Book 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 second part of the "Divine Comedy," the "Purgatorio" or "Purgatory," from the translation of Charles Eliot Norton. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters.Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Purgatorio
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem).The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere.At the shores of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil are attracted by a musical performance by Casella, but are reprimanded by Cato, a pagan who has been placed by God as the general guardian of the approach to the mountain.The text gives no indication whether or not Cato's soul is destined for heaven: his symbolic significance has been much debated.(Cantos I and II).

Dante starts the ascent on Mount Purgatory.On the lower slopes (designated as "ante-Purgatory" by commentators) Dante meets first a group of excommunicates, detained for a period thirty times as long as their period of contumacy.Ascending higher, he encounters those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths (often due to leading extremely sinful lives).These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth (Cantos III through VI).Finally, Dante is shown a beautiful valley where he sees the lately-deceased monarchs of the great nations of Europe, and a number of other persons whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

The gate of Purgatory is guarded by an angel who uses the point of his sword to draw the letter "P" (signifying peccatum, sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, abjuring him to "wash you those wounds within".The angel uses two keys, gold and silver, to open the gate and warns Dante not to look back, lest he should find himself outside the gate again, symbolizing Dante having to overcome and rise above the hell that he has just left and thusly leaving his sinning ways behind him.From there, Virgil guides the pilgrim Dante through the seven terraces of Purgatory.These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace purging a particular sin in an appropriate manner.Those in purgatory can leave their circle whenever they like, but essentially there is an honors system where no one leaves until they have corrected the nature within themselves that caused them to commit that sin. Souls can only move upwards and never backwards, since the intent of Purgatory is for souls to ascend towards God in Heaven, and can ascend only during daylight hours, since the light of God is the only true guidance.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Seeing, hearing, believing Dante
This audiobook is a remarkably good addition for the individual who enjoys good literature well read.Superb production values, an excellent reader/actor who imbues the material with accurate intonation and enunciation, cadence, and modulation, makes this one a gem.If you are spending your money wisely, you cannot go wrong with this NAXOS production.This one will be listened to many times.I even purchased the translation in hardcopy to pay closer attention to the reading.

Wonderful Performance
This is a wonderful performance of the entire Divine Comedy which one can listen to many times.The reader, Heathecoate Williams, must be some sort of an actor -- full throated furious at times, pale and poignant at others as he wends his way through it all, mimicking all the saints and sinners like a mockingbird. Each of the 100 cantos is prefaced by a short suggestion of period music for a breather and for atmosphere, which does not intrude or ham up the performance, as often happens with similar efforts.

Shameless drama of Williams' variety may be embarrassing to some, out of style to others.But it supplies an important element lacking to the rather dry academic fashion by which most are these days exposed to Dante.Nor is any accuracy of meaning sacrificed thereby.The three parts of the Comedy are all read from a prose translation by a man named Benedict Flynn.I am not aware that this translation is available anywhere in print, but having read several English translations of Dante, the word choice is familiar and sounds properly middle of the road.Truth be told, a dramatic flair does no disservice to this very personal poem at all, which was radical in its day for being written in common vernacular.For the hearer of our language, it places Dante in the ring where he belongs:with the fully engaged Shakespeare of the history plays, not with the closet dramas of a T.S. Eliot or a Robert Lowell.

The set is well worth the price, and the bonus disc lecture on Dante's life not only adds the academic dimension, but makes the price for the whole a steal. ... Read more

Book Description
A new blank verse translation of Dante's epic, complete with an authoritative Introduction, diagrams, maps, and notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (52)

Understandable
This is a great translation of Dante.I've read a few translations of The Inferno - once in high school and a different one in college.This one was far clearer and had better notes that either of them.Also, I am a fan of hardcovers for books such as this - ones that you intend to keep around.

The story itself is fascinating - Dante's view of the afterlife, filled with beautiful literary devices.In the Inferno, for example, he will discuss different circles of hell, with different degrees of punishment, reserved fordifferent sinners.The retribution that the sinners face always reflects their sins on earth.

