Customer Reviews

Dante: Inferno

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The translations of Dante remain as popular as ever with the general reading public, Simone's rendition, titled INFERNO, joins other noted scholars. The eclectic ingredients of the different forms of narratives, background, allusion, and also the peculiar text offer intuitive rewards to readers.

Dante tells about the journey, of an endangered pilgrim, through the known cosmos, the realms of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. He allows him to see the spectrum of human reality and the glory of divine origins that lead to salvation. Dante makes the pilgrim a version of himself and creates two major voices: the voice of the pilgrim experiencing the journey for the first time, and the voice of the narrator shaping and retelling the journey. The poem begins in high drama with the pilgrim's life hanging in the balance. Dante's comedy offers readers many points of interest that cannot be divined without the aid, at a minimum, of a basic glossing and crafted commentary. His work is a central poem in world literature, and also a historical text. It is full of references to the world of late medieval Italy, and the broad history of the culture and thoughts of that era. There are many Italian, religious, and classical references.

Simone's translation is founded on his desire to assist in providing the beginning student, of Dante, an informal first reading of INFERNO. He attempts to stay as close as possible to the literal meaning of Dante's Italian text, while still suggesting that the work is a poem. This edition of Dante's masterpiece includes an in-depth introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences. This is a vigorous translation of Dante's drama, which captures and intensifies his range.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

As a graduate student studying this text, I found Simone's translation to be the most helpful among the versions that I sampled. The footnotes were much easier to use than the endnotes common in other editions. In addition, the introduction and glossary were excellent in their scholarly-yet-readable anaylsis of the text. Simone's translation puts the text in front but adds the necessary comments and background to help understand Dante's amazing work.