The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation by Robert Pinsky

A handsome book, but a clunky and awkward translation.

I'm not a religious man in the least, but - like the great works of Classical composers, or the Sistine Chapel - that's hardly a consideration when reading a soaring work of near-ancient literature. Esolen's translation is marvellous, attempting to keep rhyme, meter and meaning in check, without ever sacrificing beauty. What results is a work of epic poetry which, while adhering to rules, is more than happy to flaunt them when necessary. Dante's vision is quite clever, and - although you will need copious notes at times to understand the medieval Italian history references - a sublimely beautiful piece.

Dante's journey through Hell ranks in my top 5 favorite books. I especially like this translation, as it keeps the language modern enough to be readable, but is still beautiful. Also, there are plenty of foot and end notes to explain middle age-phrases and historical references many people may not be familiar with.

This is my first exposure to Dante's writing. I was looking for poetry by a different author when I came across this translation. When I saw the narrator, I decided it was time to read/hear some Dante :)

Dante sure thought a lot of himself! Good grief, even when he's singing the praises of some denizen of limbo, he's doing so in the context of being the vehicle of their remembrance among the living. You've probably heard the idiom, "damning with faint praise." Over and over, Dante praises himself with faint condemnation. No, Dante, it's not actually all that terrible that you trembled with fear while faced with the horrors of the pit.

I want to read an annotated translation of The Inferno. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he was mocking and calling out some of his contemporaries, as well as commenting on figures from the past.

Most of the work came from describing and talking to the denizens of the various neighborhood of perdition, but he didn't stint on describing the environs. He readily sketched the horrific backdrops to his interactions, giving just enough detail to be clear, but leaving space for the imagination to fill in the unmentioned horrors. This is not at all bedtime listening.

I seemed to sense some negative commentary on Church doctrine, but I'm not sure if that was in the text, or if that came from my 20th/21st century perspective. For instance, he lamented the number of people, even great and good people, condemned to Limbo simply because they lived before the establishment of Christianity. To my ear, that's a reason to question the church - but to Dante it may have been just another thing that was and didn't need to be questioned.

Stick with the original, this is "clever" yet not "readable."

I've read this book, the first of three, in French, when I was 25, and I immediately was swept away by its poetic force, its classical symmetrical construction and its sharp and benign view on the human condition. Brilliantly composed. Each canto tells the story of several prominent historical persons, set in breathtaking landscapes. Tragedy is all around, sometimes with a comical touch, but almost always compassionate. The filosofical and theological dimensions are less prominent than in book II and III. I've reread this book in Dutch (both prose and lyrical translation) and in the original Italian. An everlasting treasure.

I hate Shakespeare so I didn't think I'd like this, but I did. Really cool, every scene became real in my head, the black and white, cartoon version at least. The craziest part -- hell is real, to Dante and all the Catholics who read it when it was first published. How horrifying for them. Next time my grandmother wants me to go to mass with her, I'll go. He's a beautiful writer, and so modern but I don't know if thats just the English translation. Interesting perspectives on sin. It's like he knows to sin is a natural part of being human, which I keep forgetting. I hate to read those little summaries they give you because I want to read it the same way people have been for hundreds of years. He sort of invented hell, or he really saw it. The world was much more spiritual back then so to be honest I wouldn't rule it out. Maybe he saw all this in a dream. I don't know if I completely got this book but I'm just gonna keep reading it until I do. It's better if you don't read others' explanations of books like these, I think, because it is better to read it how people have always read it, and you can preserve your original reactions, based on your personal background in religion, nationality, language, faith, and sin. Maybe you think you belong in hell, maybe you think you belong in heaven, or maybe you don't believe in either or God or maybe you have your own definition of purgatory, and this will change the way we all feel about what Dante describes.

I liked this classic poem more than I expected. I may have lucked out with the translation, but I found the Inferno much easier to read than the excerpts I remember from my high school textbook. I also had the added context of having taken several classes on Florentine history in college, and I could spot a few of the cultural references Dante makes. Overall, this made for much richer reading than I expected and I'm tempted to picked up the next two books in the Divine Comedy.

Gets 5 star for the translation as much as the masterpiece itself - Pinsky really puts the fun back in the Inferno! ; )

I read the Longfellow translation and despite a huge lack of historical knowledge about Dante's contemporary Florence I really enjoyed Inferno.

