The Poet’s Journey
I have always been fascinated by the use of data visualization as a tool for literary exploration. It serves not only to cast new light on classics, offering fresh approaches to works we thought we knew inside and out, but also to potentially revolutionize how we engage with them. What I find even more fascinating is its ability to provide a holistic view of a medium (the written words) which we can only experience linearly (through reading). Being an Italian designer, I wanted to visualize one of our greatest classic: Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Dante’s journey into the afterlife is divided into three Cantiche (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso: “Hell”, “Purgatory”, “Paradise”), and it’s full of symbolic, allegorical, and political meanings, which are illustrated to the reader through the many encounters the poet makes along the way.
I therefore decided to visualize all the characters that are somehow present in the Divine Comedy: those that Dante encounters and those that are mentioned.
Visualization by Michela Lazzaroni for La Lettura, Corriere della Sera.
Published: 19th March 2023.
For more about data, literature and the creative process behind this project, I've written an article on Medium: https://link.medium.com/ARDUkfb1yDb
Published for the first time in 1321, the Divine Comedy is a poem in verse, chained triplets of hendecasyllables, now known as “Dante’s triplets”. Each of the three Cantiche is made up of 33 cantos (except the Inferno, which contains a further introductory canto) made up of a variable number of verses, between 115 and 160, for a total of 14,233 verses. The Divine Comedy tells the poet’s imaginary journey into the three otherworldly realms, a path called Itinerarium mentis in Deum, “a journey of the mind into God”. The poet had two guides: Virgil, Dante’s literary mentor, in the first two Cantiche, and Beatrice, the poet’s beloved woman, in the last one.
In order to build the dataset, I re-read the poem with the help of a prose commentary. I compiled the dataset by hand, mapping all the characters presented:
• the encounters that Dante actually did, (Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia, “There was Minos, horrible, and growled”, Inf. V, v 4);
• the characters mentioned in the text, (O muse, o alto genio, or m’aiutate, “Oh Muses, oh my intelligence, help me now”, Inf. II, v 7);
• the encounters that Dante actually did, (Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia, “There was Minos, horrible, and growled”, Inf. V, v 4);
• the characters mentioned in the text, (O muse, o alto genio, or m’aiutate, “Oh Muses, oh my intelligence, help me now”, Inf. II, v 7);
• the characters mentioned in a dialogue, (in canto V of the Inferno Francesca mentions Lancelot: Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse, “One day we read for amusement how Lancelot fell in love”, Inf. V, vv 127-128);
• all the mentions of God, including periphrases, (Quello imperador che lassù regna, “That emperor who reigns in heaven”, Inf. I, v 124).
• all the mentions of God, including periphrases, (Quello imperador che lassù regna, “That emperor who reigns in heaven”, Inf. I, v 124).
For each of these characters, I then compiled the dataset with further information: whether they were meetings or mentions; whether they were fictional characters (many from Greek and Latin mythology, others from sacred texts) or real ones (for which I indicated Dante’s contemporaries); whether they spoke with Dante or with his guides; whether their gender was male, female, or other.
I wanted to include a particular symbol for Dante’s guides: the mentions of Beatrice before she guides Dante in the Paradiso; and the mentions of Virgil in the last Cantica and the memory of him as a dolce guida, “gentle guide”.
The result is three illustrated tables that have triple value.
Firstly, they show in detail the encounters, and therefore become a map to easily retrieve the characters of each canto, or vice versa to find out where a certain character appears.
Secondly, they allow you to see the evolution of the encounters from the beginning to the end of each Cantica: which is the canto with the greatest number of characters; the fictional ones compared to the real ones; or the women to the men.
And lastly, they allow you to compare the Cantiche: for example Dante puts many more characters in Hell than in the other two realms! And we also notice how the mentions of God increase in number as one approaches the end of the poem, when the poet encounters the Holy Trinity.
I’m very happy with this project, I enjoyed the process and I’m satisfied with how it turned out.
It was the first time I had faced the Divine Comedy since I was in school, and it was an exciting experience, sometimes desperate (so many characters!), but also deeply moving: have you ever read the tragic story of Ugolino della Gherardesca in canto XXXIII of the Inferno? I cry every time.
One of the things I’m most proud of is having received messages from teachers who hoped things like this could be used in schools, to intrigue the kids with something different, and, at best, help them with learning (I myself have a visual memory).
One of the things I’m most proud of is having received messages from teachers who hoped things like this could be used in schools, to intrigue the kids with something different, and, at best, help them with learning (I myself have a visual memory).
Dante guided me through a great journey, and if my work made someone want to do it again with him, I can consider myself proud, so that again we will “go out to see the stars”: E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.
