The Divine Comedy (second posting) - Dante Alighieri

So I've posted about Dante's Divine Comedy before, but I've gone ahead and included my entry from the collection anyway since it offers a somewhat different treatment of the work:

This is the volume I would consider to have initiated my collection. While I might have acquired the books above much earlier, this was the first book that I saw as part of my own collection. I had first encountered Dante in 1999 in a high school English textbook alongside the classic Gustave Doré illustrations of The Divine Comedy. When my paternal grandfather asked me what I wanted for Christmas, Dante was at the top of the list, preferably a volume with the Doré illustrations inside. Always one to please, my grandfather probably searched farther and wider than I am aware even now. He had not managed to find the book that I had hoped would be out there (it exists now, published by Barnes and Noble) but he DID find this fine book as well as a separate book of the complete Doré illustrations. I got BOTH for Christmas that year and have since enjoyed that fact that my own divine journey of book collecting began with this fine green-covered and rough-paged antiquarian edition of the Medieval Italian poet’s literary journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.
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My relationship with this text has recently grown as well since I just completed a graduate seminar on Dante and Italian Cinema. My paper for the course, which you can read here, dealt with affective piety and a specific scene in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita. Fun stuff. I've included pictures of the translation I worked with for this paper below since you can see the original entry here.

A three volume set, as you can see. Especially nice since it includes Gustave Doré's art on its covers.

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy 1: Inferno. Trans. John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatorio. Trans. John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy 3: Paradiso. Trans. John D. Sinclair. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.

Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson

Continuing a brief pirate theme, I first read Treasure Island on a weekend that I had been shipped off to my paternal grandmother’s house while my parents were away. I started and finished Stevenson’s novel about Jim Hawkins’ adventure to find buried gold and his encounter with the dreaded pirate Long John Silver when I should have been sleeping on the floor of her sewing room, a room also appropriately dominated by a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf inhabited by her own literary treasures. The volume, a beautiful illustrated hardcover with rough-cut pages, is unfortunately not the one I had read in 1997 during that stay at grandma’s house, but one given to me later as a Christmas present from my sister who had recalled our adventures with pirates.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. Illus. N.C. Wyeth. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1911 (1981 reissue by Atheneum Books for Young Readers).

Hook - Steven Spielberg

While not a book, this videotape seems to have made its own interesting journey. Inspired by J.M. Barrie’s early 20th century children’s novel (also annotated in this collection), the film focuses on an older Peter Pan (Robin Williams), returning to Neverland to revisit his old identity and save his children from a revivified Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). Perhaps appropriately, this VHS was a pirated copy of the film that was always in the drawer and my paternal grandmother’s house (rest assured, I have since purchased the DVD). My sisters and I were usually only able to watch it when our parents were out-of-town on business trips or vacations, although at some point in 1996 we plundered this treasure and brought it back home with us.

Hook. Dir. Stephen Spielberg. Perf. Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Maggie Smith. Tri-Star, 1991. VHS.

Note: Yes, I am aware that the image above is a DVD and not a video tape. The tape itself, while I do consider it an important part of my collection, is in a basket somewhere at my parents house (not to mention the fact that rewatching the film is a much better experience on disc). If I think of it, I will try to get around to taking a picture of it (although anyone of my generation would not be hard pressed to imagine a nondescript black VHS tape with a white label marked with black Sharpie).

As another musing sidenote, I still don't exactly understand why Spielberg has all but disowned this film. Perhaps he measures his successes in box office proceeds only but it holds a special place in my heart as it does for many children of the 90's.