The imaginative punishments are gruesome enough to capture your attention and the whole poem is successful in painting quite a visual image of Dante's incarnation of hell.

Peter Thornton's verse translation of the first book of the Divine Commedy, The Inferno, is certainly readable. To the extent that that was an (the?) intention it succeeds. I think for a general reader who just wants to know why The Inferno has remained influential this will serve them well. There are plenty of contextualizing notes, a must for just about any translation, which will make understanding why certain people are where they are comprehensible to a contemporary reader.For study purposes I have my doubts but I have my own favorite translations so am doing more of a comparison than simply an isolated assessment. First, my preferred verse translation is still Ciardi's version (plus, if for study purposes, he translated all of the Comedy not just one book so you don't have to change translations when you leave the Inferno). Part of my favoritism here is likely because it was the third version I had read and the first with a professor who made it come alive for me, so I do want to acknowledge that. Part of it for me is how the translators try to solve the issue of form. Some compromise is necessary to make an English translation and I am not sure there is a right vs a wrong way, they will all fall well short of Dante in Italian. I just think that wrestling with a form closer to Dante's helps students to slow down and do a better close reading while making it too easy to read turns Dante's work into simply a story that can be read quickly and easily. Again, this is personal opinion and preference. The necessary notes will keep the work from being read like a contemporary novel and could, with the right effort from an instructor, keep the reading close. I just have a hard time imagining The Inferno as an easy read and hope not to see this type of translation of Purgatorio or Paradiso since those should be more difficult to grasp in keeping with Dante's apparent intentions.I would certainly recommend this to general readers who just want to read it and maybe for high school classes that want to get through it with just a few areas of closer reading. I would also recommend instructors look at it and decide if this translation would serve their purposes for what they hope to achieve in their courses. It is a good translation even though I would personally choose not to use it.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss.

Gave me nightmares.

The primary virtue of the Oxford / Sinclair edition is the parallel text, which means that you can both appreciate the beauty of Dante's original, and make sure that you miss none of the finer points by following the English translation. Each canto has its own introduction and endnotes, which means that important contextual information is always at hand. Inferno is for me by far the most engaging cantica, as Dante creates ever more imaginative tortures for the souls condemned to each circle of Hell. An absolute classic.

I have finally read the Inferno and if I am going to be honest, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Not being a student of Italian literature and having read Clive James' English translation there was probably a lot I was missing, in the original, but I found that it was really just a horror story with the added s pice of the author being able to denigrate persons he didn't like. All this would have been extremely entertaining at the time when the names were topical, but I do not understand why it is considered such a classic. It was just a litany of various types of physical torture with no overarching point that I could see, except to list all that horror.

Amazing and bizarre. To have lived in a time awhen the fires and ice of hell were as real as the sun rising each day. The horrors of The Inferno were certainly cautionary, but not exactly in keeping with what modernity would deem the correct weight of sins. On to Purgatorio.

I've read this book, the first of three, in French, when I was 25, and I immediately was swept away by its poetic force, its classical symmetrical construction and its sharp and benign view on the human condition. Brilliantly composed. Each canto tells the story of several prominent historical persons, set in breathtaking landscapes. Tragedy is all around, sometimes with a comical touch, but almost always compassionate. The filosofical and theological dimensions are less prominent than in book II and III. I've reread this book in Dutch (both prose and lyrical translation) and in the original Italian. An everlasting treasure.

As much as I enjoyed reading about the tortures he designed for his Florentine political opponents, I spent entirely too much time reading about all these characters in the footnotes. He designed an interesting underworld that was essentially Christian but integrated diverse figures from the Bible, contemporary Italy, classical Greece and Rome, and Classical mythology.

.The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: the Inferno. A verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum. 1982. I had big plans to spend the summer studying The Inferno. I didn’t and ended up skimming part of it to be ready for the book club. I will go back and read it more carefully and study the maps and the notes that are included as read Purgatorio before our next meeting. This masterpiece deserves much more than I have given it.

It was kind of hard to understand but once I got it, it turned out to be super interesting.

It's interesting but I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. The morality seems rather heavy-handed, maybe I'm not digging deep enough into it.

I listened to this book on CD instead of actually reading it. The version that I had had an explination at the beginning of each verse to help you understand and then read the verse.

