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La Commedia o Divina Commedia (originariamente Comedìa; l'aggettivo Divina, attribuito da Boccaccio, si ritrova solo a partire dalle edizioni a stampa del 1555 a cura di Ludovico Dolce) è un poema di Dante Alighieri, scritto in terzine incatenate di versi endecasillabi, in lingua volgare fiorentina. Composta secondo la critica tra il 1307 e il 1321,[1] la Commedia è l'opera più celebre di Dante, nonché una delle più importanti testimonianze della civiltà medievale; conosciuta e studiata in tutto il mondo, è ritenuta uno dei capolavori della letteratura mondiale di tutti i tempi.[2]

Il poema è diviso in tre parti, chiamate cantiche (Inferno, Purgatorio e Paradiso), ognuna delle quali composta da 33 canti (tranne l'Inferno, che contiene un ulteriore canto proemiale). Il poeta narra di un viaggio attraverso i tre regni ultraterreni che lo condurrà fino alla visione della Trinità. La sua rappresentazione immaginaria e allegorica dell'oltretomba cristiano è un culmine della visione medioevale del mondo sviluppatasi nella Chiesa cattolica. ... Read more

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"Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third." UNDERSTANDING DANTE attempts to explain and justify T. S. Eliot’s bold claim. John Scott offers readers at all levels a critical overview of Dante’s writings: five chapters deal with his New Life of love and poetry ("Vita Nova"), the "Banquet" of knowledge ("Convivio"), his Latin treatise on language and poetics ("De Vulgari Eloquentia"), Italian lyrics ("Rime"), and his blueprint for world government ("Monarchia"). The next five chapters concentrate on Dante’s masterpiece, the "Comedy": its structure, Dante’s worldview (still relevant today), and the "Comedy" examined as a poem. Much has been written on Dante’s moral, political, and religious ideas; important as these are, however, such discussions are perforce limited. It is above all as a work of poetry that the "Divine Comedy" maintains its appeal and fascination to readers of all backgrounds and beliefs.

Firmly grounded in the latest advances of Dante scholarship, UNDERSTANDING DANTE offers an original and uniquely detailed, global analysis of Dante as poet of the "Comedy" that will be welcomed by those who read the poem in translation as well as by those who study the original Italian text. At the same time, Scott’s book will be welcome for its rich and insightful analysis of the whole corpus of Dante’s writings, as well as Scott’s mastery of the vast sea of critical literature in various languages. Scott bridges the gap that often exists between Dante studies in English-speaking countries and the great tradition of Dante scholarship in the poet’s homeland. No work in English about the great Italian poet can rival UNDERSTANDING DANTE’s scope in both depth and breadth of close reading and critical vision. ... Read more

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This Book Is In German. ... Read more

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Dante's epic-in a stunning new clothbound edition.

Describing Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, the Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasing torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must journey with Virgil to the heart of Hell-for it is only by encountering Satan that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

Go to hell
"Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, where the right way was lost..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.

The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.

But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.

If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.

Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.

And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, they say, 'Sullen were we in the sweet air that is gladdened by the Sun, bearing within ourselves the sluggish fume; now we are sullen in the black mire...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")

More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.

Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated.

Divine Comedy
This is a fantastic edition of the Inferno.It is the 1st time I've ever read the Divine Comedy besides excerpts attempting to ape the terza rima.While such exerpts are gratifying the way a 3rd generation video tape of a movie may be, it is far more fullfilling to read a 'literal' representation of the Italian text in English and then frame that within the borders of the original Italian.Singleton's notes are also exceptional and lead to a very complex reading of the text.In short, for someone who cannot speak a word of Italian but wants to have the richest reading of the text, from language to content to the culture the poem draws upon, this is the text to purchase.When I complete the Inferno I plan to complete the rest of the Dante's masterpiece with Singleton holding my hand.

