Dante’s descent into the Underworld to find his lost love.
Guided by the poet Virgil, Dante plunges to the very depths of Hell and embarks on his arduous journey towards God. Together they descend through the nine circles of the underworld and encounter the tormented souls of the damned – from heretics and pagans to gluttons, criminals and seducers – who tell of their sad fates and predict events still to come in Dante’s life. In this first part of his Divine Comedy, Dante fused satire and humour with intellect and soaring passion to create an immortal Christian allegory of mankind’s search for self-knowledge and spiritual enlightenment.
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
From the Back Cover
This story begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year of our Lord 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense re-creation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.
About the Author
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. He met Beatrice, who was to be his muse, in 1274, and when she died in 1290 he sought distraction in philosophy and theology, and wrote La Vita Nuova. He worked on the Divine Comedy from 1308 until near the time of his death in Ravenna in 1321.
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