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The Inferno is the first part of The Divine Comedy, Dante's epic poem describing man's progress from hell to paradise. In it, the author is lost in a dark wood, threatened by wild beasts and unable to find the right path to salvation. Notable for its nine circles of hell, the poem vividly illustrates the poetic justice of punishments faced by earthly sinners. The Inferno is perhaps the most popular of the three books of The Divine Comedy, which is widely considered the preeminent work in show more Italian literature. show lessTags
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"I came around and found myself now searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost. How hard it is to say what that wood was, a wilderness, savage, brute, harsh and wild… My theme will be the good I found there…" (pg. 3)
In my belated quest to acquire, over the course of my adult life, an appreciation of culture that was once considered the responsibility of our education system – but long since abdicated – it pleases me to be able to say that I've now read Dante's Inferno. However, I must also say that, in contrast to my previous encounters with Homer, Milton, the scribes of the Bible and others, I rather struggled with this one and did not enjoy it.
This struggle was in part because of my Penguin Classics edition. show more These are usually dependable, readable editions accessible to the layman – that, in fact, was the imprint's initial raison d'être – but I found this edition of Dante's Inferno plodding. It begins with a dense, 100-page introduction that did more to get me lost in the weeds than bring me out of the forest, and it ends with another 130+ pages of commentaries and endnotes. I know that a reader isn't obliged to read these, of course, but I usually like a deep delve into the scholarly analysis. Here, it sapped my will.
This edition also disappointed in its translation by Robin Kirkpatrick, which is a technical feat, no doubt, but in my opinion a rather tasteless one. From what I understand, Dante's verse is particularly hard to translate – it seems like every word in Italian ends with a vowel, which makes it easier to rhyme than in English – and his austere, unlyrical style does a translator no favours ("his plain style and syntax," Kirkpatrick writes, almost ruefully, "has yet to be absorbed into the repertoire of English poetry" (pg. ciii)). But, even with these caveats, it's still disappointing when the most famous phrase of Dante – the inscription above the gates of Hell, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" – is delivered as the rather more flaccid "Surrender as you enter every hope you have" (pg. 21).
But, translators and editions aside, I also struggled with Dante himself. The narrative was often laborious; the descent into a literal Hell which Dante pursues was lacking in orientation. Many of the denizens of Dante's Hell are political and religious figures from his own time, and to understand the context of their role the reader must undergo a restless flicking backwards and forwards to the endnotes. I got lost in the procession of monstrous creatures, and the thread of narrative was slight. Dante has great ideas, as I shall come onto presently, but these are not easy to discover for yourself as you read. Just about every line, it seems, requires scholarly divination. That plain, unlyrical style I mentioned above was not only unexpected (I was anticipating an Italian Milton), but it meant that in the moments when I was adrift I didn't even have the benefit of a killer phrase to sustain me through a rough patch.
Nevertheless, after the inauspicious journey through the outer rings of Hell, I did start to get a tenuous grasp on what Dante had achieved. The deeper he goes through his infamous Seven Circles of Hell, the better it gets, and by the end my impression of the poem was a favourable one. The poet Dante – as opposed to the character Dante in his Inferno – was an exile from his native land, and his conception of Hell is a sort of mind map for the paths a human soul can find themselves on. Barred from his literal homeland, he navigates the "construct in his mind [of] an intellectual and spiritual homeland" (pg. xxiii).
Dante's journey is not crude religious iconography of brimstone and winged hellspawn, but instead a lucid meditation on the moral challenges people face in their lives. His Hell is not a place for irredeemable sinners, but instead a banal dwelling-place for those who have erred in their lives and have not sought remedy, whether through apathy, sin or ignorance. As Kirkpatrick's introduction puts it, "the sinners in Dante's Hell… have all in some way denied themselves a full realization of their human potentiality and fallen into an alliance with dullness and death" (pg. lxxv). With this orientation in mind, we recognise that Dante's poem is not a gleeful condemnation or vindictive settling of scores, not even when the people he meets in Hell are people he has known in real life. He is gripped by "great sorrow" when he comes across the tortured, bewildered souls, "for many persons of the greatest worth were held, I knew, suspended on this strip" (pg. 31).
Mistakes on these paths of life lead to spiritual and psychological Hell. Dante's construction is a forerunner of Milton's Hell – in Paradise Lost, it is a place you end up if you make bad decisions in your life (which is why Milton's Satan is the lord there – you can't conceive of a worse decision to make in your life than to scorn and rebel against God). Dante was perhaps even more committed to this conception of Hell than Milton. Whereas Milton's Lucifer is rather compelling – a representation of the seductive appeal of secular, or anti-God, reasoning – Dante's Satan, when he finally appears at the end, is without fanfare. He is nothing, a void, an anticlimactic and – were it not for his grossness – pitiable creature, more like a hairy, bovine slug than a threatening demon. Evil is, for Dante, not sin or violence but "sheer banality and tedium" (pg. lxxv), as the Introduction puts it; a void inside that results from false life choices carried to their end. His Hell is made of ice, not fire. It is a deadening bureaucracy, rigorously organised into ossified strata, not a chaotic pandemonium of licentiousness and sin. When Dante emerges into the light of the mortal world at the end of Inferno, representing the decision to pursue a fulfilling (Christian) life, the reader shares his relief. (Kirkpatrick's commentary notes this beautifully: once the banality and tedium of evil is witnessed firsthand, even sin becomes insignificant, and "correspondingly the enjoyment of light is the essential duty of any created being" (pg. 448).)
Dante (both the poet and the character) is, in traversing this landscape, undergoing a courageous meditation on how to live properly. This adventure is, the Introduction says, "an attempt to see what the human mind can achieve when… it anatomizes its own psyche and adjusts its own ethical apparatus to achieve a better performance" (pg. lxxix). That's less thrilling, perhaps, than a tumble into a turbulent, out-of-control, fire-and-mayhem inferno (just how did that word come to mean what it means today? Its popularisers must not have even read Dante). But the mechanics are profound, even if – to a modern English-speaking audience – the execution is not.
I found myself admiring Dante's storytelling choices, even when the poem itself was failing to capture me. To end the story with such an anticlimactic adversary – the banal Satan figure – is a decision that I don't think any writer would have the courage to make today. It's perfect for Dante's message in Inferno, but I suspect most writers would prefer to sabotage their own painstakingly-built philosophy rather than conclude with something so lacking in a crowd-pleasing element. I admired the conception of the Seven Circles of Hell – once I understood it – and the decision by Dante to have Virgil, the Roman (and therefore pagan) poet, as his literal guide through the Inferno – is perhaps one of the great magnanimous acts of any artist in history. Given Dante's influence, the central role of Virgil in his story advocates for the moral legitimacy of pagan, Classical tradition in a Christian world, leading to a harmony between classical and Christian thought. Dante's Inferno is, in this crucial respect, a foundation stone for the Renaissance and the Age of Reason.