CHARLES SINGLETON's translation of Divine Comedy
I capitalize CHARLES SINGLETON because amazon.com pile their customer reviews into one long list, admitting no differences between translations. SINGLETON's very literal prose best serves the reader who would read theoriginal Italian, and clarify his reading by referring to the facingEnglish translation.You needn't have studied Italian for this, thoughsome skill in another Romance language is very helpful. But if you insiston getting your terza rima secondhand, read Pinsky's Inferno(Pinsky has yetto bring over the Purgatorio and Paradiso). ... Read more

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Get your "A" in gear!

They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes™ has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles.SparkNotes'™ motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because:

· They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.
· They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.
· The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.

And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!



... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.Amazon.com Review
The one quality that all classic works of literature share is their timelessness. Shakespeare still plays in Peoria 400 years after his death because the stories he dramatized resonate in modern readers' hearts and minds; methods of warfare have changed quite a bit since the Trojan War described by Homer in his Iliad, but the passions and conflicts that shaped such warriors as Achilles, Agamemnon, Patroclus, and Odysseus still find their counterparts today on battlefields from Bosnia to Afghanistan. Likewise, a little travel guide to hell written by the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri in the 13th century remains in print at the end of the 20th century, and it continues to speak to new generations of readers. There have been countless translations of the Inferno, but this one by poet Robert Pinsky is both eloquent and tailored to our times.

Yes, this is an epic poem, but don't let that put you off. An excellent introduction provides context for the work, while detailed notes on each canto are a virtual who's who of 13th-century Italian politics, culture, and literature. Best of all, Pinsky's brilliant translation communicates the horror, despair, and terror of hell with such immediacy, you can almost smell the sulfur and feel the heat from the rain of fire as Dante--led by his faithful guide Virgil--descends lower and lower into the pit. Dante's journey through Satan's kingdom must rate as one of the great fictional travel tales of all time, and Pinsky does it great justice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (52)

Quite rightly highly rated translation!
This came in today; compared with my 1968 edition [ which was minus Italian original verse ] Pinsky does a poetic justice to Dante.

I enjoy comparing James Branch Cabell's Jurgen's view of Hell and Heaven to Dante's. The dogmatic complexities of humor and poetry are almost numbing. In a way Cabell does a credible examination of Dante, he suggests that Hell is made in Jurgen's fathers
mind-something that children are taught at an early age-and the Devil is merely a shadow of God.

I wish Albrecht Dürer's illustrations were part of this volume too.The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation, Bilingual Edition (English and Italian Edition)

The darkest thing I have ever read
A guided tour through hell written in the form of a poem? An idea that good only comes once in a thousand years.

Brilliant work but I didn't enjoy it
As a literature minor, I know that I'm supposed to take great joy in dissecting and analyzing a great work of literature such as The Inferno, but I didn't really enjoy this book all that much.

I found way too much of the storyline to be repetitive and drawn out for two long. The first half or so of the story is basically traveling from one circle of Hell to another, finding out what the sin and the punishment for the sin in that area is, meeting and talking with one or two of the sinners and relating what they did in their lives to the reason that they are here. Dante reacts to their trials either sympathetically or feeling that they deserve what they got mainly based on who they are (if they happen to be somebody from his actual life who treated him badly or had a hand in his expulsion from his home, he feels pretty justified in thinking that they are getting what they deserve.)

I don't want to take away from the greatness of this piece of literature. The rhyming scheme and the contrapasso (matching up the punishments so that they fit the crime) that Dante has developed are pure genius and the poem itself is a great accomplishment. My rating is based entirely upon my personal enjoyment (or lack there of) of the work.

As Good as it Gets...
When I came across Mr. Pinsky's translation over a decade ago, I was thrilled and impressed.I loved sitting with the beautiful prose in Italian and English.When I heard my daughter was taking a course in Italian on Dante's Inferno at Syracuse (ahhh to be in college again), I sent her the book.Both my daughter and her professor love this translation.The professor has used the text in her class before.A great buy in hardcover...even better in paperback.A great enhancement would be a version for my new kindle2!

