The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: The Inferno - Softcover

Dante Alighieri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451628047 ISBN 13: 9780451628046

Publisher: Signet, 1954

Synopsis

Ciardi's translation of the magnificent story of a man's way through the infinite torment of hell in his search for paradise.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“Professor Esolen’s translation of Dante’s Inferno is the best one I have seen, for two reasons. His decision to use unrhymed blank verse allows him to come nearly as close to the meaning of the original as any prose reading could do, and allows him also to avoid the harrowing sacrifices that the demand for rhyme imposes on any translator. And his endnotes and other apparatus provoke answers to almost any question that could arise about the work.”
- A. Kent Hieatt, Professor Emeritus, Yale University

"Esolen’s brilliant translation captures the power and the spirit of a poem that does not easily give up its secrets. The notes and appendixes provide exactly the kind of help that most readers will need."
- Robert Royal, President, Faith and Reason Institute, author of Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy, Divine Spirituality

“Dante’s conversations with his mentor Virgil and the doomed shades are by turns assertive and abashed, irritated and pitying and inquisitive, and Anthony Esolen’s new translation renders them so sensitively that they seem to take place in the same room with us. It follows Dante through all his spectacular range, commanding where he is commanding, wrestling, as he does, with the density and darkness in language and in the soul. This Inferno gives us Dante’s vivid drama and his verbal inventiveness. It is living writing.”
- James Richardson, Princeton University

About the Author

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265. Considered Italy's greatest poet, this scion of a Florentine family mastered in the art of lyric poetry at an early age. His first major work is La Vita Nuova (1292) which is a tribute to Beatrice Portinari, the great love of his life. Married to Gemma Donatic, Dante's political activism resulted in his being exiled from Florence to eventually settle in Ravenna. It is believed that The Divine Comedy—comprised of three canticles, The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso—was written between 1308 and 1320. Dante Alighieri died in 1321.
John Ciardi was a distinguished poet and professor, having taught at Harvard and Rutgers universities, and a poetry editor of The Saturday Review. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1955 he won the Harriet Monroe Memorial Award, and in 1956, the Prix de Rome. He died in 1986.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet
• Publication date: 1954
• ISBN 10: 0451628047
• ISBN 13: 9780451628046
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288