I would like such a noble conclusion to be my dominant thought, and I am sure that in time my appreciation for Dante's Inferno and its foundational role in Western culture will be my enduring memory of the book. But, for the purposes of review, it is worth reiterating that I found the book and its translation an often unsatisfying trial. I apologise for being such a heretic, and I don't know which circle of Hell such a statement puts me in (I suspect the sixth), but it's my honest, immediate response to finishing the book. I hope – to return to the quote from Dante with which I opened this review – that my theme has been the good I found here, but I was more stimulated by the ideas when they were unpacked in the introduction and the endnotes, even though these were denser than they needed to be. Dante's conceptual genius seeded all this, of course, but it was hard for me to reap. show less
In my belated quest to acquire, over the course of my adult life, an appreciation of culture that was once considered the responsibility of our education system – but long since abdicated – it pleases me to be able to say that I've now read Dante's Inferno. However, I must also say that, in contrast to my previous encounters with Homer, Milton, the scribes of the Bible and others, I rather struggled with this one and did not enjoy it.
This struggle was in part because of my Penguin Classics edition. show more These are usually dependable, readable editions accessible to the layman – that, in fact, was the imprint's initial raison d'être – but I found this edition of Dante's Inferno plodding. It begins with a dense, 100-page introduction that did more to get me lost in the weeds than bring me out of the forest, and it ends with another 130+ pages of commentaries and endnotes. I know that a reader isn't obliged to read these, of course, but I usually like a deep delve into the scholarly analysis. Here, it sapped my will.
This edition also disappointed in its translation by Robin Kirkpatrick, which is a technical feat, no doubt, but in my opinion a rather tasteless one. From what I understand, Dante's verse is particularly hard to translate – it seems like every word in Italian ends with a vowel, which makes it easier to rhyme than in English – and his austere, unlyrical style does a translator no favours ("his plain style and syntax," Kirkpatrick writes, almost ruefully, "has yet to be absorbed into the repertoire of English poetry" (pg. ciii)). But, even with these caveats, it's still disappointing when the most famous phrase of Dante – the inscription above the gates of Hell, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" – is delivered as the rather more flaccid "Surrender as you enter every hope you have" (pg. 21).
But, translators and editions aside, I also struggled with Dante himself. The narrative was often laborious; the descent into a literal Hell which Dante pursues was lacking in orientation. Many of the denizens of Dante's Hell are political and religious figures from his own time, and to understand the context of their role the reader must undergo a restless flicking backwards and forwards to the endnotes. I got lost in the procession of monstrous creatures, and the thread of narrative was slight. Dante has great ideas, as I shall come onto presently, but these are not easy to discover for yourself as you read. Just about every line, it seems, requires scholarly divination. That plain, unlyrical style I mentioned above was not only unexpected (I was anticipating an Italian Milton), but it meant that in the moments when I was adrift I didn't even have the benefit of a killer phrase to sustain me through a rough patch.
Nevertheless, after the inauspicious journey through the outer rings of Hell, I did start to get a tenuous grasp on what Dante had achieved. The deeper he goes through his infamous Seven Circles of Hell, the better it gets, and by the end my impression of the poem was a favourable one. The poet Dante – as opposed to the character Dante in his Inferno – was an exile from his native land, and his conception of Hell is a sort of mind map for the paths a human soul can find themselves on. Barred from his literal homeland, he navigates the "construct in his mind [of] an intellectual and spiritual homeland" (pg. xxiii).
Dante's journey is not crude religious iconography of brimstone and winged hellspawn, but instead a lucid meditation on the moral challenges people face in their lives. His Hell is not a place for irredeemable sinners, but instead a banal dwelling-place for those who have erred in their lives and have not sought remedy, whether through apathy, sin or ignorance. As Kirkpatrick's introduction puts it, "the sinners in Dante's Hell… have all in some way denied themselves a full realization of their human potentiality and fallen into an alliance with dullness and death" (pg. lxxv). With this orientation in mind, we recognise that Dante's poem is not a gleeful condemnation or vindictive settling of scores, not even when the people he meets in Hell are people he has known in real life. He is gripped by "great sorrow" when he comes across the tortured, bewildered souls, "for many persons of the greatest worth were held, I knew, suspended on this strip" (pg. 31).
Mistakes on these paths of life lead to spiritual and psychological Hell. Dante's construction is a forerunner of Milton's Hell – in Paradise Lost, it is a place you end up if you make bad decisions in your life (which is why Milton's Satan is the lord there – you can't conceive of a worse decision to make in your life than to scorn and rebel against God). Dante was perhaps even more committed to this conception of Hell than Milton. Whereas Milton's Lucifer is rather compelling – a representation of the seductive appeal of secular, or anti-God, reasoning – Dante's Satan, when he finally appears at the end, is without fanfare. He is nothing, a void, an anticlimactic and – were it not for his grossness – pitiable creature, more like a hairy, bovine slug than a threatening demon. Evil is, for Dante, not sin or violence but "sheer banality and tedium" (pg. lxxv), as the Introduction puts it; a void inside that results from false life choices carried to their end. His Hell is made of ice, not fire. It is a deadening bureaucracy, rigorously organised into ossified strata, not a chaotic pandemonium of licentiousness and sin. When Dante emerges into the light of the mortal world at the end of Inferno, representing the decision to pursue a fulfilling (Christian) life, the reader shares his relief. (Kirkpatrick's commentary notes this beautifully: once the banality and tedium of evil is witnessed firsthand, even sin becomes insignificant, and "correspondingly the enjoyment of light is the essential duty of any created being" (pg. 448).)
Dante (both the poet and the character) is, in traversing this landscape, undergoing a courageous meditation on how to live properly. This adventure is, the Introduction says, "an attempt to see what the human mind can achieve when… it anatomizes its own psyche and adjusts its own ethical apparatus to achieve a better performance" (pg. lxxix). That's less thrilling, perhaps, than a tumble into a turbulent, out-of-control, fire-and-mayhem inferno (just how did that word come to mean what it means today? Its popularisers must not have even read Dante). But the mechanics are profound, even if – to a modern English-speaking audience – the execution is not.
