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

Customer Reviews (6)

Sweet
There were no problems with the seller or the product. Would recommend purchasing from this seller.

Terrific way to read the Inferno
This parallel-text edition gives the Italian alongside Sinclair's translation, which is prose but gives you a close understanding of the Italian.The footnotes are helpful without overburdening the reader, and each canto ends with some good expatiatory commentary on each canto.This makes for a very nice reading of the piece for the general reader.

Modern trends
The Inferno is a timeless classic that continues to inspire young authors. I recently ran a cross a modern version of the book,, A Journey to hell and Back by Charlotte Johnson, based on one individuals modern journey through hell in the Z-shop.It is intriguing to read both books and discuss the modern use of metaphors and allegory with classic literature.It is alos a good way to keep teenagers interested in classical literature. I have included this book introduction to show the parallel structures.

Journey To Hell and Back
By Charlotte Johnson
Journey To Hell and Back is a gripping saga of a young woman's journey from adolescence to adulthood at an accelerated pace. This book is an exploration of a troubled teen's journey into the underworld to emerge as an independent, confident, and self-assured woman. Pitfalls, tragedy, and trials that lure a young honor student into the mean streets of Atlanta and finally, New York mark the story. Her journey to hell led her through a fiery furnace that burned 70 % of her body with 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and an over three months hospital stay where God provided personal consolation and healing. After God miraculously saved her from a life in the streets heaped with sin, her zeal for God resulted in her making additional mistakes, including renewing the abusive relationship that had almost cost her life.
The story is a modern day version of Dante's Inferno. Each layer of Hell corresponds with a new low in the protagonist's life. Finally, from within the very bowels of Hell, she cries out to the Lord for salvation.This spiritual epiphany becomes a turning point in her life, thrusting her forward from Hell. The tremendous suffering and miraculous ending of this book will offer hope and comfort for anyone suffering from loneliness, heartache, or disappointment. It provides a realistic and human perspective on many social topics such as teenage rebellion and pregnancy, domestic violence, divorce, AIDS, substance abuse, prostitution, and the legal system. It is a necessity for anyone who has been a part or will work with any of these populations.

Dante/Sinclair - A marriage made in heaven... (Or hell ?:)
La Commedia Divina is one of the cornerstones in litterature, and Sinclair's translation is, hands down, STILL the Primus Inter Pares of English translations of Dante Alighieri's work of genious. Sinclair's translation is based on even older source-material than Giorgio Petrocchi, but instead of trying to "get artistic" with Dante's original Terza Rima's, he stick to easily understood prose backed up with lots of elaborate notes, invaluable in understanding Dante's work fully.

Be sure to get the "Purgatorio" and "Paradisio" volumes too; they are equally essential.

"The divine comedy" is such a grand piece of work that it deserves to be read in different translations, but for God's sake, make the Sinclair version one of them... ...A good alternative is the Mark Musa translation.

Another good idea is to get the book "The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy", because, to me at least, the imagery of Doré has become an integral part in fully appreciating the medieval way of thinking, portraited in Dante's Comedy.

"La Commedia Divina" has had such an impact on me, that I at some point actually considered learning Italian to get the full splendour out of Dante's poetry... ...Well, there's still time...

Dante Translation Difficulties
Dante's Comedy is one of the three or four must-reads if you want to gain an understanding of mediaeval thought & culture. The problem is that Dante's Italian--because of the rhyme scheme & stanza structure--is simply not translatable into English. Our languagedoes not have enough rhymes avilable to use the same pattern as Dante, or anything like it. Many have tried--Longfellow, Sayers, Pinsky--& all have failed to some extent or other. Sinclair's prose translationtries to show you what Dante says, without trying to imitate his poetic structure.This, unfortunately, may be the best & only way to get a good feeling for the content & meaning of this remarkable work. Highly recommended--but if you're really interested in pursuing this further, try to learn some Italian. ... Read more

Product Description
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

Product Description
The New Life is the masterpiece of Dante's youth, an account of his love for Beatrice, the girl who was to become his lifelong muse, and of her tragic early death. An allegory of the soul's crisis and growth, combining prose and poetry, narrative and meditation, dreams and songs and prayers, this work of crystalline beauty and fascinating complexity has long taken its place as one of the supreme revelations in the literature of love.

