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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
Just found this explanation paola - thank you very much. There's an awful lot to think about when reading this, and I'm sure a lot of it is passing me by, though in the Sayers translation there are helpful notes at the end of each Canto.
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Reading the original without notes is extremely hard for an Italian, as Dante's language is very very different from modern Italian, but from reading the translations they seem much more manageable. I find going back and forth with the notes does detract from the flow, so I'd go with the flow first and leave the reading of the notes until after each canto, unless you are stuck for meaning. This I think is also the problem in school: most teachers, at least in my days, were so concentrated on hammering into us each and every detail and nuance that the beauty of the verses got easily lost...