I found myself admiring Dante's storytelling choices, even when the poem itself was failing to capture me. To end the story with such an anticlimactic adversary – the banal Satan figure – is a decision that I don't think any writer would have the courage to make today. It's perfect for Dante's message in Inferno, but I suspect most writers would prefer to sabotage their own painstakingly-built philosophy rather than conclude with something so lacking in a crowd-pleasing element. I admired the conception of the Seven Circles of Hell – once I understood it – and the decision by Dante to have Virgil, the Roman (and therefore pagan) poet, as his literal guide through the Inferno – is perhaps one of the great magnanimous acts of any artist in history. Given Dante's influence, the central role of Virgil in his story advocates for the moral legitimacy of pagan, Classical tradition in a Christian world, leading to a harmony between classical and Christian thought. Dante's Inferno is, in this crucial respect, a foundation stone for the Renaissance and the Age of Reason.
I would like such a noble conclusion to be my dominant thought, and I am sure that in time my appreciation for Dante's Inferno and its foundational role in Western culture will be my enduring memory of the book. But, for the purposes of review, it is worth reiterating that I found the book and its translation an often unsatisfying trial. I apologise for being such a heretic, and I don't know which circle of Hell such a statement puts me in (I suspect the sixth), but it's my honest, immediate response to finishing the book. I hope – to return to the quote from Dante with which I opened this review – that my theme has been the good I found here, but I was more stimulated by the ideas when they were unpacked in the introduction and the endnotes, even though these were denser than they needed to be. Dante's conceptual genius seeded all this, of course, but it was hard for me to reap. show less
Dante’s Divine Comedy is famously organized into three sections: hell (inferno), then purgatory, and finally paradise. The first section (hell) is generally considered the greatest of the three, and Robert Pinsky attempts to re-translate the verses in this edition. Dante intentionally wrote the Divine Comedy in the Italian of commoners (instead of the Latin of scholars) so that the masses could read it. Therefore, it is appropriate for Pinsky to translate the Inferno in a way that the average modern reader can understand. In my view, he is successful in this attempt.
The pilgrim/narrator, who is an everyman living on earth, is guided into hell by Virgil, who is considered a great pagan living in the outer circles of hell. The Inferno show more represents a dystopia that only gets worse as one descends into the center. Its story of vices, not virtues, vividly portray the tragedy of the human condition, filled with thieves, betrayers, lusters, and hypocrites. One’s condition while alive on earth is only amplified in the afterlife. Although wedded to the Christian tradition, this version of hell is most representative of the ancient Romans and Greeks.
Images like Brutus (who betrayed Julius Caesar) and Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Jesus Christ) sitting near the center of hell still fill the western psyche. Lucifer (Satan) sits at the center of hell, which lies at the center of earth. These images continue to fill popular culture and stem from Dante’s imagination more than Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The story of the Inferno is very dark and reminds the reader of darker parts of her/his own experiences on earth. Ironically, for Dante, hell is not a place of fire and brimstone but of self-absorption and never-ending sadness.
Many in the modern world will reject Dante’s conception of the universe, which is based on medieval adaptations of Greco-Roman philosophy. We are much more scientific and not as otherworldly. Our concept of virtues and vices likewise correspond with our modern consciousness. Judas Iscariot and Brutus are not our archenemies as much as Hitler and Stalin. To the modern ear, Dante’s world seems utterly foreign. Nonetheless, Dante’s dark imagery (from the 1300s) will remind the reader of human nature today. Dante’s conception of the afterlife starts in the present-life.
That’s why the modern reader should still attend to Dante, despite his medieval bearings. He understands human nature well. His poetic imagery is poignant and clairvoyant. He represents eras of human history that the literate public should not forget. Pinsky’s modern translation makes him once again accessible. show less
The pilgrim/narrator, who is an everyman living on earth, is guided into hell by Virgil, who is considered a great pagan living in the outer circles of hell. The Inferno show more represents a dystopia that only gets worse as one descends into the center. Its story of vices, not virtues, vividly portray the tragedy of the human condition, filled with thieves, betrayers, lusters, and hypocrites. One’s condition while alive on earth is only amplified in the afterlife. Although wedded to the Christian tradition, this version of hell is most representative of the ancient Romans and Greeks.
Images like Brutus (who betrayed Julius Caesar) and Judas Iscariot (who betrayed Jesus Christ) sitting near the center of hell still fill the western psyche. Lucifer (Satan) sits at the center of hell, which lies at the center of earth. These images continue to fill popular culture and stem from Dante’s imagination more than Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The story of the Inferno is very dark and reminds the reader of darker parts of her/his own experiences on earth. Ironically, for Dante, hell is not a place of fire and brimstone but of self-absorption and never-ending sadness.
Many in the modern world will reject Dante’s conception of the universe, which is based on medieval adaptations of Greco-Roman philosophy. We are much more scientific and not as otherworldly. Our concept of virtues and vices likewise correspond with our modern consciousness. Judas Iscariot and Brutus are not our archenemies as much as Hitler and Stalin. To the modern ear, Dante’s world seems utterly foreign. Nonetheless, Dante’s dark imagery (from the 1300s) will remind the reader of human nature today. Dante’s conception of the afterlife starts in the present-life.
That’s why the modern reader should still attend to Dante, despite his medieval bearings. He understands human nature well. His poetic imagery is poignant and clairvoyant. He represents eras of human history that the literate public should not forget. Pinsky’s modern translation makes him once again accessible. show less
I started one translation of the Inferno then switched to another, resulting in two interestingly different reading experiences. The first that I happened to come across in the library had a 1939 prose translation by John D Sinclair. I read the first few cantos of this in a very slow and unwieldy, yet rewarding, fashion. I have very basic knowledge of Italian, thanks to a short course during Sixth Form and GSCE Latin, both long ago. Sinclair’s translation sacrifices poetry in order to remain close to the Italian, close enough for me to follow. This allowed me the luxury of reading each verse aloud in Italian, then aloud in English, then mapping the latter onto the former. (My Italian accent was inevitably atrocious, but as I was on my show more own there was no pronunciation police to castigate me for it.) Whilst I enjoyed this process, it was labour intensive and removed the pace and vigor of the narrative, whilst instead emphasising the beauty of the original poetry. Then I told a friend I was reading it this way, they were vaguely horrified and promptly lent me another translation.
The second translation was by Robert Pinsky, who states in his introduction that he prioritised poetry (but not exact rhyme) over literalism in his version. He also didn’t follow the line breaks in the original Italian, as Sinclair tended to do. My very limited Italian could not cope with this, so I ended up reading this version entirely in English and not aloud, which was vastly quicker. This allowed appreciation of what was actually happening, rather than merely wallowing in the sound of words (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that). If I am over-explaining how I read the Inferno, it is largely because I tend to feel incompetent at reading and appreciating poetry, having given up studying literature after GSCE despite a lifelong obsession with reading. The great thing about reading anything for leisure purposes, of course, is that you are not being marked on your response to it.
