Pattaya Inferno: LOS Lyrics, #2

By Bangkok Byron

Dante's Divine Comedy, the first section of which is the Inferno, is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language – but what would it have been like if he had visited Thailand? The Inferno describes the journey of a fictionalised version of Dante guided through Hell by the classical poet Virgil. In my rewrite, Dante leads the narrator through Pattaya, a place which many men think of as heaven, but is really just another kind of hell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bui Doi Books
• Release date: May 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224886326

Bangkok Byron

Bangkok Byron is famous (or should that be "infamous"?) for his numerous contributions to the Thailand forums. Bangkok Byron is, of course, a pen name (earned when he wrote his long narrative poem, Bangkok Don Juan, in the same verse form as Byron's Don Juan) to conceal his identity on account of his adventures (or should that be "misadventures"?) in the fleshpots of SE Asia.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Dante degli Alighieri (1265–1321), commonly known as Dante, was the most famous Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, the first section of which is the Inferno, is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language – but what would it have been like if he had visited Thailand?

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The Inferno describes the journey of a fictionalised version of Dante guided through Hell by the classical poet Virgil. In my rewrite, Dante leads the narrator through Pattaya, a place which many men think of as heaven, but is really just another kind of hell.

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My poem uses the same verse form as Dante’s masterpiece, terza rima. This is a difficult form to use because the chain rhyme makes it had to change anything, as the consequence of the change ripples through all the rhymes, and require many more changes to make it work. As a result, when I came to revise the poem, I decided