For example, he visits those who have taken their own life.They are turned into trees and are mute - that is unless a branch is broken.In that case, they are able to speak through their blood while it flows.So, as they used their blood to say their final words to the world, so they can only use that as their means to communicate in hell.

Abysmal Translation, Good Notes
Reading this book gave one the impression that they could well sympathize with Hannibal's troops as they crossed the alps--one sets out with an obstensibly noble mission, but encounters massive casualties along the way.

Sisson's vers libre provides the vacuum within the bog.If the Divine Comedy is poetry, the Divine Comedy this is not.Poetry turned mundane.

However, his 235 pages of endnotes are massively helpful.The Divine Comedy was, in part, an exercise in commentary concerning contemporary politics.This veritable iceberg of symbolism's main bulk remains unseen without a strong dose of explanation for each page.Sisson offers the needed notes.

All things considered, a mixed-bag.An abysmal translation in text of this length is akin to adding the chains of Dickens's Marley onto the reader.Formidable scholarship regarding explanation of symbolism is, for the reader, analogous to Bouchard's discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

Divine Comedy
I found the cd very close to the book but abriged.I recommended even if you can't get thought the book which is difficult

The need for Quality Assurance ???
Dante stands alongside Shakespeare, Milton, & T.S Eliot et al. as one of the most profound minds and thinkers of our shared culture and history. Whilst the recording does not capture the tone and poetic sensibilities of Dante, It is tragic to say the least that anyone can publish a review - in particular those who can not even read (See Annie Feng's review). I think there is a need for some form of Quality Assurance to ensure that those who can appreciate art (regardless of their religious or philosophical stance) can read reviews that are of a genuine critical nature that understand something of the historical and literary context of a particular work rather than just bigoted condemnations !!! A good way of doing this would be to note the number of people who find a particular review helpful -

It is important to note that 0 out of 3 found Annie Fengs review of help !!! (good to see Annie gave the Angel DVD series 5 stars - i think this speaks for itself).

Could Annie and people like her please stick to the Angel series or at least learn to read - are u really over 13 years of age Annie ???

Bad recording of a Great Book
While the actor, Heathecote Williams, clearly can read, either he was a poor choice for this task, or the producers of this audio version had no experience with audio books.The production quality of this recording is terrible.I purchase a lot of audio books, but seldom have I had such a horrible listening experience.
The actor speaks in a droning monitone and then starts to yell in a high-pitched and squeaky voice.
I would suggest that you read this book rather than listen to this badly produced set of discs. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a translation of all the lyric poems written by Dante Alighieri, except the Divine Comedy. It includes two Latin Eclogues. This bilingual edition of the poems includes also the poems of the Vita Nova. The full text of the Vita Nova is included only in Italian. ... Read more

Book Description
The second volume of Oxford's new Divine Comedy presents the Italian text of the Purgatorio and, on facing pages, a new prose translation. Continuing the story of the poet's journey through the medieval Other World under the guidance of the Roman poet Virgil, the Purgatorio culminates in the regaining of the Garden of Eden and the reunion there with the poet's long-lost love Beatrice. This new edition of the Italian text takes recent critical editions into account, and Durling's prose translation, like that of the Inferno, is unprecedented in its accuracy, eloquence, and closeness to Dante's syntax.Martinez' and Durling's notes are designed for the first-time reader of the poem but include a wealth of new material unavailable elsewhere. The extensive notes on each canto include innovative sections sketching the close relation to passages--often similarly numbered cantos--in the Inferno. Fifteen short essays explore special topics and controversial issues, including Dante's debts to Virgil and Ovid, his radical political views, his original conceptions of homosexuality, of moral growth, and of eschatology. As in the Inferno, there is an extensive bibliography and four useful indexes. Robert Turner's illustrations include maps, diagrams of Purgatory and the cosmos, and line drawings of objects and places mentioned in the poem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
"The Divine Comedy" describes Dante's journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman epic poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and another of his works, "La Vita Nuova." While the vision of Hell, the Inferno, is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and scholarship to understand.Purgatorio, the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; Paradiso, the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa" - "at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," Paradiso, XXXIII, 142).