In this book, you travel with Dante through the 9 circles of hell.

I really liked this book. I forgot how much I liked Greek Mythology (which I did not expect in this book at all). It has pushed me to look into more mythology again.

I never would have understood this book if my professor hadn't guided the class through it. Regardless, it became one of the most interesting piece's of literature I have ever read. I frequently think about. 'Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here," says the sign above the entrance to hell. Now, that's cool . . . I mean hot. Whatever.

Mildly amusing, though this ostensibly pure Christian author clearly has a perverse streak running through him. (As does the Christian God, so not surprising.)

I'd never read this, though references to it abound in countless books, movies, etc. I found the translation (having not even the slightest knowledge of Italian) very readable/accessible/beautiful in parts. Recommendation: if you want to find out the source of most of what we think about hell, go to hell...with Dante.

Obviously an amazing work. I just got bogged down in the middle, and it took me forever to finish. I think I would have gotten far more out of it in the context of a class that dealt with the many layers of references, or if I had simply taken more time to read the notes...but as it was, I just didn't really commit to it on a level that could remotely do it justice. I still look forward to reading Purgatorio and Paradiso, though.

Fantastic, even though the Sayers translation may give up too much in the battle to stick to the terza rima scheme. It's not a fatal flaw by any means, but the tendency is particularly noticeable in some of the classic lines: "I could never have believed death had undone so many" becomes "It never would have entered my head / There were so many men whom death had slain" in order to cram the square English into the round Italian.

If you haven't walked through Hell with Dante, I highly recommend you do so immediately. It's quite nice.

I read the Ciardi translation in college, and this had a similar feel. It read a little more like prose than poetry--it's unrhymed, though it still has a nice rhythm. Really drags when you get closer to the end, though.

Almost totally pointless to read without an extensive grounding in 13th century Italian political history. I'm not surprised that Dante took the narrative of exploring hell as an opportunity to portray the supposedly deserved suffering of various recent historical figures he hated but I was not prepared for the extent to which he single-mindedly devoted the Inferno to this purpose and nothing else, just one long catalog of medieval Italians I'd never heard of and what a just God would posthumously wreak on them. Also Simon told me there's a cute fan-fictioney current to the relationship with Virgil, and I thought he was exaggerating but no, it's definitely there - there's one point where Dante talks about how one of his slams on these dead Italian assholes was so on target that Virgil decided to show how happy he was with it by carrying Dante around in his big strong poet arms for a while. Anyway this is cute and gay but it's not enough to carry my interest through the book.