Excellent for the Rookie
Perhaps you are reading these reviews because, let us be honest, you are a bit intimidated to read a book of this nature.Written over seven centuries ago, many, perhaps even most, of the references are today obscure.Yes, the scholars can read Dante, but what of you, who just wants something deeper, who recognizes that you should fill your head with something a bit more permanent than the latest best seller?You still want something accessible and understandable.To you I say...you should plunge ahead and read THE INFERNO OF DANTE.It is fantastic.

I am no expert on the time period reflected in THE INFERNO.And I remember nothing about any poetry class I ever took.I cannot even say whether Pinsky did a good job of translating Dante into English.I can only comment on the pages that are in front of me, and they are extremely enjoyable.Dante himself sought to make THE INFERNO accessible to the masses.He wrote it in Italian rather than Latin for exactly that reason and this translation remains true to that end.

As most are aware, THE INFERNO takes us through the circles of Hell, deeper and deeper into the abyss.THE INFERNO's descriptions are excellent, grabbing the reader's attention as the sins become more and more serious the deeper we go, with the eternal punishments meted out becoming more and more severe.Although many references are now obscure, the notes for the book provide an excellent context that allows one to follow along.I personally was concerned that I would be spending too much time with the endnotes to really enjoy the text.But the two really complement each other very well, making the book that much more enjoyable.

We learn a great deal along the way.In limbo, for instance, Dante encounters many souls worthy of salvation, but which are doomed to limbo, as they were born before Christ provided that salvation to man.Interestingly, although most Muslims are later found deeper in hell with the heretics, several notable Muslims are here, evidencing at least a grudging appreciation on the part of the deeply Chritian Dante for the damned of a non-Christian religion.

Following that same theme, the founder of Islam himself, Mohammed, is further down still than the heretics.Following the belief that Mohammed was a fallen Catholic cardinal, he is with the schismatics, who broke from the one true church to lead others onto a false path.Eternally split open from head to tailbone only to heal up for another round of the same, his torture perfectly symbolizes his sin.

Of course, I use the above merely as examples.THE INFERNO is rife with others, each as readable as they are gruesome.Contrary to my own initial concerns, I found THE INFERNO OF DANTE very much worth the time and I recommend it without hesitation. ... Read more

Product Description
This translation of Dante's Convito - the first in English - is from the hand of a lady whose enthusiasm for the genius of Dante has made it a chief pleasure of her .life to dwell on it by translating, not his Divine Comedy only, but also the whole body of his other works. Among those works the Vita Nuova and the Convito ·have a distinct place, as leading up to the great masterpiece. In the New Life, Man starts on his career with human love that points to the rlivine. In the Banquet, he passes to mature life and to love of knowledge that declares the power and the love of God in the material and moral world about us and within us. In the Divine Comedy, the Poet passes to the world to come, and rises to the final union of the love for Beatrice, the beatifier, with the glory of the Love of God. Of this great series, the crowning work has, of course, had many translators, and there have been translators also of the book that shows the youth of love. But

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the difficult to read text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Stuffy translation
This translation of Dante's Il Convivo is called "Il Convito," Why? Also, while it has the distinction of being the first English tranlation, which is impressive, it also dates from 1887, which means that the English is quite stuffy. I will look for a more modern translation. ... Read more

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Dante (1265-1321) is the greatest of Italian poets and his DIVINE COMEDY is the finest of all Christian allegories. To the consternation of his more academic admirers, who believed Latin to be the only proper language for dignified verse, Dante wrote his COMEDY in colloquial Italian, wanting it to be a poem for the common reader. This edition is translated by, and includes an Introduction by, Dorothy L. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Dante the Medievalist
A window into the medieval world. Read it: the minds of the Middle Ages were not nearly so befuddled as those that claim it to be.

