Sure, you picked up a book or two last year. You tore through God Is Not Great, nodding in agreement along the way. You read Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows on the Metro, brandishing the cover proudly and caring little that anyone saw you. You read a lot of graphic novels. And, then, just for grins and giggles, you picked up The Divine Comedy in the original Italian. Okay, maybe you read this version…

In Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy, the poet emerges from Hell with his guide, Virgil, and experiences something akin to a sailor seeing land for the first time in months.We climbed up, he first and I second, so far that through a round opening I saw some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears; and thence we issued forth to see again the stars. It’s one of the most powerful moments in the…