The Divine Comedy: Dante Inferno Purgatorio Paradiso (Vintage Classics)

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About The Divine Comedy: Dante Inferno Purgatorio

Product Description The complete Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) in one volume from Vintage Classics. The greatest poem of the Middle Ages, in the standard Carlyle-Okey-Wickstead translation, with full notes. Dante’s Divine Comedy relates the allegorical tale of the poet’s journey through the three realms of the dead. Accompanied through the Inferno and Purgatory by Virgil—author of the Roman epic the Aeniad—Dante encounters mythical, historical, and contemporaneous figures in their respective afterlives. Relying on classical (pagan) mythology and Christian imagery and theology, Dante imagines diverse vivid and inventive punishments for the various sinners he encounters, which have become part of the Western imagination.   Upon their approach to Paradise, which as a pagan, no matter how worthy, the Latin poet cannot enter, Virgil relinquishes his role as guide to Beatrice. Dante's chaste beloved then accompanies him along the ascent, as they encounter the blessed and the holy, and Dante arrives at a vision of the heavenly paradise. Review “The English Dante of choice.” –Hugh Kenner “Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.” –Robert Fagles, Princeton University “A marvel of fidelity to the original, of sobriety, and truly, of inspired poetry.” –Henri Peyre, Yale University About the Author Dante Alighieri, born in Florence, Italy, c. 1265, is considered one of the world's greatest poets. His use of the Florentine dialect established it as the basis for modern Italian. His late medieval epic, The Divine Comedy, was above all inspired, as was all his poetry, by his unrequited love for Beatrice, a woman he may have seen only from afar. He died in 1321, having completed his great work, yet an exile from his native city. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CANTO I   Dante finds himself astray in a dark Wood, where he spends a night of great misery. He says that death is hardly more bitter, than it is to recall what he suffered there; but that be will tell the fearful things be saw, in order that be may also tell bow be found guidance, and first began to discern the real causes of all misery. He comes to a Hill; and seeing its summit already bright with the rays of the Sun, be begins to ascend it. The way to it looks quite deserted. He is met by a beautiful Leopard, which keeps distracting his attention from the Hill, and makes him turn back several times. The hour of the morning, the season, and the gay outward aspect of that animal, give him good hopes at first; but he is driven down and terrified by a Lion and a She-wolf. Virgilcomes to his aid, and tells him that the Wolf lets none pass her way, but entangles and slays everyone that tries to get up the mountain by the road on which she stands. He says a time will come when a swift and strong Greyhound shall clear the earth of her, and chase her into Hell. And he offers to conduct Dante by another road; to show him the eternal roots of misery and of joy, and leave him with a higher guide that will lead him up to Heaven.   IN THE middle of the journey of our life1 I came to myself in a dark wood2 where the straight way was lost.   Ah! how hard a think it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!   So bitter is it, that scarcely more is death: but to treat of the good that I there found, I will relate the other things that I discerned.   I cannot rightly tell how I entered it, so full of sleep was I about the moment that I left the true way.   But after I had reached the foot of a Hill3 there, where that valley ended, which had pierced my heart with fear, I looked up and saw its shoulders already clothed with the rays of the Planet4 that leads men straight on every road.   Then the fear was somewhat calmed, which had continued in the lake of my heart the night that I passed so piteously.   And as he