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

DANTE THROUGH DOROTHY: IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS
please read the life and works of Dorothy L. SAyers to appreciate fully the effort she made here, her final writing, posthumously completed (no, not with any seance, which she adequately lambasted in her detective stories).

Her total translation of the Commedia is worth the price of admission (Do not abandon all hope, as she will bring you home to the beatific vision).

There are several translations of varying usefulness and grace, but Dorothy is the rock upon which to stand when comparing the rest.

Hame one cannot give 6 stars...
This is not the most up - to - date translation: however, it is one of the more worthy bits of the history that has grown up around the Comedy, and its perspective is still of practical use. (She actually tries to avoid Freud, for example). Her misunderstandings are ones we can overlook, and she could evenhelp to correct any new ones (not that I do not have full faith in our, er, "currentness", of course!) that might arise.
As for the work of the Master himself, what can one say? Its the best book in world history (have not read any better: and I am, in all humillity, considered something of a reader).
Simply put, its Heaven.

Quella che m'paradisa la mia mente
The elevated sound of poetry are here heard. Not fisical reality, but the ideal; In the Paradiso, ideas and feelings are visible. Dante sees God's unexpressible force: love. ... Read more

Product Description
Dante's immortal poem enters English in the clearest, most accurate, most readable translation in decades, accompanied by a commentary of unsurpassed scholarship.

The Inferno, the opening section of Dante Alighieri's epic theological poem La Divina Commedia, is one of the indispensable works of the Western literary canon. The modern concept of hell and damnation owes everything to this work, and it is the rock upon which vernacular Italian was built. Its influence is woven into the very fabric of Western imagination, and poets, painters, scholars, and translators return to it endlessly.

This new verse translation (with facing-page Italian text) by internationally famed scholar and master teacher Robert Hollander and his wife, poet Jean Hollander, is a unique collaboration that combines the virtues of maximum readability with complete fidelity to the original Italian-and to Dante's intentions and subtle shadings of meaning.  The book reflects Robert Hollander's faultless Dante scholarship and his nearly four decades' teaching experience at Princeton. The introduction, notes, and commentary on the poem cannot be matched for their depth of learning and usefulness for the lay reader. In addition, the book matches the English and Italian text on the Web site of the Princeton Dante Project, which also offers a voiced Italian reading, fuller-scale commentaries, and links to a database of some sixty Dante commentaries.

The Inferno opens the glories of Dante's epic wider for English speakers than any previous translation, and provides the interpretative apparatus for ever-deeper excursions into its endless layers of meaning and implication. It is truly a Dante for the new millennium.Amazon.com Review
Translation is always an imperfect art, demanding from its practitioners a level of dual fidelity that even a seasoned bigamist would envy. And nowork of art has prompted more in the way of earnest imperfection thanDante's Divine Comedy. Transforming those intricate, rhyme-richtercets into English has been the despair of many a distinguishedtranslator, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to W.S. Merwin (whose estimable rendition ofPurgatorio found the poet rattling over more than one linguisticspeed bump). Now comes a fresh rendition of the Inferno from ahusband-and-wife team. Robert Hollander, who has taught Dante for nearlyfour decades at Princeton, supplies the scholarly muscle, while his wife,poet Jean Hollander, attends to the verbal music.

How does their collaboration stack up? In his introduction, RobertHollander is quick to acknowledge his debt to John D. Sinclair's prose trot of 1939, and to theversion that CharlesSingleton derived largely from his predecessor's in 1970. Yet theHollanders have done us all a favor by throwing Sinclair'sfaux medievalisms overboard. And their predilection for direct,monosyllabic English sometimes brings them much closer to Dante's asperityand rhythmic urgency. One example will suffice. In the last line of CantoV, after listening to Francesca's adulterous aria, the poet faints: "Ecaddi come corpo morto cade." Sinclair's rendering---"I swooned as ifin death and dropped like a dead body"--has a kind of conditional mushinessto it. Compare the punchier rendition from the Hollanders: "And down I fellas a dead body falls." It sounds like an actual line of English verse,which is the least we can do for the supreme poet of our beleagueredcivilization.

