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Orlando Furioso has been stupendous for 489 years now. After chasing her around the known world, Orlando discovers his beloved Angelica has married some rando Arab soldier and gone back to China. It drives him stark raving mad. He strips off his clothes and then rampages naked across Europe, murdering everyone in his path, until Astolfo flies to the moon on a chariot pulled by two hippogriffs on loan from John the Baptist to recover his lost wits (because lost things inevitably wind up on the moon). I've read it three times in three different translation. I suggest the Guido Waldman prose one. The Inferno from The Divine Comedy is great, Purgatory is all right, and Paradise is rather dull. Don Quixote, I could never get through. Maybe the translation was bad but it bored me to tears. Les Misérables is the perfect book. A jot or tittle more or less would lessen it. Some say its explanatory diversions are tiresome and I say you're nuts. Moby-Dick, now, I will agree is exhausting in its descriptions of whales, whaling ships, and the practice of whaling, devoting -- at most -- 10% of the text to the actual plot.
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Oct 26, 2021 05:54
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 10:02 |
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