Reading Dante's Inferno. It's actually
Readable . I thought it would be
Like the Silmarillion (aaargh) but it's not...
For some reason it's written like it's a poem,
Even though in the English translation it doesn't
Really look like one. I mean, the sentences
Are all of even length, but they don't end
At the end of a line>.>. Was kinda confusing
Until I realized that if there is no period at the
End I just have to keep reading even though
The next line starts with a capital. Yay.
Actually, Dante wrote the original in rhyming meter; what you're probably encountering is a translator who was aiming for accuracy of translation, at the expense of the meter/rhyming scheme, but decided to half-arse it with line breaks. Seen the same thing with translations of the Kalevala; one translator aiming to capture the feel of the original language, while another tries to capture the words as they were written.
Here's a side-by-side excerpt from the Kalevala, to illustrate; Lemminkainen is trying to fish her dead son out of the River of Death with a magic rake:
Lemminkainen's faithful mother
Takes the rake of magic metals,
Rakes the Tuoni river bottoms,
Rakes the cataract and whirlpool,
Rakes the swift and boiling current
Of the sacred stream of death-land,
In the Manala home and kingdom.
Searching for her long-lost hero,
Rakes a long time, finding nothing;
Now she wades the river deeper,
To her belt in mud and water,
Deeper, deeper, rakes the death-stream,
Rakes the river's deepest caverns,
Raking up and down the current,
Till at last she finds his tunic,
Heavy-hearted, finds his jacket;
Rakes again and rakes unceasing,
Finds the hero's shoes and stockings,
Sorely troubled, finds these relies;
Now she wades the river deeper,
Rakes the Manala shoals and shallows,
Rakes the deeps at every angle;
As she draws the rake the third time
From the Tuoni shores and waters,
In the rake she finds the body
Of her long-lost Lemminkainen,
In the metal teeth entangled,
In the rake with copper handle.
Thus the reckless Lemminkainen,
Thus the son of Kalevala,
Was recovered from the bottom
Of the Manala lake and river.
There were wanting many fragments,
Half the head, a hand, a fore-arm,
Many other smaller portions,
Life, above all else, was missing.
Then the mother, well reflecting,
Spake these words in bitter weeping:
"From these fragments, with my magic,
I will bring to life my hero."
Hearing this, the raven answered,
Spake these measures to the mother:
"There is not in these a hero,
Thou canst not revive these fragments;
Eels have fed upon his body,
On his eyes have fed the whiting;
Cast the dead upon the waters,
On the streams of Tuonela,
Let him there become a walrus,
Or a seal, or whale, or porpoise."
Then the mother of Lemminkäinen took the iron rake;
Rakes for her son in the roaring rapids,
In the rushing stream. Rakes and does not find.
Thence she moves in deeper: wading into the waters,
Up to her garters in the stream, up to her waistband in water.
Rakes for her son the length of Death's river,
Dragging cross-current. Dragged once, then again:
Gets the shirt of her boychild, a shirt to her heart's sorrow;
Dragged yet once more: got socks, met the hat,
Socks to her great grief, the hat to her annoyance.
Stepped even deeper from there, to the deeps of the Cursèd Lands.
Dragged once along the water, once more across the water,
A third diagonally. And then on this, the third try,
A bale of wheat came against the iron rake.
A bale of wheat it was not: but it was the flighty Lemminkäinen,
The beauteous Farmind himself, caught in the tine of the rake
By his ring finger, by his left toe.
Arose the flighty Lemminkäinen, rose the son of Kaleva,
On the rake of copper to the top of the waters smooth;
Yet was a little lacking: one hand, half a head,
Many other members, most of all his life.
His dam at this fell wondering, thus she crying saith:
"Would this yet make a man, a male worked anew?"
A raven overheard it. To that it replied:
"There is no man in the passed-away, nor barely in the remains:
His eyes have been eaten by whitefish, his shoulders split by the pike.
Leave the man to the waters, push him into the River of Death!
Mayhap he'll become a cod fish, or grow strengthened into a whale."