This is especially fortunate as the Inferno is dense with allusions that went completely over my head. The notes at the end helpfully explained many of them, whilst also highlighting areas where scholars still argue bitterly about what Dante meant. I appreciated this, but frequent moments of incomprehension did not prevent my enjoying the poem. I was convinced to read it by Alberto Manguel’s [b:Curiosity|23168484|Curiosity|Alberto Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411447672s/23168484.jpg|42713702], which uses the Divine Comedy as a framing device to examine humanity’s desire to know ourselves, each other, and the world. Manguel emphasises the universal themes of the Divine Comedy, which I had in mind as I read the Inferno. Perhaps the most powerful of these themes is the pity and sympathy that Dante has for most of the shades he finds suffering in the various circles of Hell. Although there are several that he has no pity for (including one he kicks in the face), for the most part he wants to know their names and stories. Dante does not question God’s plan for these unfortunate souls, and neither do the sinners themselves, but he nonetheless has considerable empathy for their plight. Virgil is more tight-lipped and hurries Dante on when he gets too deeply into conversation with tortured souls, most of whom consider it a respite to talk to a living being.
Dante’s depiction of the circles of Hell and the punishments meted out within is intensely vivid and horrific. It also retrospectively made me realise the debt owed to the Divine Comedy by, amongst other things, the excellent Lucifer graphic novel series (my favourite volume of which is in fact titled [b:Lucifer, Vol. 5: Inferno|314573|Lucifer, Vol. 5 Inferno|Mike Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1309578687s/314573.jpg|305411]) and [b:The Amber Spyglass|18122|The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1329189152s/18122.jpg|1774510]. On the other hand, the narrative also echoes Aeneas’ journey to the Underworld in [b:The Aeneid|12914|The Aeneid|Virgil|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386923968s/12914.jpg|288738], which I remember doodling across my notes at school. (Why did no-one recommend the Divine Comedy to me when I was teenager? I would have loved it!) In fact, the tension between antiquity and Christianity throughout the poem is fascinating. Dante makes it abundantly clear that he loves and reveres Virgil, but Virgil is only qualified to be his guide to Hell because he cannot enter heaven. Having lived in the pre-Christian era, he is doomed by default, as are the heroes, philosophers, and poets of Greece and Rome. The deeper bowels of Hell, however, seem more densely populated by Christians who did terrible things. Two exceptions are Ulysses and Diomedes, whose actions as ‘false councillors’ land them in the Malebolge (what a wonderful word, Malebolge).
Rather than rambling further, I will conclude with a quote from the Pinsky translation. I greatly enjoyed the whole poem and found that this translation had a lovely rhythm, so I chose a bit of canto XX entirely arbitrarily.
The second translation was by Robert Pinsky, who states in his introduction that he prioritised poetry (but not exact rhyme) over literalism in his version. He also didn’t follow the line breaks in the original Italian, as Sinclair tended to do. My very limited Italian could not cope with this, so I ended up reading this version entirely in English and not aloud, which was vastly quicker. This allowed appreciation of what was actually happening, rather than merely wallowing in the sound of words (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that). If I am over-explaining how I read the Inferno, it is largely because I tend to feel incompetent at reading and appreciating poetry, having given up studying literature after GSCE despite a lifelong obsession with reading. The great thing about reading anything for leisure purposes, of course, is that you are not being marked on your response to it.
This is especially fortunate as the Inferno is dense with allusions that went completely over my head. The notes at the end helpfully explained many of them, whilst also highlighting areas where scholars still argue bitterly about what Dante meant. I appreciated this, but frequent moments of incomprehension did not prevent my enjoying the poem. I was convinced to read it by Alberto Manguel’s [b:Curiosity|23168484|Curiosity|Alberto Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411447672s/23168484.jpg|42713702], which uses the Divine Comedy as a framing device to examine humanity’s desire to know ourselves, each other, and the world. Manguel emphasises the universal themes of the Divine Comedy, which I had in mind as I read the Inferno. Perhaps the most powerful of these themes is the pity and sympathy that Dante has for most of the shades he finds suffering in the various circles of Hell. Although there are several that he has no pity for (including one he kicks in the face), for the most part he wants to know their names and stories. Dante does not question God’s plan for these unfortunate souls, and neither do the sinners themselves, but he nonetheless has considerable empathy for their plight. Virgil is more tight-lipped and hurries Dante on when he gets too deeply into conversation with tortured souls, most of whom consider it a respite to talk to a living being.
Dante’s depiction of the circles of Hell and the punishments meted out within is intensely vivid and horrific. It also retrospectively made me realise the debt owed to the Divine Comedy by, amongst other things, the excellent Lucifer graphic novel series (my favourite volume of which is in fact titled [b:Lucifer, Vol. 5: Inferno|314573|Lucifer, Vol. 5 Inferno|Mike Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1309578687s/314573.jpg|305411]) and [b:The Amber Spyglass|18122|The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1329189152s/18122.jpg|1774510]. On the other hand, the narrative also echoes Aeneas’ journey to the Underworld in [b:The Aeneid|12914|The Aeneid|Virgil|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386923968s/12914.jpg|288738], which I remember doodling across my notes at school. (Why did no-one recommend the Divine Comedy to me when I was teenager? I would have loved it!) In fact, the tension between antiquity and Christianity throughout the poem is fascinating. Dante makes it abundantly clear that he loves and reveres Virgil, but Virgil is only qualified to be his guide to Hell because he cannot enter heaven. Having lived in the pre-Christian era, he is doomed by default, as are the heroes, philosophers, and poets of Greece and Rome. The deeper bowels of Hell, however, seem more densely populated by Christians who did terrible things. Two exceptions are Ulysses and Diomedes, whose actions as ‘false councillors’ land them in the Malebolge (what a wonderful word, Malebolge).
Rather than rambling further, I will conclude with a quote from the Pinsky translation. I greatly enjoyed the whole poem and found that this translation had a lovely rhythm, so I chose a bit of canto XX entirely arbitrarily.
Reading myself at the cliff’s brink, I looked downshow less
Into the canyon my master had revealed
And saw that it was watered by tears of pain:
All through the circular valley I beheld
A host of people coming, weeping but mute.
