Book on Divine Comedy does Dante differently

What’s a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey whose first language was Yiddish doing writing a book about history’s greatest Catholic poet, Dante?

Perhaps trying to convince the world that his epic poem, the Divine Comedy, is not just for Ivy League intellectuals but for the common man and woman on life’s journey.

Harriet Rubin’s "Dante in Love," published by Simon and Schuster, may not become required reading in the hallowed halls of Oxbridge academia. But that’s just fine with her.

"This book is aimed at people in hell," said Rubin. "And how do you get out of hell if there is no exit sign anywhere? The book is aimed at people who are in some kind of quandary. People with passion."

Quandary? Passion? Dante ate them for breakfast.

Banned from returning to his beloved Florence in 1302, Dante roamed from city to city in Italy and France, from noble court to grubby back streets until he died in Ravenna in 1321.

Through the exile, the wandering and the angst, he created The Divine Comedy -- divided into Hell, Purgatory and Paradise -- a poem many consider the greatest ever written.

Rubin, the daughter of a window cleaner and housewife from New Jersey, already had experience in writing about an Italian luminary from centuries past.

She is author of the highly provocative and acclaimed 1998 book "The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women," in which she discusses how to become powerful without becoming like a man.

Now she is doing Dante differently from many previous works on the poet considered to be the father of the Italian language.

It is by no means a "Divine Comedy for Idiots."

But in its own way it does take Dante off the pedestal of poetic sanctity and explain as simply as possible the immense tapestry of religion, art, architecture, cosmology, theology and history that provided the backdrop for the work.

猶太女孩譜寫別樣《神曲》

一個來自新澤西、母語為依地語的猶太女孩創作了一本關于歷史上最偉大的天主教詩人但丁的書，不覺得她很可愛嗎?

這或許是為了向世人證明，但丁的史詩《神曲》并不僅僅是寫給長青藤聯盟的學者看的，同樣也適合跋涉在生命旅程中的普通男女。

哈里特·魯賓的《愛中的但丁》一書由西蒙和舒斯特出版集團發行，這本書可能并不會成為牛津和劍橋大學神圣廳堂里的必讀書，但對她來說這樣已經很好了。

魯賓說：“這本書的受眾對象是那些在苦難中掙扎的人們。如果在任何地方都找不到出口標志，你怎樣才能脫離困境呢?這本書是專為那些陷入某種困境、卻仍懷有激情的人們而寫的。”

困境?激情?但丁拿它們當家常便飯。

1302年，但丁被禁止回到他深愛的佛羅倫薩，于是他周游意大利和法國，從一個城市游蕩到另一個城市，從高雅的宮廷徘徊到骯臟的后街，直到1321年，他死于拉文納(意大利東北部港市)。

在流放、游蕩和痛苦中，他創作了《神曲》，這部被很多人視為有史以來最偉大的詩篇分為《地獄》、《煉獄》和《天堂》三部。

魯賓，一個新澤西的擦窗工人兼家庭主婦的女兒，在寫作方面已小有經驗，她曾寫過一本關于幾個世紀前的一位意大利大師的書。

1998年，她創作的《女君王論: 女人獲取權力的戰略、戰術與武器》一書出版了，這本書非常富有煽動性、贏得了很高的評價。在書中她討論了(女人)怎樣才能變得強大，卻不必像男人一樣。

現在，她正在用一種和以往許多描寫但丁的著作不同的方式來詮釋這位被認為是意大利語言之父的詩人。

這決不是一本“為愚人而作的神曲”。

但是，她獨有的寫作手法確實使但丁的圣潔詩歌不再那么高高在上，她盡可能用最簡單直白的方式來闡釋這部作品深厚的背景，那是宗教、藝術、建筑、宇宙哲學、神學和史學共同編織出的巨大織錦。