Product Description
Publisher: London ; New York : MacmillanPublication date: 1892Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.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. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Standard Edition of Dante
I want to explore what makes for a good edition of a classic work such as this. First, of course, is the value of the translation itself. Dr. Esolen's is a superior translation to the others readily available, including that by John Ciardi. I have tried numerous times to read Ciardi's rendering, wanting very much to like it, but in the end I found his rhythm forced and his efforts even at approximate rhyme unsatisfying. Simply put, his lines do not flow. By contrast, Esolen's lines not only flow, but propel the reader onward through the narrative, which is no small feat given the many places throughout the rings of Hell and along the ascent of Mount Purgatory where that attention could stall.

This would be enough to commend the translation, but there is more that makes this Modern Library a superlative edition. His introduction does an extraordinary job of explaining what Purgatory is and is not. In so doing, he has provided an invaluable aid not only to the non-Catholic reader, but likely to the Catholic reader as well, who may not have the best understanding of this wonderful aspect of life after death. Yes, I say it is wonderful based on Esolen's introduction, but I shall leave the reasons for that until another post. For the moment I will conclude by saying that based on his introduction alone, one could not help but marvel at the love of God, desire that love ever more ardently, and see in the gift of Purgatory one more expression of that love.

For such a reasonably priced and slender book, Dr. Esolen manages to include the most helpful appendices and notes. Two appendices contain selections from Aquinas that give insight into Dante's theology. One includes samples of Medieval poetry by poets whom Dante encounters. A fourth appendix includes relevant selections from the Church Fathers on Purgatory, and a fifth presents the full text of various Latin songs and prayers in translation that are sung and prayed by the souls that Dante meets.

Finally, the notes for each canto are all, but only, what a reader needs. To annotate sufficiently the vast number of contemporary references that Dante makes, to say nothing of his ancient allusions, would be a daunting task. Dr. Esolen, however, has provided the reader with just what he needs to make sense of the poem without burdening him with superfluous facts.

As with his Inferno, Dr. Esolen has produced an outstanding edition of Purgatory. In many ways it is like having a university course in Dante in the pages of a book.

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.

Purgatorio
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem).The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere.At the shores of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil are attracted by a musical performance by Casella, but are reprimanded by Cato, a pagan who has been placed by God as the general guardian of the approach to the mountain.The text gives no indication whether or not Cato's soul is destined for heaven: his symbolic significance has been much debated.(Cantos I and II).

Dante starts the ascent on Mount Purgatory.On the lower slopes (designated as "ante-Purgatory" by commentators) Dante meets first a group of excommunicates, detained for a period thirty times as long as their period of contumacy.Ascending higher, he encounters those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths (often due to leading extremely sinful lives).These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth (Cantos III through VI).Finally, Dante is shown a beautiful valley where he sees the lately-deceased monarchs of the great nations of Europe, and a number of other persons whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

The gate of Purgatory is guarded by an angel who uses the point of his sword to draw the letter "P" (signifying peccatum, sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, abjuring him to "wash you those wounds within".The angel uses two keys, gold and silver, to open the gate and warns Dante not to look back, lest he should find himself outside the gate again, symbolizing Dante having to overcome and rise above the hell that he has just left and thusly leaving his sinning ways behind him.From there, Virgil guides the pilgrim Dante through the seven terraces of Purgatory.These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace purging a particular sin in an appropriate manner.Those in purgatory can leave their circle whenever they like, but essentially there is an honors system where no one leaves until they have corrected the nature within themselves that caused them to commit that sin. Souls can only move upwards and never backwards, since the intent of Purgatory is for souls to ascend towards God in Heaven, and can ascend only during daylight hours, since the light of God is the only true guidance.

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

Customer Reviews (5)

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.

