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For translation try the Hollanders; for commentary this Oxford Don
for great translation of the Inferno I far prefer the fairly recent The Inferno version done by the husband and wife team of Robert and Jean HOllander, who have now completed all three parts of the Commedia, Purgatorio and Paradiso. They added a better than pedestrian but in fact a very useful commentary to each line, to each canto, plus a great introduction and remarks on the process of translation. I like their faithfulness to the text and to the triplet rhyming as possible while placing it into a living contemporary and comprehensible English which does not in itself need any explanation. For me this is the most faithful and readable version.
Of course the standard version widely used in our schools is the old John Ciardi The Inferno (Signet Classics). If you really require an Oxfordian tone to your translation, then certainly Dorothy L. Sayer's monumental, unmatchable and moving translation of the entire Commedia: The Divine Comedy: Hell (Penguin Classics), The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory (Penguin Classics), and her posthumous The Divine Comedy Part 3: Paradise (Penguin Classics). I especially appreciate the way she courageously, correctly and brilliantly translates the title of the first section in to good old, clear and monosyllabic anglo-saxon.
For a flavor of a more recent, and male, Oxford Don we have this present new translation by Robin. I find this translation the least felicitous of all, yet the introduction and the commentary highly informative, uesful and not to be missed. In fact the notes and commentary alone, although limited to the world view of a Protestant Oxford Don, are alone worth the price of the book.
Like the Hollander's, this edition is bilingual, placing face to face the currently most authoritative version of Dante's original vernacular, that published in his native Florence in 1994 by the Casa Editrice Le Lettere as Commedia: Secundo l'Antica Vulgata. [edizione nazionale] from Giorgio Petrocchio. For this we are most grateful, and in fact is our sole object in purchasing this edition.
Please note that unlike the indication in another review's title, Robin does not use the most remembered words "Abandon hope" to translate the closing line of the inscription which opens Canto Three: "Lasciate ogni speranza . . ." Rather Robin writes: "Surrender as you enter every hope you have (p. 21)." I would prefer, without thinking too deeply about the matter, something along the lines of "Let go of all hope, you entering (here)."
In a word please think of this then as a brilliant historical, cultural and textual commentary rather than easy reading translation. For instance we read on p. xxiii: "Dante is never more Christian than when he vibrates in horror at the corruption disseminated by the institutional politics of the contemporary Church, the Whore of Babylon ( . . .) impelled in all its decisions by avarice and violence." Or again we may read on pp. xivff: "Dante comes to believe in a providence that creates and sustains human beings in all aspects of their existence. In the end it is charity that underlies Dante's political vision - a love which seeks not to possess (n)or to violate but rather to promote the good of others ( . . .) Despair then is no part of Dante's vision ( . . .) The awful pain of exile informs Dante's representation of Hell, which is a state of absolute alienation form human and divine companionship. But exile in Purgatory is transformed into the condition of pilgrimage, of a quest for distant truth; and in Paradise it finally becomes clear that exile, in spiritual terms, is a metaphor expressing the true nature of charity: 'caritas' demands nothing less than exile; it is that absolute and willing dispossession of self ( . . .)."
This beings therefore to read much like Pope Benedict's First Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est God Is Love: Prepack of 50 or Thomas Merton on peace or something from Dante's own contemporary Saint Francis of Assisi. The commentary by Robin is well worth the price of admission; the translation is like a host's dreary after-dinner reading of his own poetry. For Dante, read the Hollanders, or the original.
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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.
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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.
Product Description
The most famous of the three canticles that comprise The Divine Comedy, Inferno describes Dantes 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 allfor 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 ODonoghue
This version is the first to bring together poetry and scholarship in the very body of the translationa deeply informed version of Dante that is also a pleasure to read.
Professor David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania
