Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

Overview

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

‘There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.’

Considered one of the greatest medieval poems written in the common vernacular of the time, Dante’s Inferno begins on Good Friday in the year 1300. As he wanders through a dark forest, Dante loses his way and stumbles across the ghost of the poet Virgil. Virgil promises to lead him back to the top of the mountain, but to do so, they must pass through Hell, encountering all manner of shocking horrors, sins and evil torments along the way, evoking questions about God’s justice, human behaviour and Christianity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780007902095
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Series:	Collins Classics
Edition description:	UK ed.
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	4.38(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Durante degli Alighieri, or Dante (c. 1265–1321), was one of the major Italian poets of the Middle Ages and is referred to as the father of the Italian language. His ‘Divine Comedy’ is widely considered to be the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	IX
	Acknowledgments	XIX
	The Plan of Dante's Hell	XXI
	Inferno	I

Editorial Reviews

"Seeking to preserve Dante's 'infinitely variable rhythmic pulse,' James makes an inspired metrical choice…The greatest virtue of James's translation is his gift for infusing poetry in the least likely places…James's austere volume achieves something remarkable: It lets Dante's poetry shine in all its brilliance."

Joseph Luzzi

"An extraordinary verse-rendering—the fruit of many years' work—of Dante's The Divine Comedy…[James] has not only tackled this Everest of translation, but has scrambled to the summit in triumph."

Guardian - Robert McCrum

"The freedoms James takes allow him to get off some beautiful phrases…James is a poet, doing a poet's work…[He] is also a premier practitioner of the high-low style that became so popular in the nineteen-twenties, notably via Eliot and Pound, which is to say, in part, via Dante."

The New Yorker - Joan Acocella

The only good Hell to be in right now is poet Mary Jo Bang's innovative, new translation of Dante's Inferno, illustrated with drawings by Henrik Drescher. Bang's thrillingly contemporary translation of the first part (the juiciest part) of Alighieri's 14th-century poem The Divine Comedy is indeed epic. . . . Once you embark on this journey, you may wish to read not only all of Mary Jo Bang's work but all of Dante's, too.” —Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“Being an excellent poet in her own right, [Bang] succeeds in giving the Inferno's narrative drama an energetic idiom that gets the poem moving, and at times even dancing on the page. . . .The result is one of the most readable and enjoyable versions of the Inferno of our time.” —The New York Review of Books

“This will be the Dante for the next generation.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A transformative translation.” —The Millions

“Bang [dwells] in depths—not only in Dante's, but our own. . . . Bang's hell is our culture, the numbing proliferation of texts, images, meanings, interpretations. For her, the perfervid busyness of our culture leads to a deadening akin to spiritual numbness. Hence the allusions to everything from Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors to the Boy Scouts to frozen Jell-O to the Hotel California—these are the fragments that have shored up against our ruins, to borrow from T. S. Eliot, who knew a thing or two about Dante, and death, and fittingly appears several times in these pages.” —New York Daily News

“[Bang's] Inferno is a classic recast for our age, a hell we'll find ourselves in, an old poem made new by one of our most surprising and innovative poets.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, National Public Radio

“Wonderfully evocative to a contemporary reader. . . . Bang did something incredibly smart before she coaxed Dante's corpse to sit up and sing for us: She taught him how to talk like us. Hell is more appealing in the form of a mirror.” —The Stranger

“Mary Jo Bang's Inferno is quaking with aliveness. . . . [Her translation] will burn us all awake.” —Eileen Myles, The Poetry Foundations Harriet blog

“Mary Jo Bang's new translation of Dante's Inferno restores meaning to that old book-blurb cliche, 'startlingly original.' . . . Imagine a contemporary translation of Dante that includes references to Pink Floyd, South Park, Donald Rumsfeld, and Star Trek. Now imagine that this isn't gimmicky. . . . Imagine instead that the old warhorse is now scary again, and perversely funny, and lyrical and faux-lyrical in a way that sounds sometimes like Auden, sometimes like Nabokov, but always like Mary Jo Bang.” —BOMBlog

From the Publisher

Actor and writer Heathcote Williams gives a masterful performance of Benedict Flynn’s blank verse translation. Williams modulates his smooth baritone into different characters, maintaining an even pace through this classic work. The cantos are punctuated by short selections of music ranging from Gregorian chant to Renaissance dance music. The CDs are accompanied by detailed notes that outline the action of each canto and provide information on classical and biblical references. The notes also include reproductions of Gustave Doré’s famous illustrations. A plaintive horn sounds the beginning of INFERNO, the beginning of Dante’s journey from The Gloomy Wood to the Circles of Hell. Dante begins alone in a fog of seeking and confusion until he encounters the shade of Virgil. When the poets begin the descent at the beginning of Canto Three, Williams’s booming voice is technologically enhanced to create an echo for the famous line, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here. R.F. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

DEC 05/JAN 06 - AudioFile