Robert Hollander has also supplied an extensive and very welcomecommentary. There are times, perhaps, when he might have broken ranks withhis academic ancestors: why not deviate from Giorgio Petrocchi's 1967edition of the Italian text when he thinks that the great scholar wasbarking up the wrong tree? In any case, the Hollanders' Inferno is afine addition to the burgeoning bookshelf of Dante in English. It won'tdisplace the relatively recent verse translations by Robert Pinsky or AllenMandelbaum, and even John Ciardi's version, which sometimes substitutesbreeziness for accuracy, can probably hold its own here. But when it comesto high fidelity and exegetical generosity, this Inferno burnsbrightly indeed. --James Marcus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (31)

Dante's Inferno
My son is interested in reading all 3 of these books, so I ordered them all.Good quality and arrived in a timely fashion.

Bad Binding
The binding is really bad. The pages started to fall off soon after I bought the book.

I don't really like the translation. I would recommend Durling's translation.

Best available translation and commentary
The Hollander's have produced an translation and commentary on Dante that is thoughtful, poetic, and scholarly without being pedantic or overbearing.

If you buy only one translation of the Inferno...
If you buy only one translation of the Inferno, this one should be it.

Of course, if you like Dante, this won't be the only translation that you buy, but you absolutely must buy it. It's a remarkable translation and you certainly won't regret it!

I don't know why you'd buy any other edition...
Perhaps needless to say, Dante is very hard to translate into English. His terza rima, his hendecayllabic lines often mislabeled "iambic pentameter," his constant elisions, his fluid syntax--all of these things are relatively easy to accomplish in medieval Italian, but trying to mimic its beauty in American English is like trying to squeeze Walt Whitman into tailored Milanese couture. The Hollanders make no such attempts to stretch American English beyond its limits, instead opting for faith to the meaning of Dante's words and lucid English syntax that actually sounds like contemporary American poetry (if Louise Glück decided to write The Divine Comedy today, this is how it would read). What more could you ask for?

Facing the text of the Hollanders' translation is Dante's Italian, allowing the gorgeousness of his poetry to speak for itself. At the beginning of each canto is an outline giving a thorough summary of the plot, and at the end are wonderfully extensive notes offering Professor Hollander's and his peers' interpretations of the text. Some might prefer to have these notes at the back of the book or in a separate volume, but I happen to think their placement in this translation allows one to flip between the poem and the notes much more easily. I also agree with other reviewers' annoyance that Hollander's notes often tell one to read further elsewhere instead of just explaining what these other sources say, but I suppose there's only so much literary criticism one can fit between two covers. ... Read more

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While singly thus along the rim we walk'd, Oft the good master warn'd me: "Look thou well. Avail it that I caution thee." The sun Now all the western clime irradiate chang'd From azure tinct to white; and, as I pass'd, My passing shadow made the umber'd flame Burn ruddier. At so strange a sight I mark'd That many a spirit marvel'd on his way.
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Customer Reviews (1)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.Norton edition has great articles to help explain the work and is a great translation.The other great translation is by Mark Musa."The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters. Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Paradiso
After an initial ascension (Canto I), Beatrice guides Dante through the nine spheres of Heaven. These are concentric and spherical, similar to Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology.Dante admits that the vision of heaven he receives is the one that his human eyes permit him to see. Thus, the vision of heaven found in the Cantos is Dante's own personal vision, ambiguous in its true construction.The addition of a moral dimension means that a soul that has reached Paradise stops at the level applicable to it.Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their human ability to love God.Thus, there is a heavenly hierarchy. All parts of heaven are accessible to the heavenly soul.That is to say all experience God but there is a hierarchy in the sense that some souls are more spiritually developed than others.This is not determined by time or learning as such but by their proximity to God (how much they allow themselves to experience him above other things).It must be remembered in Dante's schema that all souls in Heaven are on some level always in contact with God.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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Climbing out of Hell, Dante in the Purgatorio reaches an island set in the southern ocean. This is Mount Purgatory, where he encounters the penitents who heroically endure their sufferings and speak of their time on Earth. Strange and fresh at every turn, Dante's narrative evokes the mountain landscape in terms of intense physical sensation, right up to the summit. There, before rising to heaven, he enters the Earthly Paradise, where he is movingly reunited with his lost love, Beatrice. This gloriously vivid portrayal of the search for redemption transformed the traditional conception of Purgatory and affirmed the dignity of human will and compassion. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