Difficult text, rendered well
I am not a professional Dante scholar, and in fact, speak no Italian at all, so my judgement as to the accuracy of the translation is suspect. That said, Musa does an admirable job of helping the reader understand this very difficult final third of the Divine Comedy. Of the three sections of the Comedy, my feeling is that Paradise is the least interesting, though it would be a shame to read the first two parts and neglect the third, since they all are integral to understanding what Dante was trying to accomplish. But the characters in Paradise are all literally perfect and sinless, and there is not nearly as much of interest as in the other books. There is a lot of symbolism involving what shapes the saints stand in and the like, but its all rather trying and sometimes monotonous, to me anyway. Musa is a good guide though. The translation smartly abandons any hope of recreating Rima Terza, and goes with a straight blank verse rendering. The translation is subtle and effective, even when the poem itself is slow and tedious. Despite my beliefs about Paradise, both history and personal experience tell me that Divine Comedy is an important and fulfilling part of the Western Canon that should not go neglected. I have no problem recommending Musa's version of Paradise.

Wonderful, Informative, Scary Story
My interest in classic literature did not arise until recently. I read many reviews which indicated that people with this such interest absolutely MUST read Dante's Inferno. With that hefty weight upon my "newbie" shoulders I decided to undergo the journey that so many others have made over the last 700 years.

As it turns out, Mark Musa's translation of Inferno is fantastic. Each chapter begins with a very brief but informative synopsis, followed by the prose, then finally capped off my Musa's notes on the text. Musa's notes give backgroud on all of the characters and situations that take place throughout the story. These notes are a MUST for any newcomer to Dante and classical literature in general. So, not only is there the original text in English for us non-Italian speakers, but there are notes to increase the readers comprehension.

Dante is guided by the author of the Aeneid, Virgil.Virgil takes Dante through the Nine Levels of Hell to show him the pain and suffering of all those who do not love and follow God.Dante learns a great deal on this journey as does the reader.

Mark Musa's translation of Dante is smooth, entertaining, and very informative. Anyone interested in Christianity, Hell, famous Greeks, and classical literature should definitely indulge themselves as this translation is not overwhelming in the slightest. Five stars across the board.

I understood the grace and beauty
The pilgrim's journey continues to heaven.

If you, like me, are intimidated by Dante but are interested in these great works of Western Literature, you now have an accessible translation of the Divine Comedy.Musa's translation communicates the divinity of the events in the story onan understandable level. The Divine Comedy colored my perception ofreligion and helped me to a new understanding of the harmony ofresponsibility and grace. The work also educates the reader in an enrichingway about the belief system of the middle ages.

Don't miss this book anddon't read any other translation.

Divine Comedy : Paradise
In this translation of paradise, Mark Musa exhibits the same sensitivity to language and knowledge of translation that enabled his versions of the Inferno and Purgatory to caputure the vibrant powers of Dantes poetry.Thats what it says on the back of the book and boy you couldnt have said itbetter than that.This book is by far better than the first and a perfectsequel to the secound translation.Mark Musa puts Dante's complex poetryinto plain english so that even a common student like myself canunderstand.I think anyone who likes Dantes interpretations about lifewill love this addition to his work. ... 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

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
This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Dante is designed to provide an accessible introduction to Dante for students, teachers and general readers. The volume has been fully updated to take account of the most up-to-date scholarship and includes three new essays on Dante's works. The suggestions for further reading now include the most recent secondary works and translations as well as online resources. The essays cover Dante's early works and their relation to the Commedia, his literary antecedents, both vernacular and classical, biblical and theological influences, the historical and political dimensions of Dante's works, and their reception. In addition there are introductory essays to each of the three canticles of the Commedia that analyse their themes and style. This new edition will ensure that the Companion continues to be the most useful single volume for new generations of students of Dante. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Essential
No literary work, other than the Bible, has been the subject of (or needed) so many commentaries and notes as Dante's Commedia.If you are looking to really appreciate the poem, I'd recommend reading it first, then reading this "companion" then returning to reread the poem.Let this book be your Virgil.

Kindle ed. : Worth every penny
The endnotes don't link, but that isn't really an issue because they are at the end of each chapter and 90% of the time only give reference to other books. I know that is important, but not to the actual reading.I just bookmark the page as I get to it if it contains a book I want to reference.Or I highlight, add note ect.The book has a couple of format issues, but really small, gaps in strange places, line breaks out of place.But these are few and far between.It is a great collection of essays on the Divine Comedy that really increases the understanding of the readings.I highly recommend it. I don't have the paper copy, only the Kindle, and I am very glad to have it.It is in my top 5 favorite Amazon purchases.