The New Life is published here in the beautiful translation by the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an inspired poetic re-creation comparable to Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a classic in its own right. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A mythic love
The 'Vita Nuova' is more than anything else a prelude to 'The Divine Comedy'. The Beatrice Dante falls in love with and longs for is on the one hand a figure unattainable, the love- goddess of courtly love. On the other hand she is to become the very essence of the spiritual and to guide Dante later through the Paradiso of the Comedy. The real figure and her life who he falls in love with truly is transformed in myth and mind to a kind of image and essence of Divine Beauty.
As with Petrarch and his Laura the love Dante writes of ' La Vita Nuova' does not somehow strike me and move me in the deepest way, and seems somehow too literary and artificial. Lines of love of Rilke and Kafka sound more authentic to me, but perhaps this is because I am apoor reader and no medievalist.
In any case this is a small classic which is prelude to a far greater one. And the real Beatrice is a small figure beside the mythic one Dante will transform into a literary immortal.

What has never been written of any other woman
Genuine romance and passion is missing from most books, either fiction or nonfiction, and I don't think I've ever come across both in such quantity as there is in "La Vita Nuova" (translation: The New Life), the unsung masterpiece of poet Dante Alighieri (who wrote the classic Divina Comedia).

It is a series of poems centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years. Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings (grief, adoration, fear) into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

I have never in my life read a book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova"; it's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. It's only a little over a hundred pages long, but it's a truly unique love story. Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova"; Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. (We don't hear of any real details about her) And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. (And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality)

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or true passion. Not the sort of stuff in pulp romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul, in a unique and unusual love story. Every true romantic should read this book. ... Read more

Product Description
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.
... Read more

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.
... 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

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Interesting for multiple reasons
This book probably couldn't be labeled as overly entertaining, but it is very interesting. For one thing, it's the very first biography of Dante. Even more importantly, it's written by Giovanni Boccaccio, one of the great luminaries of Italian literature. As far as I know, no other biography written by one literary genius about another exists.

I was pleased to find a lot of material and anecdotes in it that I had also found in modern biographies. I also enjoyed reading firsthand the adoration that Dante's people poured upon him so soon after "The Divine Comedy" was written.

There are a few things in the book that might surprise modern readers. The supposed unhappiness of Dante's marriage is talked about for quite some time, despite Boccaccio acknowledging that he has no evidence of marital troubles besides his (Boccaccio's) own personal misogyny. Also, medieval literary theory and Boccaccio's opinions on literature sidetrack the narrative a bit, but that is simply how biographies were written at the time.

The only thing I don't like and can't explain is why the publishers included a story from "The Decameron" at the end of the book. The tale isn't about Dante and does not add to the biography.

When a son of Florence writes about another son of Florence
"The Life of Dante", by Giovanni Boccaccio, is aptly described in the introduction by J.G. Nichols, at the beginning of this edition, as the "first modern literary biography", which is true, to some extent. Yet, in a time when a string of biographies written on more or less famous people seems to have, as only purpose, the crude expositions of mildly interesting (if at all) juicy tidbits, and this usually in a poor prose, this book, written in the 14th century by the author of the "Decameron", is at the same time light-hearted, poetic and informative. It gives us not only an insight into Dante's life, work and personality, but also into that of Boccaccio (and his infamous aversion to marriage, at least to that of the 'philosophers') and into the Florence both knew.

But most important and touching I think is the honest love for Dante's works and admiration for the man that are on display in every page, even when Boccaccio addresses Dante's faults. And of course, the style of the Florentine, one of the great writers behind the foundation of the Italian literature, only adds to the interest of this biography. A very refreshing reading, and a must for those of you who are at least curious about one of the major masterpieces of European literature and the man behind it.