This is the Kirkpatrick, not the Hollander edition!
All the reviews so far are for the translation by Robert and Jean Hollander; however, this version is NOT their translation.It's a new version by Robin Kirkpatrick, which I've yet to see, so I can't comment on it, except to recommend others not rely on the reviews here too much, since they are of a different translation.

Hollander edition is great for first time or for studying
Whether you're reading the Comedy for the first time or you need it for a class, you can't go wrong with the Hollander edition.Each of the 3 books--Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso--includes a diagram of where Dante is going; an outline of each canto; side-by-side Italian/English translation; extensive, easy-to-read explanatory notes after each canto; and a couple of helpful indexes.These books are worth the money!

Wonderful, complete
Robert and Jean Hollander offer a complete line-by-line translation for the Inferno, Purgatorio, and the Paradisio. One page is the Italian verse and the page next to it is the exact same text translated into English. The end notes take up 3-4 pages after every canto. This is truly the best Commedia.

Best translation, to my knowledge.
My dad's friend, who teaches a class on Medieval literature at a local college, saw I was reading a different translation of the Divine Comedy, and recommended I get the Hollanders' version, claiming it was both the most accurate and the best to read. I'll have to take his word as far as being the most accurate, but I can say, of the three translations I've read, this one is by far the most enjoyable to read. They perfectly capture the mood, feel, and beauty of Dante, and I don't see any reason to ever read a different translation. Part of what makes the Hollanders' version superior are the wonderful explanatory notes and pre-chapter outlines, which guide you through the journey page by page, and make the journey that much more enjoyable. They notes, rather than being boring and confusing, are well written and enjoyable to read. Last but not least, the maps in the introductions to all of the books (maps of hell, purgatory, and paradise) really add to the feel of the journey Dante and Virgil take. I couldn't recommend this book more highly. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Kindle Description:
Beautifully Illustrated and ready for the Kindle. Dante's Inferno or the Complete works here known as "The Divine Comedy".

The Divine Comedy (Italian: La Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church. It helped establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard. It is divided into three parts, the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. ... Read more

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Finding Comedy in the Divine journey of Dante
The Divine Comedy (Italian: La Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature,and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.

Dante's Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul towards God, It is near the end of the line of this kind of thinking and art-- The Renaissance was developing in Italy as Dante wrote. It's a splendid poem (if shocking to modern sensibilities). It's one of the best and most serious works dealing with good and evil and God's justice in Western culture.
It's Dante's language that is direct, clear, powerful, and lends itself well to translation. ... Read more

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A stint in Purgatorio
"To run o'er better waters hoists its sail/The little vessel of my genius now,/That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel..."

Having finished his tour of hell and its residents, Dante Alighieri turns his attention to a more cheerful (if less juicy) supernatural realm. "Purgatorio" is less famous than its predecessor, but it's still a beautiful piece of work that explores the mindset not of the damned, but of sinners who are undergoing a divine cleansing -- beautiful, hopeful and a little sad.

