Publisher Description

In this superb translation with an introduction and commentary by Allen Mandelbaum, all of Dante's vivid images--the earthly, sublime, intellectual, demonic, ecstatic--are rendered with marvelous clarity to read like the words of a poet born in our own age.

Back Cover

In this superb translation of the Inferno, Allen Mandelbaum brings to life for contemporary readers the first and most famous part of Dante's Divine Comedy: the poet's classic journey through the underworld. Here is Dante at his ribald, shocking, and demonic best as he describes in unforgettably vivid detail his harrowing descent to the very bottom of Hell. Filled with politics and philosophy, humor and horror, the Inferno is an epic poem at once personal and universal that provides a darkly illuminating view into our present world no less than Dante's own. For as we're led to the last circle of the Inferno we recognize the very worst in human nature...and the ever-abiding potential for redemption. Complete with an introduction and commentary, this definitive dual-language edition is unsurpassed for its clarity, beauty, and faithfulness to the original.

Author Biography

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. His early poetry falls into the tradition of love poetry that passed from the Provencal to such Italian poets as Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's friend and mentor. Dante's first major work is the Vita Nuova, 1293-1294. This sequence of lyrics, sonnets, and prose narrative describes his love, first earthly, then spiritual, for Beatrice, whom he had first seen as a child of nine, and who had died when Dante was 25. Dante married about 1285, served Florence in battle, and rose to a position of leadership in the bitter factional politics of the city-state. As one of the city's magistrates, he found it necessary to banish leaders of the so-called "Black" faction, and his friend Cavalcanti, who like Dante was a prominent "White." But after the Blacks seized control of Florence in 1301, Dante himself was tried in absentia and was banished from the city on pain of death. He never returned to Florence. We know little about Dante's life in exile. Legend has it that he studied at Paris, but if so, he returned to Italy, for his last years were spent in Verona and Ravenna. In exile he wrote his Convivio, kind of poetic compendium of medieval philosophy, as well as a political treatise, Monarchia. He began his Comedy (later to be called the Divine Comedy) around 1307-1308. On a diplomatic mission to Venice in 1321, Dante fell ill, and returned to Ravenna, where he died.?

Allen Mendelbaum's five verse volumes are: Chelmaxions; The Savantasse of Montparnasse; Journeyman; Leaves of Absence; and A Lied of Letterpress. His volumes of verse translation include The Aeneid of Virgil, a University of California Press volume (now available from Bantam) for which he won a National Book Award; the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso volumes of the California Dante (now available from Bantam); The Odyssey of Homer (now available from Bantam); The Metamorphoses of Ovid, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry; Ovid in Sicily; Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti; Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo; and David Maria Turoldo. Mandelbaum is co-editor with Robert Richardson Jr. of Three Centuries of American Poetry (Bantam Books) and, with Yehuda Amichai, of the eight volumes of the JPS Jewish Poetry Series. After receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia, he was in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. While chairman of the Ph.D. program in English at the Graduate Center of CUNY, he was a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and at the universities of Houston, Denver, Colorado, and Purdue. His honorary degrees are from Notre Dame University, Purdue University, the University of Assino, and the University of Torino. He received the Gold Medal of Honor from the city of Florence in 2000, celebrating the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth, the only translator to be so honored; and in 2003 he received the President of Italy's award for translation. He is now Professor of the History of Literary Criticism at the University of Turin and the W.R. Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University.

Review

"An exciting, vivid Inferno by a translator whose scholarship is impeccable."
--Chicago magazine

"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.

"Tough and supple, tender and violent . . . vigorous, vernacular . . . Mandelbaum's Dante will stand high among modern translations."--The Christian Science Monitor

"Lovers of the English language will be delighted by this eloquently accomplished enterprise."
--Book Review Digest

Review Quote

"An exciting, vividInfernoby a translator whose scholarship is impeccable." --Chicagomagazine "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. "Tough and supple, tender and violent . . . vigorous, vernacular . . . Mandelbaum's Dante will stand high among modern translations."--The Christian Science Monitor "Lovers of the English language will be delighted by this eloquently accomplished enterprise." --Book Review Digest