One literary master on another
Invaluable to anyone interested in Italian literature, Dante or Boccaccio. Boccaccio, of course was a great admirer of Dante's, wrote a commentary on the Divine Comedy and was greatly influenced by him. Writing at a time when Dante was not given the respect he has since (surely inevitably) gained, Boccaccio wrote this biography of him, pointing out his great merits as a person, poet, and political figure. It's fascinating to see the results, with insights on every page into both Dante, Boccaccio, and also Florentine society of the time. There are wonderful stories about Dante to illustrate his peculiarities as a man - I particularly enjoyed the story of him vandalising a workman's tools for misquoting the Comedy. Highly recommended.

Bio the way it was ment to be
More than a simple biography, Boccaccio's The Life of Dante is an ode to a master by his pupil.Not only does the book tell the tale of Dante's life, it illustrates nicely Italian life and politics.The biography is short and fast paced.The reader can actually feel the author's love of his subject seeping off the pages. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

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

Product Description
"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
... Read more

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

Product Description
At the pinnacle of a grand and prolific career, W. S. Merwin has given us a shimmering new verse translation of the central section of Dante's Divine Comedy -- the Purgatorio.

Led by Virgil, inspired by his love for Beatrice, Dante makes the arduous journey up the Mountain of Purgatory, where souls are cleansed to prepare them for the ultimate ascent to heaven.Presented with the original Italian text, and with Merwin's notes and commentary, this luminous new interpretation of Dante's great poem of sin, repentance, and salvation is a profoundly moving work of art and the definitive translation for our time.
Amazon.com Review
In the foreword to his version of the Purgatorio, W.S. Merwin dwellson the quasi-insuperable hurdles that any translator of Dante must face.Choosing just a single line from the first canticle, he asks: "How couldthat, then, really be translated? It could not, of course." Thismakes Dante's masterpiece sound like the literary equivalent of Mission:Impossible ("Your mission, Mr. Merwin, should you choose to acceptit...") Happily, however, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet decided to give ita try. He spent several years wrestling with Dante's inexhaustible tercets,and rather than applying himself to the fire-and-brimstone-scented thrillsof the Inferno, Merwin turned to the middle and most humane portionof the entire work: Purgatorio. It's here, in a kind of spiritualhalfway house between heaven and hell, that the poem reaches a peak oftenderness and regret--and rises quite literally from the dead.

Merwin's version must be measured against a good many predecessors, fromJohn Ciardi's reader-friendlyapproach to Allen Mandelbaum's free-versifying to CharlesSingleton's prosaic trot.How does this Purgatorio stack up? Very decently indeed. Merwin issomething of a strict constructionist, who wants to hew as closely aspossible to the syntax and sound of the original Italian. Yet he's noNabokovian naysayer, slapping himself on the wrist every time he deviatesfrom Dante's text, and he's wisely thrown the rhymes overboard. That leaveshim with enough flexibility to echo some of the poem's loveliest effects:

A sweet air that within itself was
unvarying struck me on the forehead,
a stroke no rougher than a gentle breeze,

at which the trembling branches all together
bent at once in that direction where
the holy mountain casts its first shadow,

without ever leaning over so far from
the upright as to make the small birds stop
the practice of their art in the treetops...

Customer Reviews (3)

among the most brilliant poetry ever written
I think the reason the Inferno is the most popular canzone of Dante's Divine Comedy is just that it's where to start with Dante's amazing incredible eternal epic.Also the Inferno has more shoot-em-up sort of action than the other 2, Purgatorio & Paradiso.Purgatory is of such poetic brilliance; it's full of poetic philosophy from Dante's critical genius, & beautiful scenes, interesting spirits -- a feeling wholly different from the grimness of the Inferno.& W. S. Merwin too is brilliant & masterful enough for a repartee with the medieval guru.Merwin is a poet & translator whose verbal & syntactical decisions you can trust.He renders Purgatorio with great exciting faithfulness to Dante's original language, with mellifluous music, with merit worthy of the high praise this has gotten from Robert Pinsky, Harold Bloom, & others.The Comedy is notoriously difficult to translate, & this is one of the best translations of Purgatorio into English ever, I'm sure.