Outside of Hell, Dante and Virgil encounter a small boat piloted by an angel and filled with human souls -- and unlike the damned, they're eager to find "the mountain." And as Hell had circles of damnation, Purgatory has terraces that the redeemable souls climb on their way towards Heaven, and none of the people there will leave their terrace until they are cleansed.

And the sins that are cleansed here are the seven deadly ones: the proud, the envious, the wrathful, the greedy, the lazy, the gluttonous, and the lustful. But as Dante moves slowly through the terraces, he finds himself gaining a new tour guide as he approaches Heaven...

I'll say this openly: the second part of the "Divine Comedy" is simply not as deliciously entertaining as "Inferno" -- it was kind of fun to see Dante skewering the corrupt people of his time, and describing the sort of grotesque punishments they merited. But while not as fun, "Purgatorio" is a more transcendent, hopeful kind of story since all the souls there will eventually be cleansed and make their way to Heaven.

As a result, "Purgatorio" is filled with a kind of eager anticipation -- there's flowers, stars, dancing, angelic ferrymen, mythic Grecian rivers and an army of souls who are all-too-eager to get to Purgatory so their purification can start. Alighieri's timeless poetry has a silken quality, from beginning to end ("Here let death's poetry arise to life!/O Muses sacrosanct whose liege I am/and let Calliope rise up and play") and it's crammed with classical references and Christian symbolism (the Sun's part in advancing the soiled souls).

And the trip through Purgatory seems to have a strong effect on Dante's self-insert, who appears less repulsed and more fascinated by what he sees there. It's hard not to feel sorry for him when the paternal Virgil exits the Comedy, but at least he has someone else appears to guide him.

What's more, this particular edition is good for people acquainted with fairly ye olde language. Longfellow's translation is lovely and has a beautifully antique flavor, but it isn't a good one for newbies.

The middle part of the Divine Comedy isn't as juicy as "Inferno," but the beauty of Dante Alighieri's writing makes up for it."Purgatorio" is a must read... and then on to Paradise. ... Read more

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To the groundbreaking series that began with Iliad (1997), and continued with Odyssey (2000) and Aeneid (2005), Stanley Lombardo now adds his translation of the first part of their most natural successor, Dante s great poetic synthesis of the classical pagan and medieval Christian traditions. Here is the Divine Comedy s most harrowing canticle, one whose fantastical Underworld setting, riveting plot line and dialogue, and remarkable range of diction offer perhaps the best vehicle yet for Lombardo s performance-based craft. Inferno takes to new heights the narrative skill and poetic virtuosity that have made him America s leading translator of epic literature.

In a brilliant Introduction that throws down an irresistible challenge to readers of the poem ( Questioning Inferno ), Steven Botterill also treats such topics as Dante and Our Life of Mind and Body, (Auto)Biography in Hell, and Dante the Politician, Dante the Poet, as well as others.

Headnotes that precede each canto, and endnotes both by Anthony Oldcorn give superb and stylish guidance to readers of Dante s enthralling but highly allusive poem, one in which God and the Devil are both in the details. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Master Translator
Next up, Mr. Lombardo will tackle Paradise Lost. Forthcoming from Hackett Press, complete with a picture of Alice Cooper on the cover.

Superb Notes
The translation is well done. The synopses at the beginning provide a helpful road map. The notes, by Anthony Oldcorn, are the best I have seen in a number of versions of Inferno. ... Read more

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"As poetry, Mr. Zappulla's English Dante is successful--. The power of Dante's descriptive poetry should be apparent, and that is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay a translator."--Washington Times

In this new rendition of a timeless classic, Italian scholar Elio Zappulla captures the majesty and enduring power of the Inferno, the first of the three canticles of Dante's The Divine Comedy, unarguably one of the masterpieces of world literature. Rendering Dante's terza rima into lyrical blank verse, Zappulla's translation makes accessible to the modern reader the journey of the famed Florentine poet Dante through the nine circles of hell. With Virgil at his side, the great poet descends through horrific landscapes of the damned--dark forests, boiling muck, and burning plains filled with unspeakable punishment, lamentation, and terror--depicted with gruesome detail unmatched in all literature. Richly annotated, this translation takes even the first-time reader on a truth-seeking journey whose imaginative and psychological discoveries make clear why this work persists at the heart of Western culture.

