Table Of Content

Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Introduction Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Canto X Canto XI Canto XII Canto XIII Canto XIV Canto XV Canto XVI Canto XVII Canto XVIII Canto XIX Canto XX Canto XXI Canto XXII Canto XXIII Canto XXIV Canto XXV Canto XXVI Canto XXVII Canto XXVIII Canto XXIX Canto XXX Canto XXXI Canto XXXII Canto XXXIII How To Read Dante “A sensitive and perceptive translation.” —Archibald MacLeish “Fresh and sharp . . . I think [Ciardi’s] version of Dante will be in many respects the best we have seen.” —John Crowe Ransom DANTE ALIGHIERI was born in 1265. Considered Italy’s greatest poet, this scion of a Florentine family mastered the art of lyric poetry at an early age. His first major work, La Vita Nuova (1292), was a tribute to Beatrice Portinari, the great love of his life. Dante’s political activism resulted in his being exiled from Florence, and he eventually settled in Ravenna. It is believed that The Divine Comedy—comprising three canticles, The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso—was written between 1308 and 1320. Dante Alighieri died in 1321. JOHN CIARDI was a distinguished poet and professor, having taught at Harvard and Rutgers universities, and a poetry editor of The Saturday Review. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1955, he won the Harriet Monroe Memorial Award, and in 1956, the Prix de Rome. He died in 1986. SIGNET CLASSIC Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Published by Signet Classic, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc. Previously published in a Mentor edition. Acknowledgment is made to Venture, Italian Quarterly, The Saturday Review, Between Worlds, The Massachusetts Review, New World Writing, and Arbor, in which excerpts from the present work first appeared. First Signet Classic Printing, July 2001 Copyright © John Ciardi, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA The Library of Congress has catalogued the Mentor edition of this title as follows: 61-18103. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014. eISBN : 978-1-101-12735-3 http://us.penguingroup.com To Dudley Fitts, Magister Introduction One of the qualities which distinguish Dante’s ,Divine Comedy from most other long narrative poems is the individual character and, as it were, physiognomy peculiar to each of its three great divisions. Readers of the Inferno will recall its frequently harsh materialism, the great variety of intonation, the vivid realism, in which its ghostly figures rapidly seem to become people and the whole scene appears the “hell on earth” Dante probably wished it to represent. To understand the Inferno, some historical background was obviously essential. It was important to know that Dante, by being born an upper- middle-class Alighieri in the independent commune of Florence in 1265, had inherited the political loyalties of a Guelph and that he had also acquired hereditary enemies called Ghibellines. The history of the civil strife between these parties was of equal importance, for, even if it culminated in a Guelph victory just after Dante’s birth, talk of it and of fears lest it flare up again, filled his mind during his formative years. Outstanding members of the preceding generation of both parties such as the great Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti, and the Guelph statesman and scholar Brunetto Latini, were to supply a number of his infernal figures, and allusions to victories, exiles, and defeats fill its pages. Since participation in public life would determine Dante’s fate, we had to be aware of new dissension among the Guelphs, now divided among themselves into “Blacks” and the “Whites” to which he belonged, and to follow the strange fatal parallel between his political progress and the growth of this new partisan strife. We saw the irony of his rise to the highest magistracy just as violence broke out in 1300, so his prominence made him a prime target for his foes. What happened next, however, was of fundamental importance for all parts of the Comedy and, indeed, for all Dante’s thinking thereafter. The Blacks schemed to interest the pope in intervening in the dispute. Boniface VIII, ever alert for an opportunity to strengthen his political influence, ignored the protests of the Whites, and invited a supposedly

Description:

In The Inferno Dante described his journey to the depths of evil, to the recognition of the true nature of sin. In The Purgatorio he now describes his journey to the renunciation of sin, accepting his suffering in preparation for his entrance into the presence of God. This brilliant translation of D