Complexity of Dantes Inferno
Quick glance at The Divine Comedy and how difficult it is to read.
A while back I read Dante's Inferno, knowing next to nothing about the history or story. Only having fragments of knowledge which I'd gleaned from games. As I began to read I learnt that it is a poem, originally written in Italian. By Florence poet Dante Alighieri 1265 – 1321. His work known as Dante's Inferno or The Divine Comedy, is a masterpiece of world literature. He begun working on it c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. Its release in Italian was contentious, as notable literature of the time was published in Latin, available only to the affluent that could read it. The Italian language was considered a 'common' language, and works published in this tongue (Italian) didn't receive the same esteem. Dante helped establish Italian as the national language.
The translation I read was The Inferno translated by John Ciardi. And as the introduction pointed out the Italian language is considered very poetic having a rhythmically cadence. Which makes it a difficult language to translate from. Being a poem (in a poetic language) it makes translating this work impossible. As you can either translate for the poetic nature, or the literally meaning. An additional layer of complexity is the inferred jabs at political and religious establishments of the time. Which requires a historical appreciation of the time. To tackle this John Ciardi splits each chapter into three components. A literal translation of the events in the story, a poetic rendition and lastly its significance at the time. So to truly appreciate the Divine Comedy you have to read it original form with knowledge of the political conflicts of the time.
So how difficult is it to read this master piece in its original medium?
The barrier to entry is quite low. As was the case in the previous post about Harry Potter in German. The lexical complexity of Dantes Inferno is higher than that of Harry Potter, but not by much. Knowing 100 words still allows you to comprehend 50% of the content. There are 10,000 unique words used to tell the story, which makes it more difficult for full comprehension. If you had thought about learning Italian it could be good a goal to read through. Get inspired and get reading!
Comprehension relative to known words
Frequency Distribution of The 7 Sins
Key word density of top 1000 words
Top 100 words in The Inferno
- e
- 4282
- che
- 3786
- la
- 2515
- di
- 2104
- a
- 1983
- non
- 1477
- per
- 1410
- in
- 1153
- si
- 1134
- l
- 959
- com
- 852
- le
- 828
- io
- 827
- de
- 824
- li
- 822
- sì
- 805
- mi
- 739
- il
- 708
- più
- 673
- da
- 663
- con
- 660
- del
- 649
- è
- 642
- lo
- 599
- chi
- 578
- se
- 561
- quest
- 542
- al
- 516
- ma
- 510
- quell
- 476
- tu
- 476
- tutt
- 463
- ne
- 449
- qual
- 382
- suo
- 382
- quel
- 380
- nel
- 376
- i
- 347
- me
- 339
- quand
- 332
- son
- 329
- tant
- 325
- poi
- 320
- o
- 313
- fu
- 312
- così
- 310
- mio
- 308
- lor
- 304
- un
- 302
- sua
- 301
- diss
- 298
- ti
- 286
- là
- 278
- ben
- 277
- prim
- 270
- già
- 266
- sol
- 260
- vid
- 251
- noi
- 250
- laltr
- 247
- lui
- 246
- ved
- 230
- qui
- 230
- dov
- 223
- era
- 219
- occhi
- 219
- quant
- 218
- cant
- 211
- sé
- 210
- perché
- 208
- ché
- 197
- mia
- 197
- ancor
- 194
- part
- 191
- ciel
- 182
- ver
- 181
- pur
- 181
- fa
- 180
- tal
- 178
- nostr
- 177
- dal
- 175
- né
- 174
- gent
- 170
- or
- 165
- ed
- 164
- ciò
- 163
- però
- 163
- giù
- 163
- cui
- 161
- fuor
- 159
- sanz
- 157
- lun
- 157
- poc
- 154
- ad
- 152
- tra
- 150
- esser
- 150
- fatt
- 149
- mond
- 149
- cha
- 148
- ven
- 145