Dante wrote the Comedy in his regional dialect.By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression, and simultaneously established the Tuscan dialect as the standard for Italian. In French, Italian is nicknamed la langue de Dante.Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break from standards of publishing in only Latin or Greek (the languages of Church and antiquity).This break allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience - setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy".In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be comedic in nature.Furthermore, the word "comedy," in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good.By this meaning of the word, the progression of Dante's pilgrim from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God.

The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: Each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternate meanings.Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the "Letter to Can Grande della Scala"), he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory (the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical).The structure of the poem, likewise, is quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns arching throughout the work, particularly threes and nines.The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of "L'Inferno", allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety."

Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" added later in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were of everyday or vulgar subjects, while High poems were for more serious matters.Dante was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of man, in the low and vulgar Italian language and not the Latin language as one might expect for such a serious topic.

Purgatorio
Having survived the depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom, to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world (in Dante's time, it was believed that Hell existed underneath Jerusalem).The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere.At the shores of Purgatory, Dante and Virgil are attracted by a musical performance by Casella, but are reprimanded by Cato, a pagan who has been placed by God as the general guardian of the approach to the mountain.The text gives no indication whether or not Cato's soul is destined for heaven: his symbolic significance has been much debated.(Cantos I and II).

Dante starts the ascent on Mount Purgatory.On the lower slopes (designated as "ante-Purgatory" by commentators) Dante meets first a group of excommunicates, detained for a period thirty times as long as their period of contumacy.Ascending higher, he encounters those too lazy to repent until shortly before death, and those who suffered violent deaths (often due to leading extremely sinful lives).These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth (Cantos III through VI).Finally, Dante is shown a beautiful valley where he sees the lately-deceased monarchs of the great nations of Europe, and a number of other persons whose devotion to public and private duties hampered their faith (Cantos VII and VIII). From this valley Dante is carried (while asleep) up to the gates of Purgatory proper (Canto IX).

The gate of Purgatory is guarded by an angel who uses the point of his sword to draw the letter "P" (signifying peccatum, sin) seven times on Dante's forehead, abjuring him to "wash you those wounds within".The angel uses two keys, gold and silver, to open the gate and warns Dante not to look back, lest he should find himself outside the gate again, symbolizing Dante having to overcome and rise above the hell that he has just left and thusly leaving his sinning ways behind him.From there, Virgil guides the pilgrim Dante through the seven terraces of Purgatory.These correspond to the seven deadly sins, each terrace purging a particular sin in an appropriate manner.Those in purgatory can leave their circle whenever they like, but essentially there is an honors system where no one leaves until they have corrected the nature within themselves that caused them to commit that sin. Souls can only move upwards and never backwards, since the intent of Purgatory is for souls to ascend towards God in Heaven, and can ascend only during daylight hours, since the light of God is the only true guidance.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
... Read more

Book Description
This vigorous translation of the poet's journey through the circles of hell re-creates for the modern reader the rich meanings that Dante's poem had for his contemporaries. Musa's introduction and commentaries on each of the cantos brilliantly illuminate the text.

Translated with Notes and an Introduction by Mark MusaDownload Description
This timeless Christian allegory has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery fo its own identity. In the Inferno, the first of the Comedy's three parts, Dante is conducted by the spirit of the classical poet Virgil through the nine circles of Hell on the initial stage of his arduous journey toward God. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Abandon hope...
"Midway life's journey I was made aware/that I had strayed into a dark forest..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.

The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.

But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.

If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.

Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.

And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, groan they, 'We were sullen and wroth...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")

More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.

Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated.