A beautiful translation of a beautiful poem.
One of the greatest literary tragedies is that so many readers believe that the Divine Comedy, or that even Dante himself, is no more than the Inferno.Such ignorance leads to a vast reading public who have never experienced the most immediately human section of the Comedy: the Purgatorio.Unlike Inferno, which is full of characters whom we either revile or pity, Purgatorio introduces us to spirits who, like most of us, try to do the right thing, but aren't always successful.If we look down upon the shades in Hell, we identify with the shades in Purgatory, and it is in this understanding that the Purgatorio gains its beauty.An absolute must read for anyone with any interest in literature, history, theology, spirituality, philosophy, psychiatry, or beauty.

As for Merwin's translation, he has managed to take a giant step in solving the problem that I mentioned above.His translation does justice to the original not only in its accuracy, but in its poetry, which is so important to Dante's works.I have read two other translations of Purgatorio (Mandelbaum and Ciardi), and this is, by far, the most readable and the most engaging of the three.Merwin captures the hopeful but unfilled tone of the poem with considerable grace while still maintaining the structural and thematic tension that are crucial to an understanding of Dante's works. As for the scholarly aspects of the work, scholastics, clearly, were not Merwin's intent.His explanatory notes are minimal (which is preferable to Mandelbaum's copious, and sometimes condescending glosses) and the foreword is more an exploration of the art of translation than of Dante's work.Not that this is a bad thing.Understanding Merwin's reservations concerning translation, and the difficulties of performing it, makes his version of Purgatorio all the more human and touching.But, any reader seeking critical commentary should look elsewhere (and by elsewhere I mean a supplemental source as passing over this translation just because it lacks scholarly material would be criminal).Whether for readers experiencing Purgatorio for the first time, or for Dante aficionados, I can't recomend this volume highly enough.First, Pinsky's Inferno, then Merwin's Purgatorio, now, if only someone would do Paradiso similar justice!

Beautiful Forward
I will confess that I haven't had a chance to read Merwin's entire translation of Dante's _Purgatorio_, though I have read about a third to this point.I will say, though, that I have read his Forward, and I foundit to be one of the more moving testaments to the emotional, spiritual, andintellectual impact that the _Commedia_ has had on readers, poets andnon-poets alike, through the ages. There isn't much new information for theDante scholar--Merwin acknowledges that his notes are largely based onSingleton's--but this is a translation written out of love, not necessarilyscholarship.This is Merwin's editon for the lover of both poets andpoetry ... Read more

Product Description
_The Divine Comedy_ is perhaps the greatest Christianclassic ever written, and probably the greatest adveture story evertold.Dante wrote it to entertain, guide, and enrich ordinaryreaders, not just the intellectual elite.This clear new version withunique aids makes the fascinating story accessible to such readerstoday.

Those who love Dante best as a storyteller and teacher will find inthis book what they have been waiting for...the freshest, clearest,most exact, and most readable Divine Comedy in the English language,with full-page illustrations and original notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Treatment of a Classic
Lindskoog does an excellent job with the translation and analysis of this book.This would be an excellent version of The Inferno for anyone not familiar with Dante's prolific use of analogy and historical reference.Irecommend this version with my full confidence that any reader will find itenjoyable and informative.

Lucid editing provides a thrilling excursion
I'm sure I must have given up on my original copy of DIVINE COMEDY after "Inferno." But the lucid editing of this edition, with abundant footnotes, make clear and easy that which I could never decipher. WithVirgil, Beatrice & Kathryn leading the way, the trip through Inferno,Purgatory & Paradise was a thrilling excursion. ... Read more

Product Description
This is The Divine Comedy - Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri in it's original Italian with a line by line English Translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This edition has been carefully edited with an easy to use Table of Contents linking you to each Canto. Also included is a short synopsis at the end of each Canto. The original illustrations by Gustave Dore are inserted throughout. Because of the large amount of content, The Divine Comedy has been issued in 3 volumes. This is the second volume - Purgatorio - Purgatory. All three volumes have been issued simultaneously so you can acquire the complete set.

