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December 05, 2007
Blawg Review this week: Heavenly.
Beauty awakens the soul to act.
--Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
You need inspiration? Well, WAC? does; we need a miracle every day. Blawg Review, consistently first-rate and tasteful, often literary, cannot be much finer or heroic than it is this week. A double-Blawg Review of the Year winner, Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise is an admirer of The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri's epic poem written between 1308 and 1321. At Blawg Review, Colin now brings to a close his Divine Comedy theme and narrative tracking Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise (or Heaven), guided first by the Roman Epic Poet Virgil, then by Dante's Life-Long Love Beatrice--and finally of course by The Yank Lawyer Colin.* In the third cantica, Paradiso--that's Blawg Review #137 for us folks in bow-ties with PDAs and Harvard Bluebooks--Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. Dante even sees the face of God, but can find no words to report his experience: All'alta fantasia qui mancò possa ("at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe") XXXIII, 142. In 2005, Colin first hosted BR with Inferno-themed Blawg Review #35 and became the 2005 Blawg Review of the Year winner. Hosting again in 2006, he decided to stay with Dante's great work, and published a Purgatorio-themed Blawg Review #86--and again, won the "best review" award. The engravings appearing on Colin's posts in all three installments are by the renowned French artist and book illustator Paul Gustave Doré, and from the illustrated editions of The Divine Comedy published 1857 and 1867.
*Virgil, a pagan, may not enter Heaven, so Dante's fellow Florentine Beatrice takes over. Lawyers, each with a back-stage pass to the Cosmos, may go anywhere.
Posted by JD Hull at December 5, 2007 11:11 AM