They walked at a solemn pace that would be called
Liturgical here above. But as my sight
Moved down their bodies, I sensed a strange distortion
That made the angle of chin and chest not right -
The head was twisted backwards: some cruel torsion
Forced face towards kidneys, and the people strode
Backwards, because deprived of forward vision.
Perhaps some time a palsy has wrung the head
Of a man straight back like these, or a terrible stroke-
But I’ve never seen one do so, and doubt it could.
Reader (God grant you the benefit of this book)
Try to imagine, yourself, how I could have kept
Tears of my own from falling for the sake
Of our human imagine so grotesquely reshaped…
Dante's Divine Comedy needs no summation or reiteration of plot. It's wound into the deepest core of Western art and theology. It's one of the most important works ever written.
The pressing question is this: If you're an English language reader who knows no Italian, which translation of Dante should you read?
Without question, the answer is Robert Pinksy's translation of Inferno.
As for Purgatory and Paradise, while there are acclaimed translations of each, I know of none that match the artistry and power of Mr. Pinsky's Inferno.
What is it that makes Mr. Pinsky's translation superior? To answer this, we need to look into the comparative nature of the English and Italian languages.
In the world of poetry, it's generally acknowledged that show more the English language is rather poor when it comes to rhyme. Considering the large vocabulary of English (much of which is borrowed from other languages) it suffers a relative paucity of words that can be made to rhyme with each other. This is why Shakespeare simplified Petrarch's original rhyme scheme for the sonnet when he adapted the structure for English. This is why free and blank verse are the most common poetic formats among modern English language poets.
Similar complaints can be voiced regarding the lackadaisical rhythmic properties of English.
By contrast, Italian is rich and rife with rhyme and rhythm. The structure of Italian words and the rules of grammar make it possible for a large percentage of Italian words to be made to rhyme with each other. There's an essential and powerful pulse that runs through the language which imbues it with an elemental rhythm. Thus, Petrarch could develop his more-complex sonnet rhyme scheme, and Dante could write the entirety of his Divine Comedy in terza rima format, without their work ever feeling overly forced or contrived.
Terza rima is a complex interlocking poetic structure of three line stanzas that requires a significant number of words that rhyme. Given the poverty of rhyming words in English, translating Dante's Divine Comedy into English has always posed a serious challenge. Historically, some of the most popular translations were done in prose, to avoid the issue altogether. Most verse translations used entirely different structures than Dante's original, typically blank verse. Those verse translations which maintained the terza rima format resorted to vocabulary so abstruse and obscure that readers need to keep a thesaurus on hand just to follow along.
In all of these cases, no English reader can hope to get the same experience of the Divine Comedy that Italian readers do. In its mother tongue, Dante's work is accessible and compelling, driven by an irresistible momentum. This irresistible momentum is what disappears in English translations where the poetic structure is altered or eliminated; the accessibility of the native Italian vocabulary can't survive the linguistic mangling required to retain the original rhyme scheme in English.
For most of Western history, English translations of Dante have been overly academic slogs, frustrating and boring.
In 1995, Robert Pinsky presented The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation. His goal was to create an English version of Dante's masterpiece that maintained the terza rima structure with its urgent, driving rhythm while also keeping the language natural, unforced, and accessible to non-academic readers. He succeeded brilliantly.
In the introduction, Mr. Pinsky explains how he handled the rhymic needs of the poem in English. Basically, he accepted the loosest possible definition of what constitutes a rhyme – consonance, assonance, imperfect rhyme, slant rhyme, etc. This allowed him the greatest freedom to choose those words which are both accurate and powerful, poetic and common, to maintain the emotional and artistic impact of the work without falling into obscurity for the sake of rhyme. It meant that he could focus on meter – typically, the most overlooked aspect of Dante's language, but the aspect with perhaps the greatest power.
Prior to reading Mr. Pinsky's translation, I'd read the editions produced by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Allen Mandelbaum. Both created translations of distinction, with many redeeming qualities – but neither was a work that got into my heart and soul, that captured my imagination as completely as Dante should.
Mr. Pinsky is the one who finally made me love Dante.
According to some Italian speakers, Mr. Pinsky's rhymes are somewhat anemic compared to the elemental, robust sounds of the original – Italian tends toward rounder, grander tones than English, so this is unavoidable. Some have argued (with some merit) that such a loose definition of rhyme isn't much better than blank verse.
But it's widely agreed that Mr. Pinsky's is the only English translation of Dante's work that captures the compelling vibrancy of the original and still manages to be fully accessible to the average reader.
It's as close as a native English reader can get to the full effect that Dante intended. show less
The pressing question is this: If you're an English language reader who knows no Italian, which translation of Dante should you read?
Without question, the answer is Robert Pinksy's translation of Inferno.
As for Purgatory and Paradise, while there are acclaimed translations of each, I know of none that match the artistry and power of Mr. Pinsky's Inferno.
What is it that makes Mr. Pinsky's translation superior? To answer this, we need to look into the comparative nature of the English and Italian languages.
In the world of poetry, it's generally acknowledged that show more the English language is rather poor when it comes to rhyme. Considering the large vocabulary of English (much of which is borrowed from other languages) it suffers a relative paucity of words that can be made to rhyme with each other. This is why Shakespeare simplified Petrarch's original rhyme scheme for the sonnet when he adapted the structure for English. This is why free and blank verse are the most common poetic formats among modern English language poets.
Similar complaints can be voiced regarding the lackadaisical rhythmic properties of English.
By contrast, Italian is rich and rife with rhyme and rhythm. The structure of Italian words and the rules of grammar make it possible for a large percentage of Italian words to be made to rhyme with each other. There's an essential and powerful pulse that runs through the language which imbues it with an elemental rhythm. Thus, Petrarch could develop his more-complex sonnet rhyme scheme, and Dante could write the entirety of his Divine Comedy in terza rima format, without their work ever feeling overly forced or contrived.
Terza rima is a complex interlocking poetic structure of three line stanzas that requires a significant number of words that rhyme. Given the poverty of rhyming words in English, translating Dante's Divine Comedy into English has always posed a serious challenge. Historically, some of the most popular translations were done in prose, to avoid the issue altogether. Most verse translations used entirely different structures than Dante's original, typically blank verse. Those verse translations which maintained the terza rima format resorted to vocabulary so abstruse and obscure that readers need to keep a thesaurus on hand just to follow along.
In all of these cases, no English reader can hope to get the same experience of the Divine Comedy that Italian readers do. In its mother tongue, Dante's work is accessible and compelling, driven by an irresistible momentum. This irresistible momentum is what disappears in English translations where the poetic structure is altered or eliminated; the accessibility of the native Italian vocabulary can't survive the linguistic mangling required to retain the original rhyme scheme in English.
