Dante's Inferno
The Vision of Hell from The Divine Comedy
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Publisher Description
Inferno is the first part of Italian poet Dante Alighieri's epic poem Divine Comedy. The allegory describes Dante's journey through the depths of Hell. He is led by the Roman poet Virgil down into the nine circles of Hell, each of which holds and punishes progressively worse sinners. From the First Circle, where unbaptized souls live in peaceful limbo, down to the Ninth Circle, where Satan is trapped in ice, Dante sees firsthand the consequence of unrepentantly sinning against God. Dante published his narrative poem between 1308 and 1321. This version is taken from an 1892 English edition, featuring British author Rev. H. F. Cary's blank verse translation and woodcut illustrations by French artist Gustave Doré.
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.