This past spring I took a class on Dante in which we read the entirety of The Commedia. After taking some time to think through and digest this massive poem, I think I am finally ready to write my review.At the opening of the poem, Dante awakes to find himself lost in a dark wood. Unable to leave the valley, he is greeted by the shade of Virgil, who tells him that he has been sent by Mary and Dante's dearly departed Beatrice to guide Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and eventually to the highest parts of Heaven. Although Dante is initially reluctant to go, he eventually follows Virgil down into the mouth of Hell. While the idea of reading such a long old poem seems daunting, the language and imagery that Dante uses makes it as compelling and fresh as if it were written yesterday. It is, first and foremost, a journey, and the sights the pilgrim sees on his journey to the bottom of Hell are described in vivid and sometimes gross detail. Hell is a very physical place, full of bodies and bodily functions, and Dante doe snot skimp on the imagery. But as often as his language is crude, it is at times stunningly beautiful. There were similes that absolutely stopped me in my tracks with their perfection and beauty. If you want to read the Inferno for the first time, read it like a novel. Jump in, enjoy the story, gawk at the imagery, and stop to relish the beautiful passages.Just as Dante the pilgrim takes Virgil as his guide through Hell, Dante the poet uses Virgil as a poetic guide in his attempt to write an epic that encompasses religion, politics, history, and the human experience. In each circle, Dante meets a new group of sinners who are in Hell for different reasons. The first thing to note about the damned is that they seem to be mostly from Florence. Seriously, sometimes I think Dante wrote this just so he could shove everyone he didn't like into the fiery pit. But in all seriousness, Dante's goal wasn't just to describe the afterlife, he was also trying to describe life on earth. By putting people from Florence in Hell or Heaven, Dante was commenting on what was happening in Italy at the time. Most important for Dante was the corruption he saw in the church, so there are entire cantos of the Inferno devoted to religious leaders, especially Popes, and especially Boniface, who was Pope at the time Dante was writing.The other thing to note about the damned is how relatable they are, at least in the beginning. When you meet Paolo and Francesca in Canto V and listen to Francesca's story, you can't help but be drawn in and pity her. Dante the pilgrim pitied her too, and swoons (again, seriously, he spends like the first 10 cantos swooning left and right) due to his empathy for them. Again and again the pilgrim pities the damned, but as the canticle goes on this happens less and less. By the end of the canticle he has stopped pitying the shades at all, and instead feels that their damnation is deserved. Why did Dante the poet make the pilgrim transforming such a way? Just as the description of Hell also serves as a description of Earth and of the nature of the human soul, the pilgrim's journey through the afterlife mirrors the soul's journey from the dark wood of sin and error to enlightenment and salvation. Dante is at first taken in by the sinners because he is not wise enough to see through their excuses. He is too much like them to do anything other than pity them. As he goes through Hell, he learns more and shakes off the darkness of the wood, so that by the time he gets to the bottom he no longer pities the damned. Still, even in the lowest circles, the shades are all deeply human, and their stories of how they ended up in Hell are incredibly compelling.Dante the poet shows again and again how similar the pilgrim and the damned really are. He constantly explores sins that he could have committed or paths that he could have taken, exposing his own weaknesses and confronting what would have been his fate if Beatrice and Mary had not sent Virgil to save him. I think it speaks to his bravery as a poet that he insisted on exposing not just the weaknesses in society, but also the weaknesses in his own character.Dante the poet is also brave, I think, for tackling some very serious theological, political, and psychological issues. When Dante the pilgrim walks through the gate of Hell, the inscription on the gate says that the gate and Hell itself were made by "the primal love" of God. Here, Dante tackles one of the greatest theological questions; how can a just and loving God permit something as awful as Hell? While the real answer doesn't come until the Paradiso, Dante was brave to put that question in such stark and paradoxical terms. Dante's constant indictments of the political and religious leaders of his day show bravery, intelligence, and a good degree of anger on his part. Before writing the Inferno, Dante had been exiled from his home city of Florence for being on the wrong side of a political scuffle. He was never able to return home, and his anger at the partisanship that caused his exile mixed with his longing for his home make the political themes of the poem emotionally charged and interesting to the reader, even now.Lastly, Dante shows both bravery and a great deal of literary skill in his treatment of Virgil. Virgil is Dante's guide through Hell and, later, Purgatory. He leads Dante every step of the way, teaching him like a father would, protecting him from daemons and even carrying him on his back at one point. It is clear that Dante admires Virgil, and in some ways the poem is like a love song to him. Virgil, living before Christ, was obviously not Christian, so Dante's choice of Virgil as a guide through the Christian afterlife is really quite extraordinary. It shows that wisdom can be attained from the ancient world, and that the light of human reason, which Virgil represents, is necessary for the attainment of enlightenment and salvation. Dante believed strongly that reason and faith were not opposites, but partners, and his choice of Virgil as a guide is a perfect illustration of that principle.But, despite Dante's love of Virgil, Virgil is, to me, one of the most tragic characters in literature. Virgil, as a pagan, cannot go to Heaven. He resides in Limbo, the first circle of Hell, home of the virtuous pagans. There, he and the other shades (including Homer, Plato, and others) receive no punishment except for their constant yearning for Heaven and the knowledge that they will never see the light of God. Virgil, at the request of Mary and Beatrice, leads Dante toward a salvation that he can never have. Human reason can only lead a soul so far; to understand the mysteries of Heaven one has to rely on faith and theology. Virgil's fate is the great tragedy of this otherwise comic poem, and the knowledge of that fate haunts the first two canticles. And while it makes sense thematically and in terms of the plot, Dante makes you love Virgil so much that his departure in the Purgatorio never really feels fair. I still miss him.The Inferno is a long and complex poem, filled with vivid imagery, vast psychological depth, scathing social commentary, and deep theological questions. It is also a journey, a real adventure in a way, and a pleasure to read. Though the real fulfillment of Dante's themes does not come until the Paradiso, the Inferno is well worth reading on its own. Even if you don't go on to read the other two canticles, reading The Inferno is time well spent.