For most of Western history, English translations of Dante have been overly academic slogs, frustrating and boring.
In 1995, Robert Pinsky presented The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation. His goal was to create an English version of Dante's masterpiece that maintained the terza rima structure with its urgent, driving rhythm while also keeping the language natural, unforced, and accessible to non-academic readers. He succeeded brilliantly.
In the introduction, Mr. Pinsky explains how he handled the rhymic needs of the poem in English. Basically, he accepted the loosest possible definition of what constitutes a rhyme – consonance, assonance, imperfect rhyme, slant rhyme, etc. This allowed him the greatest freedom to choose those words which are both accurate and powerful, poetic and common, to maintain the emotional and artistic impact of the work without falling into obscurity for the sake of rhyme. It meant that he could focus on meter – typically, the most overlooked aspect of Dante's language, but the aspect with perhaps the greatest power.
Prior to reading Mr. Pinsky's translation, I'd read the editions produced by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Allen Mandelbaum. Both created translations of distinction, with many redeeming qualities – but neither was a work that got into my heart and soul, that captured my imagination as completely as Dante should.
Mr. Pinsky is the one who finally made me love Dante.
According to some Italian speakers, Mr. Pinsky's rhymes are somewhat anemic compared to the elemental, robust sounds of the original – Italian tends toward rounder, grander tones than English, so this is unavoidable. Some have argued (with some merit) that such a loose definition of rhyme isn't much better than blank verse.
But it's widely agreed that Mr. Pinsky's is the only English translation of Dante's work that captures the compelling vibrancy of the original and still manages to be fully accessible to the average reader.
It's as close as a native English reader can get to the full effect that Dante intended. show less
Dante is the standard against which other authors should be judged. He is smarter than other authors, his work is more beautiful than theirs, and while he can create characters out of two words, he doesn't think that's all there is to literature. If the Western intellectual tradition has a center that holds everything together, it is Dante: he brings together everything that went before him, and you can find seeds in the Comedy for almost everything that comes after him. In every book I read, I find something missing, because we are finite creatures and not everyone can do everything. Except Dante, who is somehow as adept at brutal satire as he is at describing the Virgin Mary's tear-ducts. I believe he really went to heaven, because if show more he didn't, where the hell did he get the ability to write a long poem that will satisfy anyone who is willing to use their brain, even a little?
So, obviously, I'm just rating the edition. I read this one largely because I was curious about Ciaran Carson, and I can see myself picking up some of his own work on the basis of his translation. Not many--possibly none, other than Carson--poets try to put Dante into any form at all, let alone stick to terza rima as closely as English sense and sound will allow. If that's not challenging enough, Carson then tries to make the thing readable with a minimum of notes, and, inexplicably, succeeds in doing so. And he also futzes with tone in sometimes thrilling, sometimes questionable ways, but at least he tries to show that Virgil is often irritated and Dante often a putz.
Sadly, there are some really bad choices (please, let's have a moratorium on rhymes including the word 'zone'), and some things just don't work. But the ambition is breathtaking, and this might be the best place to start if you've never read Dante, but don't want to slog through, e.g., the Hollanders (Pinsky is probably Carson's competition, but I haven't read his Inferno). The downside is that Carson's tone and method probably wouldn't work for Purgatorio or Paradiso, both of which are far superior works, while being less immediately interesting. Let's be honest, not much is more entertaining than watching evil popes have their heads rammed up each others' arses, not even visions of heavenly souls. So I imagine this will be a one volume affair. But, as I said, a great place to start. show less
So, obviously, I'm just rating the edition. I read this one largely because I was curious about Ciaran Carson, and I can see myself picking up some of his own work on the basis of his translation. Not many--possibly none, other than Carson--poets try to put Dante into any form at all, let alone stick to terza rima as closely as English sense and sound will allow. If that's not challenging enough, Carson then tries to make the thing readable with a minimum of notes, and, inexplicably, succeeds in doing so. And he also futzes with tone in sometimes thrilling, sometimes questionable ways, but at least he tries to show that Virgil is often irritated and Dante often a putz.
Sadly, there are some really bad choices (please, let's have a moratorium on rhymes including the word 'zone'), and some things just don't work. But the ambition is breathtaking, and this might be the best place to start if you've never read Dante, but don't want to slog through, e.g., the Hollanders (Pinsky is probably Carson's competition, but I haven't read his Inferno). The downside is that Carson's tone and method probably wouldn't work for Purgatorio or Paradiso, both of which are far superior works, while being less immediately interesting. Let's be honest, not much is more entertaining than watching evil popes have their heads rammed up each others' arses, not even visions of heavenly souls. So I imagine this will be a one volume affair. But, as I said, a great place to start. show less
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: This widely praised version of Dante's masterpiece, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets, is more idiomatic and approachable than its many predecessors. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Pinsky employs slant rhyme and near rhyme to preserve Dante's terza rima form without distorting the flow of English idiom. The result is a clear and vigorous translation that is also unique, student-friendly, and faithful to the original: "A brilliant success," as Bernard Knox wrote in The New York Review of Books.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten show more reviews. Today's prompt is the twenty-fourth, a book that reminds you of your English teacher.
Ninth grade, or freshman high school year, was The Odyssey, and tenth was The Inferno. We used, in 1974, the then-newish Ciardi translation, made in 1954; it was quite an event, since Ciardi (a poet of some renown) translated it as poetry instead of as Italian-to-English words.
Pinsky's translation attempts the damn-near impossible feat of preserving the terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.) rhyme scheme invented by Dante for this cycle of poems. The result is a noble experiment, one marked by many successes. There are some weird things like quotes flowing over multiple stanzas, and there are some...odd...rhymes. But hell, the man tried a damned near impossible feat! Italian is a language in which it's harder *not* to rhyme than otherwise, and English resists rhyme with all its might and main.
So what is any reviewer to say about a 700-year-old poem? Nothing hasn't been said by now. I am anti-christian. The theology behind the entire Divine Comedy appalls and repulses me. I speak rudimentary Italian. Pinsky's efforts to reproduce terza rima are, to my ears, clunky and unnecessary. But in the end, rating a book like this is about what the take-away is for the reader. I take away a sense of Dante as an intelligent, desperately lonely man, attempting to make a Universe in which his existence matters and is of some moment. I stand in awed amazement at his gloriously baroque imagination. I am gobsmacked by the sheer audacity of a medieval poet writing in the vernacular. If Dante was alive today, he'd be writing raps.
Ugh. Horrible thought.
