Inferno (Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry)

Inferno (Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry)

<DIV>"Here at last that much suffering reader will find Dante's greatness manifest, and not his greatness only, but his grace, his simplicity, and his affection." — William Dean Howells, <I>The Nation</I><BR>"As a crown to his literary life, Longfellow combines his exquisite scholarship and his poetic skill and experience in the translation of one of the great poems of the world." — <I>Harper's Monthly</I><BR>Enter the unforgettable world of <I>The Inferno</I> and travel with a pair of poets through nightmare landscapes of eternal damnation to the very core of Hell. The first of the three major canticles in <I>La divina commedia</I> (The Divine Comedy), this fourteenth-century allegorical poem begins Dante's imaginary journey from Hell to Purgatory to Paradise. His encounters with historical and mythological creatures — each symbolic of a particular vice or crime — blend vivid and shocking imagery with graceful lyricism in one of the monumental works of world literature.<BR>This acclaimed translation was rendered by the beloved nineteenth-century poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A skilled linguist who taught modern languages at Harvard, Longfellow was among the first to make Dante’s visionary poem accessible to American readers.</DIV>