Slightly dated scholarship for the penny-wise
This is an able commentary to Dante, but make sure you are clear on which edition you are purchasing: the most recent (as of this review) is a March 2007 version.Sufficient edits, insights and scholarly arguments (let's not quite call them developments) exist in the 14 years between publications to make it worth being certain what you're buying before you buy.

Then again - the 1993 edition is available used for under three bucks, while the 2007 edition ranges from $25 to $50.So... choose your priority.

The Cambridge Companion to Dante - Inferno
Dante criticism has a life of its own: call it vegetable. Then again, this has been the case almost since Dante first wrote his Commedia. Though not the best text for one intending to leap into the Inferno for the first time, this canto by canto commentary, an able addition to the mountain of Dante scholarship, provides clear, interesting, scholarly help to anyone who has spent time with Dante as scholar or teacher or interested reader.

Helpful for scholars and just plain readers
This companion is an excellent guide to Dante's life, work, and thought.It is especially useful for those readers of the Comedy who want more information on specific allusions than most footnoted editions can supply.It is also helpful for an understanding of the complex political and religious turmoils in which Dante was embroiled, and which showed up continuously throughout his work. ... 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.
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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.
... 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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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
Throughout his life, the famed 14th-century poet Dante was politically active, often choosing the wrong side in internecine battles of the ruling families, forcing him constantly to abandon his family and even his country while seeking refuge. Finally his poetry won him peace and patronage in Ravenna. His one daughter, Beatrice, attended him during the last few years of his life and eventually became a Dominican nun. Kimberley Heuston, a historian by training and winner of The Washington Post's 2002 Top 10 Kids Books Award, has meticulously researched Dante's life and times in order to create this fictional account of the great poet's daughter in the decades preceding the Italian Renaissance. In lush detail, she traces the life of an intelligent and talented young woman in a time when a woman's role required neither intelligence nor talent. In spite of that, Beatrice traveled extensively, learned an art, and devoted her full life to her work and her god. Dante's Daughter brings a human scale to famous figures of history, and breathes life into the events of those turbulent times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Surprisingly good.
I had to read a book for summer reading and I came across this one. I decided to give it a try because I am a huge fan of the Victorian type era whith romance and independence and I wassurprised that I liked it so much because I thought it would be all abotu the society during those times. I found it a bit boring in certain parts but overall, it was good. Give it a try.

Beautiful writing, but story went on too long...
As someone who loves history and historical fiction and who was eager to learn more about the great poet, Dante, I find my feelings after reading this book, at best, ambivalent. The book description was certainly right about the author's richly detailed rendering of the story of Antonia Alighieri. Stylistically, Heuston's writing is beautifully artful and fluid, so fluid that, regrettably, I found myself jarred on more than one occasion when an un-artfully modernized phrase unexpectedly leapt off the page at me just when I was most entranced. She also had a tendency, particularly in the early chapters of the book, of scattering Italian words in the text without definition or even sufficient context to hazard a guess at their meaning. I found this a bit annoying and pretentious, but thankfully as the story wove on, this happened with a good deal less frequency and more sympathy for the reader in adding definitions and contexts.

Dante's daughter, Antonia, tells the story of her life in a first person account. Despite the book cover's description of Dante as an "inattentive, difficult father", for me, the book glowed most sympathetically whenever Dante appeared on the scene. Though frequently forced away from his family by unwisely chosen political allegiances, he always came across to me as a man who loved his family, treating them all with great kindness and tolerance, more than I felt was reciprocated by his wife, sons, and daughter, Antonia. (Though his sons appear briefly in the book, they are never prominent enough to capture a reader's attention in any true depth.) Admittedly, for much of the book, Antonia is a child and young woman who might be forgiven for being so focused on her own feelings that she only rarely seems able to reach beyond them to empathize in any form with a "difficult father" who nevertheless displayed touching instances of love, attention, and encouragement for her in return. If others tried to turn her from her heart's desire to paint, Dante, in this book, was not one of them.

The amount of detailed research that went into this book, while to be admired, ultimately threatened to overwhelm the story for me. I felt the last few chapters particularly began to drag, as I began to wonder if we would ever reach the end of Antonia's "life's journey".

