The Inferno

Dante Alighieri / Ciardi, John. The Inferno: A Verse Rendering for the Modern Reader. Historical Introduction by Archibald T. MacAllister. New York / Ontario / London, Mentor / New American Library / The New English Library, 1954. 11 x 18cm. 288 pages. Original softcover. Good condition with some signs of external wear and mild foxing. Annotations to text and to end leaves. [A Mentor Book]. John Ciardi, a distinguished American poet, has brilliantly rendered the Inferno into modern English, bringing it alive again with all the burning clarity and universal relevance with which the thirteenth century genius originally endowed it. The first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy is many things: a moving human drama, a supreme expression of the Middle Ages, a glorification of the ways of God, and a magnificent protest against the ways in which men have thwarted the divine plan. One of the few literary works that has enjoyed a fame both immediate and enduring, The Inferno remains powerful after seven centuries. It confronts the most universal values—good and evil, free will and predestination—while remaining intensely personal and ferociously political, for it was born out of the anguish of a man who saw human life blighted by the injustice and corruption of his times. [Mentor]

“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