Dark Side of the Horse by Samson for August 03, 2022

Forget it, Horace; nothing “divine” is ever funny.

Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” is a disappointment, too.

As in “pleasure vehicle,” or “The Toil and Tedium of Cooking.”

The funny part is that some people actually believe that stuff.

But the best bits are a h e l l of a read, especially in the original Klingon.

Odd, I found it a real laugh riot.

Most political satire isn’t funny a century after all the targets are dead, especially from foreign lands. And yes, Dante absolutely SKEWERED many of the political, religious, and financial elites of his day.

Try reading it backward

When I worked at Borders Books a customer a came in and asked, “Who wrote Dante’s Inferno?”

It’s all a joke until somebody goes to …

maybe if Sine read it to you out loud…?

Finding Comedy in Drama Side of the Horse

It’s a LOT funnier in the original Italian, if you’re not already halfway to Hades. :)

Dante’s whole point is that the joke is on you.

Those pesky words will keep changing meaning. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Ital. commedia meant “a narrative poem intended to entertain and perhaps edify, with an up-beat ending”. (Which in the case of the Paradiso, is pretty darn tedious.)

Gladly they never published Dante’s Divine Tragedy

this isn’t a comedy, this is comedy itself.