A "life lived in full"became, for me, a life lived much too full, nearly to the point of unbelievability (and sadly, knocking on the door of boredom) to me by the end of the book. In my opinion, the story would have benefited by a less broad, and more focused, approach in the telling. And ultimately, I found small evidence that the answer to the questions posed by Antonia at the beginning: "Had my journey made me wise? Had my secret griefs made me strong?" were "Yes".

To her credit, Heuston did successfully stir my interest to learn more about the "real" Dante. After reading a few of her chapters one night, I stayed up till 3 AM, researching him in some of my medieval encyclopedias. I suspect I will be buying a non-fiction biography of him soon.

Dante's Daughter is billed as a Young Adult book for grades 10-12. As a way to acquaint high school readers with pre-Renaissance Europe, this would probably be less painful than a dry old school textbook. But for entertainment, it will take a serious young reader to read such a seriously earnest book all the way to the end.

Remarkable window on dante's world
What a great novel for young adults and on up.Effortless writing of beautiful clarity.Richly evocative and historically accurate details of life in pre-renaissance Florence, Siena and Paris.Vivid characterizations of stubborn, likeable Antonia and her family, including her famous father Dante.All these combine to give us a great window on the milieu surrounding the writing of one of the world's great masterpeices (Dante's Divine Comedy).But it is the human interactions, especially between Antonia's parents, and Antonia's own timeless struggle to know herself and her place in the world (though it is at the same time a struggle beautifully representative of her time) that make this book glow with the pure color and clarity of a painting by Duccio or Giotto, artists Antonia lived among.I can't wait to pass this book around.If only I'd had it years ago to introduce middle school students to Dante's world--the depiction of the Guelphs' and Ghibellines' ferociously intertwined enmity would have been priceless in itself.

What a historical novel should be.
This is a beautiful book - a lot of fun and good food for thought.The prose is excellent. Since little is known about Dante's daughter Antonia, the author is free to tell her own story and she uses this freedom well.At the same time, she captures the flavor of a far-off time and place, where owning three dresses is amazing luxury for a small girl and it takes months to travel from Italy to Paris.We also get a feel for such places as war-torn Florence where houses are fortresses, a decadent Provencal court where lords play ball with oranges, and the peace and loveliness of a community of beguines outside Paris. I'm sure this is all meticulously researched, but it adds to the story rather than detracting from it.

Incidentally, you may not know what a beguine is - I didn't either before reading this book.It's just one of the many things I learned quite painlessly.They were women who took reversible vows of chastity but not poverty and lived in a walled village where they engaged in small businesses - a shocking idea in an age where choices for unmarried women were few and stark.

Women's lives are a major theme of this book, yet without any anachronistic imposition of modern feminism as so many historical novels have.What Antonia and her female relatives think is very probably what women of that age did think, but could not write about, since they were usually illiterate or too busy to write.

We also learn a great deal about Antonia's famous father Dante Alighieri, his writings and his political career.It makes me want to read his Divine Comedy.I also realized for the first time what a bold idea he had in that book, writing about a number of people he had known and who had died quite recently, and assigning them to Hell, Purgatory, or Paradise.Nowadays I suppose their families would sue him.It's amazing he didn't have any more enemies than he did.

Antonia is an artist, too, but with paint rather than words, and gives us a window on some of the great painters of the end of the Middle Ages in Italy, who would soon give birth to the Renaissance.

This book also has a lot to say about broken families, and relationships that break down because people of good will fail to understand each other.

All in all, I recommend this book highly both for teenagers and adults. ... 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
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

Product Description
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
The New York Times Bestseller

Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes in Dante’s Inferno. Only an elite group of America’s first Dante scholars—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J. T. Fields—can solve the mystery. With the police baffled, more lives endangered, and Dante’s literary future at stake, the Dante Club must shed its sheltered literary existence and find the killer.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (348)

A New Experience in Historical Fiction
Last night I finished The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl. This was a novel recommended by my father. The premise of the story was indeed intriguing.

