Dante klubi

Q: Did the Dante Club exist historically?

MP: Yes, and it was indeed centered around Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow, America’s most prominent 19th-century poet, had begun translating Dante’s Divine Comedy in an attempt to overcome the tragic death of his wife. He was joined by friends and colleagues who began calling themselves the Dante Club. The club members meet every Wednesday evening at Longfellow’s house in Cambridge (which we can still visit today) to review and discuss Longfellow’s latest translations, breaking for dinner in between, often staying until one or two in the morning.

Q: One review says that the murders in the novel are gruesome enough to make Stephen King wince. Is that true?

MP: I don’t think they’re quite that bloody! The reason violence in stories gets so much attention is largely because it hides secrets. Indeed, Dante's "Inferno" is full of the secret lives (and mysterious deaths) of its characters. Dante's murders shake the members of the Dante Club out of their peaceful and secure literary careers. As James Russell Lowell notes in the novel, while they were translating Dante in ink, someone else was translating Dante in blood.

Q: Does the reader need to be familiar with Dante's work to enjoy "The Dante Club"?

MP: Certainly not! There are no prerequisites to understanding the novel.