But nonetheless, I am wowed at a root level by the joyous, exuberant viciousness and the unapologetic cruelty of Dante's score-settling fates for his enemies. What a guy! Those raps he'd be writing today? They'd inspire Wes Craven to make movies and Clive Barker to write gore-fests!
Try this exercise: Imagine a beat-box under the terza rima stanzas. Read a piece aloud imagining hand-claps at the end of each stanza. This is what I think we, in this relativistic age, should strive for: to interpret the classics of literature and poetry by standards relevant to today, in addition to the standards that we know were applied at the time of the work's creation.
Many more layers to this work that way. After all, a literary classic is a work that's never finished saying what it has to say.
And here one is. show less
The Publisher Says: This widely praised version of Dante's masterpiece, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets, is more idiomatic and approachable than its many predecessors. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Pinsky employs slant rhyme and near rhyme to preserve Dante's terza rima form without distorting the flow of English idiom. The result is a clear and vigorous translation that is also unique, student-friendly, and faithful to the original: "A brilliant success," as Bernard Knox wrote in The New York Review of Books.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten show more reviews. Today's prompt is the twenty-fourth, a book that reminds you of your English teacher.
Ninth grade, or freshman high school year, was The Odyssey, and tenth was The Inferno. We used, in 1974, the then-newish Ciardi translation, made in 1954; it was quite an event, since Ciardi (a poet of some renown) translated it as poetry instead of as Italian-to-English words.
Pinsky's translation attempts the damn-near impossible feat of preserving the terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc, etc.) rhyme scheme invented by Dante for this cycle of poems. The result is a noble experiment, one marked by many successes. There are some weird things like quotes flowing over multiple stanzas, and there are some...odd...rhymes. But hell, the man tried a damned near impossible feat! Italian is a language in which it's harder *not* to rhyme than otherwise, and English resists rhyme with all its might and main.
So what is any reviewer to say about a 700-year-old poem? Nothing hasn't been said by now. I am anti-christian. The theology behind the entire Divine Comedy appalls and repulses me. I speak rudimentary Italian. Pinsky's efforts to reproduce terza rima are, to my ears, clunky and unnecessary. But in the end, rating a book like this is about what the take-away is for the reader. I take away a sense of Dante as an intelligent, desperately lonely man, attempting to make a Universe in which his existence matters and is of some moment. I stand in awed amazement at his gloriously baroque imagination. I am gobsmacked by the sheer audacity of a medieval poet writing in the vernacular. If Dante was alive today, he'd be writing raps.
Ugh. Horrible thought.
But nonetheless, I am wowed at a root level by the joyous, exuberant viciousness and the unapologetic cruelty of Dante's score-settling fates for his enemies. What a guy! Those raps he'd be writing today? They'd inspire Wes Craven to make movies and Clive Barker to write gore-fests!
Try this exercise: Imagine a beat-box under the terza rima stanzas. Read a piece aloud imagining hand-claps at the end of each stanza. This is what I think we, in this relativistic age, should strive for: to interpret the classics of literature and poetry by standards relevant to today, in addition to the standards that we know were applied at the time of the work's creation.
Many more layers to this work that way. After all, a literary classic is a work that's never finished saying what it has to say.
And here one is. show less
Can I pick out a favorite canto? How about canto 14, the division of the blasphemers in circle 7. Some surprises here even as the reader has been growing accustomed to Dante's blending of Classical culture and Christianity. Capaneus, one of the seven mythological heroes who attacked the city of Thebes in support of Polynices, son of Oedipus, as told by Aeschylus in [b:The Seven Against Thebes|752713|The Seven Against Thebes (Dover Thrift Editions)|Aeschylus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328866074l/752713._SY75_.jpg|2474147] and Statius in [b:The Thebaid: Seven Against Thebes|677893|The Thebaid Seven Against Thebes|Publius Papinius show more Statius|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348522460l/677893._SY75_.jpg|663891], is here for his blasphemy against Jupiter/Zeus. Dante thus treats blasphemy against a pagan god in mythology as equal to blasphemy against his Christian God! One might think that theologically you can't end up in the Christian Hell for defying a pagan god, but here you can, as Dante incorporates the Classical period into his Christian universe that takes in all of human history.
The idea that Hell is really a hell of one's own making is presented here as well. Capaneus continues to lash out at Jupiter: "let him hurl his bolts at me, no joy of satisfaction would I give him!" He is still the same person, unchanged, as he was in life, which is a condition of the shades in Hell: they will not ever change, their pride will never allow them to repent. Virgil speaks back to him that "no torment other than your rage itself could punish your gnawing pride more perfectly." This psychologically astute envisioning of Hell is not one I was expecting to encounter; I had been underestimating Dante.
In the second half of the canto we get a fascinatingly allegorical and resonant description of the Man of Crete. This is a colossus representing humankind that lies underneath Mt. Ida and whose tears, representing humanity's tears, are the source of Hell's rivers. Dante takes the idea of such a figure from the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and combines it with Ovid's description of the fall of man from the Golden Age down through silver and bronze and finally to the Iron Age that he presents in [b:Metamorphoses|1715|Metamorphoses|Ovid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622739150l/1715._SY75_.jpg|2870411]; the colossus is fashioned of gold at the head, silver at the chest, brass to his legs, and then iron - except for a right foot made of terra cotta that he places more weight on, which represents the modern Roman Church. Only the gold portion is unbroken, as the tears carve a fissure down the rest of him.
The idea of Hell's rivers being fed by human tears symbolically falling down a figure representing the fall and decay of man is a powerful poetic image. Also very interesting in that it shows how people in every age and every generation think that theirs is a uniquely bad time in history, going all the way back to Ovid! This is nothing new at all; likely in a thousand years people will think that their time is a uniquely bad time, as humanity continues on its way.
And then on a lighter note, we have the pilgrim, perhaps unconsciously, getting a little jab in at Virgil, who could not get them past the gates of the infernal city of Dis separating Upper from Lower Hell that was guarded by devils - Virgil can handle Classical monsters, but Christian devils are beyond his powers and they had to wait on an angel from Heaven to continue their journey. Here Dante most unnecessarily reminds Virgil of his past failure in introducing a question about their current position: "My master, you who overcome all opposition (except for those tough demons who came to meet us at the gate of Dis), who is that mighty one that seems unbothered...". Petty!