Readable translation
A lovely, readable, blank verse translation.The notes are helpful, but not so overwhelming as to detract from the poetry of the text.I'd highly recommend to any reader.

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization.The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary.Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul.He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century.Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership.The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife.He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood.Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence.In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life.Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid.Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid.Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid.Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy.They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud.Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society.These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom.The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins.There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one.For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin.Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful.In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm.In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law.Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere.She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship.A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante.Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence.Farinata predicted Dante's exile.Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God.In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides.The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch.Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members.This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile.Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile.Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud.In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc.Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices.Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire.Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted.This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile.In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism.He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church.Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation.After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads.Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind.The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer.The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy.Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant.By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves.He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

Wow
Mr. Musa writes a nice translation of a tough work, and even more challenging topic. I recommend.

One of the most thought provoking I've read yet...
While browsing through the local bookstore, one cannot help but to be bombarded with at least 5 different published versions of this wonderous story.
'The Divine Comedy' by Dante Aligheri sets in motion the journey of a pilgrim through the nine layers of hell. Accompanying him is his guide, none other then the famous poet Virgil. While he accends down into the depths, each layer has a character with a story to be told. To be honest, I had flipped through this book before and found in daunting. Set up in 'Canto' form, the book is split in 34 chapers. I was pleasently surprised to see that I had been very wrong. This book has opened up new ideas to me, and made me think of religion and the philosophy of life in a way I never thought of before. The Inferno is a very descriptive story that will not leave you unsatisfied. ... Read more

Book Description
_The Divine Comedy_ is perhaps the greatest Christian classic ever written, and probably the greatest adveture story ever told.Dante wrote it to entertain, guide, and enrich ordinary readers, not just the intellectual elite.This clear new version with unique aids makes the fascinating story accessible to such readers today.

Those who love Dante best as a storyteller and teacher will find in this book what they have been waiting for...the freshest, clearest, most exact, and most readable Divine Comedy in the English language, with full-page illustrations and original notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Dante Musa Style
Mark Musa has produced an extremely readable translation of a text that at times can be next to inaccessible.As a non-Dante scholar, I have struggled with other translations.The notes accompanying each canto also are well done:thorough and very illuminating.Musa's deft pen has turned Purgatory into a pleasure.

Bit of a slog after Hell.
By its very title, 'The Divine comedy' announces its theological purpose.For those not so inclined, the 'Inferno' offered many subsidiary pleasures - compelling narrative drive (both in the adventure of two men descinding into hell, and in the stories of the people they meet); an overpowering visual sense, both in the grand design of Hell's geography and the plan of its punishments, and in the individual details of the sinner's torments; and the endearing characterisation of the heroes, Virgil the stern, noble guide, and Dante, the clumsy, gossipy Everyman.

'Purgatory' has fewer of these delights.Here, it is impossible to avoid the doctrine.Every vast visual set-piece (the Angel fighting off the snake in the Valley of the Princes; the Holy Pageant that stuns the Pilgrim in Eden, complete with griffin-drawn chariot; the masque involving violence to said chariot by eagles, foxes, seven-headed monsters and giants) are all so allegorically pre-determined, each feature a religious symbol, that they lack the dramatic force that would have made their images truly poetic.

The plan of Purgatory - the AntePurgatory where those who left repentance to the last moment must wait; the mountain itself, where seven terraces represent the Deadly Sins to be purged; the crowning Earthly Paradise, or Eden, the gateway to Heaven - bears no real comparison, for the reader, to Hell: one's sympathy naturally inclines towards the eternally damned, and one almost resents the complaints of the saved complaining of their discomforture.The stories told the Pilgrim are also of a lesser order - perhaps proving pure evil to be more (aesthetically) attractive than contrition.

There are some moments when genuine terror intrudes - the visions of violation and tempting lust dreamt by the Pilgrim; the baptism of fire he must pass before entering Eden; the show-trial with Beatrice; while tortuous similes and evocations of nature are framed in poetry of intricate beauty (see Borges remarkable essay on the infinite metaphor in Canto 1).