This is a sample of the easy to read dual language format used in this issue. Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in 3 line stanzas with triple rime and this format has been maintained throughout.

1. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
1. Midway upon the journey of our life

2. mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
2. I found myself within a forest dark,

3. che' la diritta via era smarrita.
3. For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

4. Ahi quanto a dir qual era e` cosa dura
4. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

5. esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
5. What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

6. che nel pensier rinova la paura!
6. Which in the very thought renews the fear.


7. Tant'e` amara che poco e` piu` morte;
7. So bitter is it, death is little more;

8. ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
8. But of the good to treat, which there I found,

9. diro` de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.
9. Speak will I of the other things I saw there. ... 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

Product Description
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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IN the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death. ... Read more

Product Description
General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1846Original Publisher: Printed by Felix Le MonnierSubjects: Authors, ItalianFiction / ClassicsLiterary Collections / GeneralLiterary Criticism / GeneralLiterary Criticism / European / ItalianPoetry / Continental EuropeanNotes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free.Excerpt: SOETTO DI GlIDO CAVALCANTl,'Vedesti al mio parere ogni valore,E tutto gioco, e quanto ben uom sente, Se fusti in pruova del signor valente, Che signoreggia il mondo de 1'onore; Poi vive in parte, dove noia muore; E tien ragion ne la pietosa mente: Si va soave ne' sonni a la gente, Che i cor ne porta senza far romore. Di te lo core ne porto; veggendoChe la tua donna la niorte chiedea, Nudrilla dello cor, di cio temendo. Quando t'apparve, che ne gia dogliendo, Fu dolce sono, ch'allor si compiea, Che '1 suo contrario lo venia vincendo. ' Prcso il. ill' edizione dclle Rime di Cavalcanti pubblicata da Ant. Ciccia- )iorci, Fircnze 1613, iu-8, ma collc variant! del Codice Vaticauo 3214, ocl 1842 da Salvatore Betti, le quall ammcgliorano la lezione.The three following Sonnets are the answers returned to the first Sonnet of Dante, the meaning of the original is not always clear, but it is amusing to see the different views of men of talent on the same subject, in those days.SONNET BY GII1DO CAVALCANTI.1Thou saw'st all power (so does my judgment say) And joy, and every good which man can know, If thou wert tried by that great sovreign, who Throughout the world of honor holds his sway, Who dwells where every sorrow dies away, And o'er the gentle mind has influence too. Softly midst pleasing slumbers doth he go, And then abstracts men's hea... ... 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

Product Description
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

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Dante Alighieri - Illustrations; Art / Techniques / Cartooning; Art / Design / Book; Crafts ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Let me guess - you read Pearl's Dante Club</>, right?
And now you want to read the Longfellow translation you heard so much about in that great book. Only do so if you've read a more contemporary translation of Dante and you really enjoy the Comeddia. If you're unfamiliar with Dante, Longfellow's translation is old enough (and often intentionally more archaic than the poet really had to be) to increase the distance between the reader and that venerable Florentine. Further, in this particular edition, there are no notes, so I might really want to suggest that you only purchase this edition if you're very familiar with everything in the Comedy and won't feel lost every other tercet at the Classical, Biblical, and contemporary (to Dante) allusions and characters.

If you've never read the Comedy before, I have two things to say to you: 1) Don't make the mistake of only reading the Inferno just because so many modern translators have only bothered with it, and 2) pursuant to the above, I recommend the relatively new translation by Anthony Esolen (available in three volumes) or the darned-near-as-good translation by Alan Mandelbaum. ... 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

Customer Reviews (1)

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