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Title: The Divine Comedy: The Inferno/the Purgatorio/the Paradiso by Dante Alighieri, John Ciardi, Dante Alighieri ISBN: 0-451-20863-3 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: 10 stars would not be enough!!
Comment: The Divine Comedy" was written in Toscan by the Florentinian Dante Aligheri 700 years ago and is one of the most important texts ever written. Dante Aligheri is, along with Miguel de Cervantes, Willian Shakespeare and the Portuguese Luis de Camões, one of the most important writers of History, but we have to remember that Dante Alligheri was born some 250 years before each one of the latter.
"The Divine Comedy" was first published in the beginning of the 14th century and narrates a vision Dante Alligheri had of his visit to Hell (Dante's Inferno), the Purgatory and to the Heavens (Paradiso), where he is guided by the Latin poet Virgil and later on by his muse, Beatrice, deceased some years before. His narrative is full of devout catholic sentiments and he spares no expenses in narrating the torments perpetrated in Hell, described in details, where each ring or level is reserved for each different earthly infraction that the penitent has commited when alive. The company of Virgil, a permanent resident of the first hell ring, the Limbo, is a magistral coup by Dante Aligheri and adds lustre to the text.
Virgil leads Dante too through the Purgatory, where, contrary with what happens in the Inferno where there is no salvation, the souls are suffering with a view to a future life in Heaven. Dante is the first and only human being that put his feet into this after life regions, and things get increasingly intense and sometimes dangerous to him. Also to be noted is the disposition of Dante to here and there sting his earthly political opponents, which were not few, banning them to hellish confines.
The final visit to the supreme heavenly region, where he meets Beatrice, is suffused with catholic symbology, fully explained by Dante, who embroiders the descriptions with all the richness of his language. You end the book asking for more, and sensing intensively the powerful richness of Dante's vocabulary. I hope you enjoy the Divine COmedy as much as I did. Good reading.
Rating: 3
Summary: A bit overrated
Comment: It may well be that I would rate this work higher if I could read it in the original. There's a great deal of energy behind it. But to me, something about it feels forced. When I read, e.g. Tolkien or Marion Zimmer Bradley, I don't have the sense that the author is answerable to any authority or has any agenda other than to write out from him- or herself -- other than to tell a good story which needs to be told. But it feels to me as if Dante made up his mind to write a great epic, and although the work clearly expresses his personal feeling as well -- his love for Beatrice and Virgil, for example --it was cleanly supportive of the Roman church. He was -- it seems to me -- in some measure being a good boy and in some measure venting for past wrongs, particularly in the Inferno. My favorite book is the Paradiso. There seems to me more there for the mytholgical mind to hold onto. But when I read Shakespeare or Goethe, something in me is deeply satisfied in a way it is not satisfied by Dante.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Best There Ever Was
Comment: This is, simply, the best translation of the greatest piece of literature ever written. Not even the works of Shakespeare can surpass Dante's towering epic and its multi-layered, symphonic grandeur. Ciardi's translation, as one other reviewer here has already stated, almost sounds Italian. It is fluid, accessible, and beautiful and doesn't attempt to painstakingly preserve Dante's terza rima, a rhyme scheme that is beyond the scope of the English language (in Italian, everything seems to rhyme with everything else). This work moved me unlike any other--Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven is told with shocking genius and flawless detail. Every word is golden, every line contains a whole universe beneath its simple facade. The love, the effort, the genius, and the authenticity that went into this gloriously panoramic poem are without rival--nothing can compete with The Divine Comedy.
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Title: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (The Signet Classic Poetry Series) by John Milton, Christopher B. Ricks, Susanne Woods ISBN: 0451527925 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 07 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy by Gustave Dore ISBN: 048623231X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1976 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's the Divine Comedy by Joseph Gallagher, John Freccero ISBN: 0764804944 Publisher: Liguori Publications Pub. Date: February, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill ISBN: 0140424385 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: The Aeneid by Virgil, ROBERT FITZGERALD ISBN: 0679729526 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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