Excerpt from Book

CANTO I Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura4 esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura! Tant'' e amara che poco e piu morte;7 ma per trattar del ben ch''i'' vi trovai, diro de l''altre cose ch''i'' v''ho scorte. Io non so ben ridir com'' i'' v''intrai,10 tant'' era pien di sonno a quel punto che la verace via abbandonai. Ma poi ch''i'' fui al pie d''un colle giunto,13 la dove terminava quella valle che m''avea di paura il cor compunto, guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle16 vestite gia de'' raggi del pianeta che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle. Allor fu la paura un poco queta,19 che nel lago del cor m''era durata la notte ch''i'' passai con tanta pieta. E come quei che con lena affannata,22 uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, si volge a l''acqua perigliosa e guata, cosi l''animo mio, ch''ancor fuggiva,25 si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo che non lascio gia mai persona viva. Poi ch''ei posato un poco il corpo lasso,28 ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, si che ''l pie fermo sempre era ''l piu basso. The voyager-narrator astray by night in a dark forest. Morning and the sunlit hill. Three beasts that impede his ascent. The encounter with Virgil, who offers his guidance and an alternative path through two of the three realms the voyager must visit. When I had journeyed half of our life''s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,4 that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter--death is hardly more severe!7 But to retell the good discovered there, I''ll also tell the other things I saw. I cannot clearly say how I had entered10 the wood; I was so full of sleep just at the point where I abandoned the true path. But when I''d reached the bottom of a hill--13 it rose along the boundary of the valley that had harassed my heart with so much fear-- I looked on high and saw its shoulders clothed16 already by the rays of that same planet which serves to lead men straight along all roads. At this my fear was somewhat quieted;19 for through the night of sorrow I had spent, the lake within my heart felt terror present. And just as he who, with exhausted breath,22 having escaped from sea to shore, turns back to watch the dangerous waters he has quit, so did my spirit, still a fugitive,25 turn back to look intently at the pass that never has let any man survive. I let my tired body rest awhile.28 Moving again, I tried the lonely slope-- my firm foot always was the one below. Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l''erta,31 una lonza leggiera e presta molto, che di pel macolato era coverta; e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto,34 anzi ''mpediva tanto il mio cammino, ch''i'' fui per ritornar piu volte volto. Temp'' era dal principio del mattino,37 e ''l sol montava ''n su con quelle stelle ch''eran con lui quando l''amor divino mosse di prima quelle cose bel≤40 si ch''a bene sperar m''era cagione di quella fiera a la gaetta pelle l''ora del tempo e la dolce stagio≠43 ma non si che paura non mi desse la vista che m''apparve d''un leone. Questi parea che contra me venisse46 con la test'' alta e con rabbiosa fame, si che parea che l''aere ne tremesse. Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame49 sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, e molte genti fe gia viver grame, questa mi porse tanto di gravezza52 con la paura ch''uscia di sua vista, ch''io perdei la speranza de l''altezza. E qual e quei che volontieri acquista,55 e giugne ''l tempo che perder lo face, che ''n tutti suoi pensier piange e s''attrista; tal mi fece la bestia sanza pace,58 che, venendomi ''ncontro, a poco a poco mi ripigneva la dove ''l sol tace. Mentre ch''i'' rovinava in basso loco,61 dinanzi a li occhi mi si fu offerto chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco. Quando vidi costui nel gran diserto,64 "Miserere di me," gridai a lui, "qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo certo!" Rispuosemi: "Non omo, omo gia fui,67 e li parenti miei furon lombardi, mantoani per patria ambedui. And almost where the hillside starts to rise--31 look there!--a leopard, very quick and lithe, a leopard covered with a spotted hide. He did not disappear from sight, but stayed;34 indeed, he so impeded my ascent that I had often to turn back again. The time was the beginning of the morning;37 the sun was rising now in fellowship with the same stars that had escorted it when Divine Love first moved those things of beauty;40 so that the hour and the gentle season gave me good cause for hopefulness on seeing that beast before me with his speckled skin;43 but hope was hardly able to prevent the fear I felt when I beheld a lion. His head held high and ravenous with hunger--46 even the air around him seemed to shudder-- this lion seemed to make his way against me. And then a she-wolf showed herself; she seemed49 to carry every craving in her leanness; she had already brought despair to many. The very sight of her so weighted me52 with fearfulness that I abandoned hope of ever climbing up that mountain slope. Even as he who glories while he gains55 will, when the time has come to tally loss, lament with every thought and turn despondent, so was I when I faced that restless beast,58 which, even as she stalked me, step by step had thrust me back to where the sun is speechless. While I retreated down to lower ground,61 before my eyes there suddenly appeared one who seemed faint because of the long silence. When I saw him in that vast wilderness,64 "Have pity on me," were the words I cried, "whatever you may be--a shade, a man." He answered me: "Not man; I once was man.67 Both of my parents came from Lombardy, and both claimed Mantua as native city. Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi,70 e vissi a Roma sotto ''l buono Augusto nel tempo de li dei falsi e bugiardi. Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto73 figliuol d''Anchise che venne di Troia, poi che ''l superbo Ilion fu combusto. Ma tu perche ritorni a tanta noia?76 perche non sali il dilettoso monte ch''e principio e cagion di tutta gioia?" "Or se'' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte79 che spandi di parlar si largo fiume?" rispuos'' io lui con vergognosa fronte. "O de li altri poeti onore e lume,82 vagliami ''l lungo studio e ''l grande amore che m''ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. Tu se'' lo mio maestro e ''l mio autore,85 tu se'' solo colui da cu'' io tolsi lo bello stilo che m''ha fatto onore. Vedi la bestia per cu'' io mi volsi;88 aiutami da lei, famoso saggio, ch''ella mi fa tremar le vene e i polsi." "A te convien tenere altro viaggio,"91 rispuose, poi che lagrimar mi vide, "se vuo'' campar d''esto loco selvaggio; che questa bestia, per la qual tu gride,94 non lascia altrui passar per la sua via, ma tanto lo ''mpedisce che l''uccide; e ha natura si malvagia e ria,97 che mai non empie la bramosa voglia, e dopo ''l pasto ha piu fame che pria. Molti son li animali a cui s''ammoglia,100 e piu saranno ancora, infin che ''l veltro verra, che la fara morir con doglia. Questi non cibera terra ne peltro,103 ma sapienza, amore e virtute, e sua nazion sara tra feltro e feltro. Di quella umile Italia fia salute106 per cui mori la vergine Cammilla, Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute. And I was born, though late, sub Julio,70 and lived in Rome under the good Augustus-- the season of the false and lying gods. I was a poet, and I sang the righteous73 son of Anchises who had come from Troy when flames destro

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