O.Wilde, Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. (...)
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. (...)
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. (...)
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself...

O. Wilde (1854-1900),
Preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'


Thursday, May 05, 2011

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Hell, I ,1-6


LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di   Dante Alighieri


INFERNO
Canto I
(La selva oscura)

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.


Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!



by G. Doré

 

The Divine Comedy

by  Dante Alighieri

[translated  by  James Finn Cotter]


HELL
Canto I
(The dark forest.)

Halfway through the journey we are living
          I found myself deep in a darkened forest,
          For I had lost all trace of the straight path.
 
            Ah how hard it is to tell what it was like,
          How wild the forest was, how dense and rugged!
          To think of it still fills my mind with panic.
 
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