"If Dante's Inferno is a cautionary tale of the history of human depravity, it is also an amazingly complex narrative, treating timeless ethical themes, medieval philosophy and religion, tendentious political issues and deeply personal events."--San Diego Union-Tribune
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Customer Reviews (5)

Zappulla succeeds in his task
As mentioned above by the translator himself, Zappulla's aim in this book was to make a piece of classical literature accessible to those that are otherwise turned off by verse.This edition is one of few that summarizethe canto immediately after the verse, and give a good, general explanationof the allusions and meanings behind less obvious lines (2-5 pages of noteseach canto).For one inexperienced in reading Dante, I would suggestZappulla's free verse translation, and once the semantic and logisticalaspects of Inferno are understood, attempt a more stylized translation(maybe Pinsky's edition).And yes, it is well worth buying two copies ofthe "same" book, if you hope to have any more than a superficialunderstanding of the book.

Zappulla's "Inferno" is a joy to read.
There is a new band of translators who are trying to capture the feel of original cadence and language by applying the cadence and language of modern English. Strict translation is sacrificed for readability; this, inturn, is mitigated by plenty of clear notes and commentary. Elio Zappulla'snew iambic pentameter, unrhymed verse translation of "Inferno" byDante Alighieri succeeds as such a translation. It is a joy to read.Dante's 14th century masterpiece, one of the first major works to bewritten in the vernacular (of Italy), is appropriately translated into theordinary and occassionally coarse words of English. The result is anythingbut ordinary; sometimes reaching the extraordinary clarity afforded by theverse (over the prose). If you enjoyed Rober Fagles' translation of Homer's"Odyssey" or Everett Fox's translation of "The Five Books ofMoses", then you will breeze through Zappulla's "Inferno". Ihope that Zappulla is already preparing translations of"Purgatorio" and "Paradiso".

Zappulla's translation is the best I've seen.
Succinct, clear and artfully carved. Zappulla's translation masterfully balances beauty and simplicity. Highly recommended.

Captivating.The best translation out there.Bar none.
Elio Zappulla's translation of The Inferno is, in my mind, the clearest and most effective one to date...and I've read most of them, I assure you.Others have made Dante's work a chore to read.Zappulla makes it a joy. If you buy one book this year...first of all, you're obviously not readingenough...but if you buy one book this year, make it this one.It'll makeone helluva stocking stuffer. Bravo Mr. Zappulla. Continue with yourimportant work!

Zappulla's "Inferno" is a joy to read.
There is a new band of translators who are trying to capture the feel of original cadence and language by applying the cadence and language of modern English. Strict translation is sacrificed for readability; this, in turn, is mitigated by plenty of clear notes and commentary. Elio Zappulla's new iambic pentameter, unrhymed verse translation of "Inferno" by Dante Alighieri succeeds as such a translation. It is a joy to read. Dante's 14th century masterpiece, one of the first major works to be written in the vernacular (of Italy), is appropriately translated into the ordinary and occassionally coarse words of English. The result is anything but ordinary; sometimes reaching the extraordinary clarity afforded by the verse (over the prose). If you enjoyed Rober Fagles' translation of Homer's "Odyssey" or Everett Fox's translation of "The Five Books of Moses", then you will breeze through Zappulla's "Inferno". I hope that Zappulla is already preparing translations of "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso". --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other notes: The book is pleasantly typeset. The paintings by Gregory Gillespie are, unfortunately, an unnecessary distraction. I found the diagrams in a Carlyle-Okey-Wicksteed translation much more illuminating. ... Read more