Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell)
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3.0 • 76 Ratings
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Publisher Description
The "Divine Comedy" was entitled by Dante himself merely "Commedia," meaning a poetic composition in a style intermediate between the sustained nobility of tragedy, and the popular tone of elegy. The word had no dramatic implication at that time, though it did involve a happy ending. The poem is the narrative of a journey down through Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory, and through the revolving heavens into the presence of God. In this aspect it belongs to the two familiar medieval literary types of the Journey and the Vision. It is also an allegory, representing under the symbolism of the stages and experiences of the journey, the history of a human soul, painfully struggling from sin through purification to the Beatific Vision. Contained in this volume is the first part of the "Divine Comedy," the "Inferno" or "Hell," from the translation of Charles Eliot Norton.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this adventurous and stimulating experiment in translation, contemporary poets of quite varied persuasions--from Richard Howard to Deborah Digges--reconsider a looming ancestor, Dante. The 34 cantos of the Inferno are shared among 20 poets all known for their strong original work in English, and some, too, for their distinguished accomplishments as translators. The effect of the book is to summon a multiplicity of voices from the one, and to direct readers not only back to the source but to the varying tempos and temperaments of modern poetry in English. Some readers may, it's true, find the plurality of this Inferno engulfing, but it's difficult not to rejoice in such singular abundance. As a project in translation, this one is uncommonly educating, too, asking readers to make judgments on the various approaches and to decide for themselves what matters most about the poetry. In that sense, literary connoisseurship becomes a seemly match for the moral connoisseurship of Dante's work, where sins and sinners are mapped out with a horrifying vividness, harmoniously observed. All readers will have their own favorites, whether these are Cynthia Macdonald's sleekly vigorous Cantos VI and VII, the devastating elegance of Jorie Graham's XI and XII, or others. And yet, the point is finally the whole--the full company, and not the parts.
