 4:12-19 

If you suffer

for his name’s sake,

be unashamed,

be alert, be awake.

 

If suffering comes,

then glorify God;

trust your creator,

continue to do good.

 

Your behavior is spared

from judgment to come;

the godless will perish,

all, not only some.

 

Hold fast to your Lord,

stay strong in the word;

your suffering is short,

your cries have been heard.

 

Photograph by Abishek via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

Do ye the little things – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

Glorious, Obvious Difference: The Complementary Souls of Men and Women – David Mathis at Desiring God.

Following No Other Way – Nathan Beacom at Comment Magazine.

Own Your Faith – Jacob Crouch.

Stones and Fonts – Barb Drummond at Curious Histories.

Saturday Good Reads - March 1, 2025

Pew Research has issued its periodic study on religion in the United States, and it appears something is changing. The decline of Christianity appears to have leveled off, and the reason might be due to the growing interest by young men.  

The memo heard round the world: Jeff Bezos told the Washington Post staff this week that the opinion page would have two pillars – personal liberties and free markets. Reaction was swift. Some 75,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions; the journalism community was outraged. 

Add that to the upheaval going on in television news and commentary – in just the past week, Joy Reid lost her show on MSNBC, Lester Holt announced his retirement from NBC, and Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar learned their contracts on The View would not be renewed. The media landscape is fundamentally changing. 

 

As I was working on my novel Brookhaven, published in December, I accidentally rediscovered Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It wasn’t that he’d gone anywhere, but since the advent of modernism a century ago, his poetry hasn’t been held in the same regard it was in the 19^th century. What happened for me was to see the 2022 movie I Heard the Bellsand reread Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2020) by Nicholas Basbanes. And then a character in the story began to recite Longfellow. This week, at Poems Ancient and Modern, Sally Thomas looks at Longfellow’s poem “The Children’s Hour,” and I find myself becoming re-enchanted.

 

More Good Reads

 

Israel

 

The Life and Death of the Oldest Hostage in Gaza – Matti Friedman at The Free Press.

 

American Psychological Association Slammed for ‘Virulent’ Jew Hate – Sally Satel at The Free Press.

 

British Stuff

 

Cloud control – Abhishek Saha at The Critic Magazine.

 

In the Roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral – Spitalfields Life.

 

Ex-church of England head Carey among clergy facing possible punishment over abuse scandal – Muvija M at Reuters.

 

Faith

 

The Depth of J.I. Packer’s Legacy – John Piper at Desiring God.

 

Good to Go – Mark Daniels.

 

Dumb Church – Stephen McAlpine.

 

Poetry

 

Detective Fiction Is the Purest Literature We Have – poem by Elizabeth Scott Tervo at An Unexpected Journal.

 

“The Leaden-Eyed,” poem by Vachel Lindsay – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Desert Power – Erik Coonce at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

The 3 Lost Pieces of a Good Romance – Chloe Ann at The Radical Reader.

 

Understanding Evil with Cormac McCarthy and John Frame – Seth Troutt at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Right is Changing Cancel Culture’s Rules – Christopher Rufo.

 

Adults with Disabilities Deserve to Work – Jill Escher at The Free Press.

 

The Documentary That Investigates Jerry Lewis’ Never Released Nazi Camp Clown Movie – Keith Roysdon at CrimeReads.

American Stuff

 

Grief in the White House – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic. 

 

Thomas Jefferson’s Library – Neely Tucker at Library of Congress Blogs.

 

Lincoln’s “Second thoughts” on the Emancipation Proclamation – Kevin Donovan at Emerging Civil War.

 

Art

 

A Van Gogh drawing – with what is almost certainly the artist’s fingerprint – goes to auction at Sotheby’s – Martin Baily at The Art Newspaper.

 

Inside the Shadowy World of a Notorious Art Looter Who Evaded Justice – Min Chen at Artnet.

 

By focusing on Edvard Munch’s portraiture, London’s National Gallery reveals a different side of the Norwegian Expressionist – Alexander Morrison at The Art Newspaper.

 

Run and Run – Matt Papa, Matt Boswell

 Painting: Man Reading, oil on canvas (1851) by Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), The Clark Museum, Williamstown, Mass.