Mark Musa, like most American annotators, has not heeded the lessons of Charles Kinbote, and his commentary to 'Purgatory' is almost loopily overwritten.He is an amiable, enthusiastic and informative guide, and if his translating choices are sometimes questionable, he has the grace to offer other alternatives.His explanation of the purpose of each image or scene makes it easier to follow the poem with greater understanding (if not necessarily enjoyment).But because he concentrates on every line with such minute detail, he frequently misses the wider design, and so, when he is puzzled by lines that don't fit his view of the Comedy, he has a tendency to blame Dante rather than himself.

A Thoroughly Annotated Translation
This is the second volume of Alighieri Dante's classic Divine Comedy.It tells the tale of Dante's journey through Purgatory, led by his guide, Virgil.Having passed through the depths of Hell (the Inferno) in the first volume, Dante and Virgil ascend the mountain of Purgatory, passing its many allegorical characters and observing the penances they must fulfill.The Divine Comedy is a beautiful, epic poem that takes the reader through a wide emotional spectrum and many vivid, picturesque scenes from Dante's fictional afterlife.

This translation was wonderful.Each of the 33 Cantos (Chapters) is set up in this sequence:1) a short summation by the translator, 2) the poem, and 3) notes on names, characters, and items referenced by Dante.The translator, Mark Musa, even explains in his notes when he has a differing interpretation of a word or phrase than other translators' have had.

Dante used so many references to Greek mythology and events that were common knowledge to educated people of the 13th-14th Century that this poem, without notes, is entirely esoteric and fully appreciated only by the most erudite modern-day readers.Mark Musa brings every reader up to par with his thorough, easily-read notes; thereby making this classic poem a very entertaining and profound experience.

Working Our Way Up
Inferno is the most famous of the trio of volumes of Dante's Divine Comedy. But don't stop there. Purgatory is a beautiful work, illustrating the rise of the human soul through Purgatory's nine ledges. I found itbeautiful how the souls were not hurrying. They waited patiently, yeteagerly.

Musa's translation makes all the difference. The language isaccessible, but not irreverent or vulgar. A routine I found helpful was toread the introduction to each canto, read the canto, then read all thenotes, checking back to reinforce meanings or double check a name orplace.

The Pilgrim's journey through this volume is heavily illustrativeof God's grace, and yet the idea of each person's responsibilities to Godare clear.

Don't stop reading after Inferno. These stirring translationsby Musa make it possible to read, understand and love the whole DivineComedy.

UNEARTHLY BEAUTY
Dante's DIVINE COMEDY: JOURNEY TO JOY, by Kathryn Lindskoog, is a delight to read. This is definitely a reader-friendly retelling of Dante's Christian classic. The original DIVINE COMEDY was written in terza rima, aclosely rhymed form of Italian poetry. This version is written in clear andflowing modern English prose, which at times is suggestive of poetry. Thereader is given easy-to-follow footnotes, providing historical backgroundand interpretation that make the book readily understandable andenjoyable.

The story can be understood on more than one level. On theliteral level, this spiritual adventure first describes Dante's journey,led by the Roman poet Virgil, down through the nine circles of INFERNO,then up the mountain of PURGATORY. There, on PURGATORY's nine ledges,penitent souls move eagerly through repentance and penance, purifying themselves in the joyful knowledge that Paradise awaits them. As anallegory of the Christian experience, PURGATORY relates the pilgrimage ofthe human soul, homesick for heaven, struggling to be free of an unworthypast, and longing for fulfillment in God.