-------
Finally found a translation, Mark Musa’s, that I really get on with. Also watched and read the lectures and notes from Columbia University’s course on the Commedia alongside reading each canto, which are available for free at digitaldante.columbia.edu, an amazing gift. I would have understood a mere fraction of the context, richness, and literary techniques of this work without those. show less
The idea that Hell is really a hell of one's own making is presented here as well. Capaneus continues to lash out at Jupiter: "let him hurl his bolts at me, no joy of satisfaction would I give him!" He is still the same person, unchanged, as he was in life, which is a condition of the shades in Hell: they will not ever change, their pride will never allow them to repent. Virgil speaks back to him that "no torment other than your rage itself could punish your gnawing pride more perfectly." This psychologically astute envisioning of Hell is not one I was expecting to encounter; I had been underestimating Dante.
In the second half of the canto we get a fascinatingly allegorical and resonant description of the Man of Crete. This is a colossus representing humankind that lies underneath Mt. Ida and whose tears, representing humanity's tears, are the source of Hell's rivers. Dante takes the idea of such a figure from the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and combines it with Ovid's description of the fall of man from the Golden Age down through silver and bronze and finally to the Iron Age that he presents in [b:Metamorphoses|1715|Metamorphoses|Ovid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622739150l/1715._SY75_.jpg|2870411]; the colossus is fashioned of gold at the head, silver at the chest, brass to his legs, and then iron - except for a right foot made of terra cotta that he places more weight on, which represents the modern Roman Church. Only the gold portion is unbroken, as the tears carve a fissure down the rest of him.
The idea of Hell's rivers being fed by human tears symbolically falling down a figure representing the fall and decay of man is a powerful poetic image. Also very interesting in that it shows how people in every age and every generation think that theirs is a uniquely bad time in history, going all the way back to Ovid! This is nothing new at all; likely in a thousand years people will think that their time is a uniquely bad time, as humanity continues on its way.
And then on a lighter note, we have the pilgrim, perhaps unconsciously, getting a little jab in at Virgil, who could not get them past the gates of the infernal city of Dis separating Upper from Lower Hell that was guarded by devils - Virgil can handle Classical monsters, but Christian devils are beyond his powers and they had to wait on an angel from Heaven to continue their journey. Here Dante most unnecessarily reminds Virgil of his past failure in introducing a question about their current position: "My master, you who overcome all opposition (except for those tough demons who came to meet us at the gate of Dis), who is that mighty one that seems unbothered...". Petty!
-------
Finally found a translation, Mark Musa’s, that I really get on with. Also watched and read the lectures and notes from Columbia University’s course on the Commedia alongside reading each canto, which are available for free at digitaldante.columbia.edu, an amazing gift. I would have understood a mere fraction of the context, richness, and literary techniques of this work without those. show less
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Paris Review Challenge : The Divine Comedy, Season 1 in Dante's Sitting Room (October 2013)
Author Information
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
Distinctions
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Doubleday Dolphin (C1)
Penguin Clothbound Classics (2010)
Wereldbibliotheek (57-58)
Oscar Classici [Mondadori] (75; 613)
Penguin Classics (L006)
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Contains
Is retold in
Has the adaptation
Is parodied in
Inspired
Has as a reference guide/companion
Has as a commentary on the text
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Inferno
- Original title
- Comedìa - Inferno
- Alternate titles*
- Commedia - Inferno; Divina Commedia - Inferno; La Divina Commedia - Inferno
- Original publication date
- 1308 - 1321; 1949 (Dorothy L. Sayers translation) (Dorothy L. Sayers translation); 1472-04-11 (first printed edition) (first printed edition)
- People/Characters
- Dante Alighieri; Virgil; Beatrice Portinari; Beatrice; Charon the Ferryman; Francesca da Rimini (show all 25); Paolo Malatesta; Cerberus; Phlegyas; Farinata degli Uberti; Minotaur; Centaurs; Nessus; Chiron; Harpies; Brunetto Latini; Geryon; Pope Nicholas III; Malebranche, Nicolas de, 1638-1715; Malacoda; Odysseus; Diomedes; Nimrod; Ugolino della Gherardesca; Satan
- Important places
- Hell; Purgatory; Dark Wood; Limbo
- Epigraph
- E quant' io l'abbia in grado, mentre io vivo convien che nella mia lingua si scerna.
Inf. xv. 86-7
(Penguin Classics, Dorothy L. Sayers translation, 1977 reprint) - Dedication
- To the dead master of the affirmations, Charles Williams
(Penguin Classics, Dorothy L. Sayers translation, 1977 reprint) - First words
- When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. [translator: Allen Mandelbaum]
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
The ideal way of reading The Divine Comedy would be to start at the first line and go straight through to the end, surrendering to the vigour of the story-telling and the swift movement of the verse, and not bothering ... (show all)about any historical allusions or theological explanations which did not occur in the text itself.
Introduction (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1949).
Midway this way of life we're bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. [translator: Dorothy L. Sayers]
THE STORY. Dante finds that he has strayed from the right road and is lost in a Dark Wood. ...
Midway this way of life we're bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wh... (show all)olly lost and gone.
Canto I (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1949).
Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say [translator: John Ciardi]
Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wilderness, for I had wandered from the straight and true. [translator: Anthony Esolen] - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And with no care for any rest, we climbed--he first, I following--until I saw, through a round opening, some of those things, of beauty Heaven bears. It was from there that we emerged, to see--once more--the stars. [translator: Allen Mandelbaum]
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)By that hid way my guide and I withal,
Back to the lit world from the darkened dens
Toiled upward, caring for no rest at all,
He first, I following; till my straining sense
Glimpsed the bright burden of the heavenly cars
Through a round hole; by this we climbed, and thence
Came forth, to look once more upon the stars.
(Dorothy L. Sayers, 1949).
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He first, I following, till my straining sense Glimpsed the bright burden of the heavenly cars Through a round hole; by this we climbed, and thence Came forth, to look once more upon the stars. [translator: Dorothy L. Sayers]
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He first, I second, without thought of rest we climbed the dark until we reached the point where a round opening brought in sight the blest and beauteous shining of the Heavenly cars. And we walked out once more beneath the Stars. [translator: John Ciardi]
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He first and I behind, we climbed so high that through a small round opening I saw some of the turning beauties of the sky. And we came out to see, once more, the stars. [translator: Anthony Esolen] - Blurbers
- Davidson, Will
- Original language
- Italian
- Disambiguation notice
- This work contains the first cantica of Dante's Comedy. Please do not combine it with other works containing the other cantica
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Genres
- Poetry, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 851.1 — Literature & rhetoric Italian, Romanian & related literatures Italian poetry Early Italian; Age of Dante –1375
- LCC
- PQ4315.2 .C5 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Italian literature Individual authors and works to 1400
- BISAC
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