Set in 1865 Boston, our main characters are actual historical figures: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, J. T. Fields, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. These literary masters are collaborating together to translate Dante's Commedia into English, amidst the opposition of the more conservative Board of Directors at Harvard College. Their "Dante Club" becomes involved in so much more, however, when gruesome murders occur among Boston's elite.

These murders bear a horrifying similarity to the punishments Dante invisions in his Inferno, his journey into Hell. The Club begins a race with the murderer, whom they name "Lucifer", in a frantic effort to find him before he kills again.

This novel had many twists and turns, and I was surprised in the end! Pearl is a very detailed writer. The content of his novel, having one foot in history and the other in fiction, requires a delicate balance of explanation and story-telling. It was not a quick read, and not a book where I could allow my mind to wander at all as I read. There were times when Pearl's descriptive powers were almost overwhelming, as he described the sickening murders.

So I would recommend this book with reservations. If you have an affinity for the great American poets, for ancient literature (namely Dante's Divine Comedy), for a wickedly complicated mystery, and a strong stomach, you will be drawn into The Dante Club, and find yourself caught up in the emotions of the group just as I was.

Karina Harris, author of "Second Chance"

Finally!An author.. that lifts the reader UP.. and doesn't dumb it down!
Bought "The Dante Club" on a whim.. and now.. I realize.. the universe DEMANDS this book be read!Taking REAL people in history.. and bringing them to life.. in such a way.. that historians today.. wouldn't DARE even consider!

Now, that I've been properly nudged in the right direction.. I am SO thankful to see.. that there are several Matthew Pearl books.. that I've not read!!!Oh, the joy of knowing.. many weeks of GOOD reading are ahead!!

Onwards to the Nexus!

Not-So-Predictable Murder-Mystery
For those who loves Dante's Inferno, civil war history, and murder-mysteries.The read takes some getting used to b/c it's a bit slow in the beginning and everybody talks like Stewie from the Family Guy, though the book keeps you guessing until the end.

good read, with minor flaws
Synopsis: If you ask some of the major literary figures, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Dante to get together to solve a mysterious murder case, and you were wondering how it would play out, this novel would be your answer. The Dante Club is a novel full of history, literature, suspense, and fast-paced thrill.

Review: First of all, kudos to the author for making such a unique and intriguing premise, and for starring these real life characters in a fiction story. Another kudos for the fact that it truly came off that the author did a thorough and careful research. Historical facts were stated, characters were on-point, there were barely any plot holes at all, etc. Also, the way the author wrote and talked about the setting was good too. I was able to really picture Boston (I have never actually been there) right after the Civil War. I think it had most to do with the author's way of writing his details and descriptions, without really giving too much information. I liked that it was subtle, but direct.

I do have minor complaints though. There were some situations and events that were too over the top or exaggerated. Another thing that I thought was too over the top were the other characters aside from the four main ones. The others were all pretty much based off stereotypical nonsense. Because of these negative aspects, I didn't find any of these very believable, and so I had a hard time relating myself to the book and completely immerse myself to it.

Please don't get me wrong though. This book is not terrible. I can't even say that it was bad. It has its good points and it also has its bad points. I liked it in a way, simply because it was interesting and fast-paced. I also do recommend it, but only to certain readers. If you like historical fiction, and if the plot itself about the four literary characters intrigue you, then go for it. If you are neither though, I really do suggest you skip this one.

men of mystery
Since this book of life imitating art was billed as a literary mystery, I had great expectations but was a trifle disappointed.I didn't mind that it was somewhat gory, but it was a bit too slow-paced.The title refers to a group of men, including Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell, who are assisting Longfellow in the first American translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in Boston.Oddly enough, the Harvard board has some objections to this work, due to anti-Catholic sentiment and because Italian is a modern language and therefore not worth studying.The Dante Club soon realizes that several local murders are apparently inspired by Dante's Inferno and that they may become suspects.Consequently, they embark on some clandestine investigations of their own.The source of the leak of Dante information is very obvious, but the identity of the real culprit, whom they dub "Lucifer," is not.Still, the book is not particularly suspenseful, although the casting of Longfellow as an amateur sleuth is refreshing, I guess.The author does do a good job of evoking the post-Civil War times, and his expansion of the personalities of well-known poets is entertaining. ... Read more