Dante envisions PURGATORY as aplace of unearthly beauty, and here Kathryn Lindskoog's pleasing choice oflanguage makes this book a delight for the reader. Her descriptive passagesinclude such lovely phrases as: "a cliff so steep that nimble legswere useless," ... "a mountain mist...through which you could seeonly as moles do..." "...gold and fine silver, crimson cloth, ...freshly cracked emeralds - all these colors would look dull next to thegrass and flowers in that valley, just as less is always overcome bymore." The true glory of Purgatory lies in the sense of eagerness,hope, and anticipation that Dante discovers in the souls he encounters onhis journey of spiritual preparation. The book closes with the words,"now I was pure and prepared to rise to the stars." ... Read more

Product Description
As one of the supreme Christian epic poems, Dante's Divine Comedy provides not only far more personality and emotional depth than the pagan epics, it also opens up all the issues on which Western history turns—truth, beauty, goodness, sin, sanctification, and triumph. For all that, C.S. Lewis loved the Comedy for its seemingly effortless poetry.

In this guide Peter Leithart uses a biblical angle to open up the Comedy for students, high school and up. He begins his discussion by examining the meaning and place of the courtly love tradition and then introduces us to the varied levels of meaning throughout the work. In the heart of the guide, Leithart walks us carefully through the craft and symbolism of each progressive stage—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each section contains helpful study questions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Ascent to Understanding Dante!
Unless you are a literature professor or certified theologian, do not attempt to read Dante's Divine Comedy without this book!(My understanding is that Leithart happens to be both!)My teenage daughter and I attempted to work our way through the trilogy without Leithart's excellent guide. Finally, I just set it aside until Leithart's book was published.What a difference some guidance makes.Many view the Divine Comedy as merely a theological examination of the "places" of hell, purgatory, and hell. Leithart successfully leads students through a more insightful examination of the concept of "courtly love" and follows through the progression towards true, selfless love. This is a critical understanding for young people to differentiate.It opened our eyes to truths in Dante's book which, formerly a drudgery, became a favorite in her high school, homeschool education of worldviews. ... Read more

Book Description
The Cary translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. ... Read more

Book Description
An invaluable source of pleasure to those English readers who wish to read this great medieval classic with true understanding, Sinclair's three-volume prose translation of Dante's Divine Comedy provides both the original Italian text and the Sinclair translation, arranged on facing pages, and commentaries, appearing after each canto, which serve as brilliant examples of genuine literary criticism. This volume contains the complete translation of Dante's Paradiso. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good.
This final part of the Divine Comedy was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot.However, I felt that it was too dogmatic and that Dante spent too much time considering doctrine problems in the Catholic Chruch.However,the ending was spectular!!!I felt like I was actually there and could seethe faces of the angels and the blessed. If you are a fan of the DivineComedy and Dante in general then please read this book.But I would notrecommend it to the non-fan. ... Read more

Book 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Inferno
I first read this book when I was in highschool and it's still one of my favorites books today.

perfect carry along book
tucks away easily in my back pack, easy to read, and even the coffee house snobs pay it respect.

Excellent Book
I found Dante's Inferno to be in excellent shape, a great book, and plan on purchasing volumes II and III.

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization.The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary.Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul.He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century.Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership.The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife.He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood.Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence.In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life.Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid.Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid.Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid.Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy.They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud.Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society.These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom.The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins.There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one.For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin.Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful.In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm.In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law.Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere.She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship.A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante.Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence.Farinata predicted Dante's exile.Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God.In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides.The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch.Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members.This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile.Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile.Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud.In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc.Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices.Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire.Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted.This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile.In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism.He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church.Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation.After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads.Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind.The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer.The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy.Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant.By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves.He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

Abandon hope...
"Midway life's journey I was made aware/that I had strayed into a dark forest..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.

The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.

But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.

If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.

Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.

And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, groan they, 'We were sullen and wroth...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")

More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.

Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated. ... Read more

Product Description
Issued with a dust jacket ... Read more

Book Description
"Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third." UNDERSTANDING DANTE attempts to explain and justify T. S. Eliot's bold claim. John Scott offers readers at all levels a critical overview of Dante's writings: five chapters deal with his New Life of love and poetry ("Vita Nova"), the "Banquet" of knowledge ("Convivio"), his Latin treatise on language and poetics ("De Vulgari Eloquentia"), Italian lyrics ("Rime"), and his blueprint for world government ("Monarchia"). The next five chapters concentrate on Dante's masterpiece, the "Comedy": its structure, Dante's worldview (still relevant today), and the "Comedy" examined as a poem. Much has been written on Dante's moral, political, and religious ideas; important as these are, however, such discussions are perforce limited. It is above all as a work of poetry that the "Divine Comedy" maintains its appeal and fascination to readers of all backgrounds and beliefs.

Firmly grounded in the latest advances of Dante scholarship, UNDERSTANDING DANTE offers an original and uniquely detailed, global analysis of Dante as poet of the "Comedy" that will be welcomed by those who read the poem in translation as well as by those who study the original Italian text. At the same time, Scott's book will be welcome for its rich and insightful analysis of the whole corpus of Dante's writings, as well as Scott's mastery of the vast sea of critical literature in various languages. Scott bridges the gap that often exists between Dante studies in English-speaking countries and the great tradition of Dante scholarship in the poet's homeland. No work in English about the great Italian poet can rival UNDERSTANDING DANTE's scope in both depth and breadth of close reading and critical vision. ... Read more

Book Description
The most famous of the three canticles that comprise The Divine Comedy, Inferno describes Dante’s descent in Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonizing torture, Dante encounters doomed souls that include the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicidal Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, Dante must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all—for it is only by encountering Satan himself, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin. BACKCOVER: “The perfect balance of tightness and colloquialism... likely to be the best modern version of Dante.
—Bernard O’Donoghue

“This version is the first to bring together poetry and scholarship in the very body of the translation—a deeply informed version of Dante that is also a pleasure to read.”
—Professor David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Abandon hope...
"Midway life's journey I was made aware/that I had strayed into a dark forest..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.

The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.

But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.

If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.

Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.

And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, groan they, 'We were sullen and wroth...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")

More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.

Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated.

Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization.The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary.Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul.He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century.Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership.The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife.He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood.Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence.In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life.Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid.Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid.Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid.Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy.They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud.Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society.These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom.The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins.There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one.For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin.Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful.In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm.In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law.Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere.She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship.A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante.Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence.Farinata predicted Dante's exile.Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God.In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides.The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch.Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members.This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile.Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile.Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud.In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc.Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices.Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire.Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted.This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile.In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism.He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church.Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation.After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads.Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind.The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer.The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy.Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant.By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves.He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

A good new translation
Kirkpatrick's translation of the first book of Dante's 'Divine Comedy' is the latest of a series of Penguin editions of Dante's works.It has a good commentary and introduction to the text.

Dante of course really needs no introduction.He is in my view the Western world's finest poet between Virgil and Shakspeare.His visionary genius, incredible intellect and ability to see and integrate several aspects of the medieval world view as a whole are unmatched by any writer or poet of the medieval era.He is the poetic equivalent of Thomas Aquinas.

The Divine Comedy is a journey within and without, to the deepest parts of hell to the highest realms of heaven to the vision of God himself.You get the sense in reading Dante no word is superfluous, every letter has its place in a beautifully precise and organic scaffolding of art.The unity of his poetic vision and his ability to execute it, place him in the same rank of genius as Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton.

The poem is at the deepest level an allegory of the journey into the depths of the egoistic self (hell) to the beatific vision, where God is found within through the means of graced vision.While Dante may be read in other ways (he certainly was influenced by political, social and class concerns, so a Marxist and feminist interpretation is possible) his spiritual and psychological journey is just as important.

Dante is timeless, even if his view of the cosmos seems absurd and antiquated in our time when clearly there is no empyrean but only an expanding infinite universe of billions of galaxies.Still, if Dante were alive today, I doubt he would have any trouble incorporating our cosmology into a comprehensive vision, such was this man's genius. ... Read more