Dante Books

The endnotes don't link, but that isn't really an issue because they are at the end of each chapter and 90% of the time only give reference to other books. I know that is important, but not to the actual reading. I just bookmark the page as I get to it if it contains a book I want to reference. Or I highlight, add note ect. The book has a couple of format issues, but really small, gaps in strange places, line breaks out of place. But these are few and far between. It is a great collection of essays on the Divine Comedy that really increases the understanding of the readings. I highly recommend it. I don't have the paper copy, only the Kindle, and I am very glad to have it. It is in my top 5 favorite Amazon purchases.

This companion is an excellent guide to Dante's life, work, and thought. It is especially useful for those readers of the Comedy who want more information on specific allusions than most footnoted editions can supply. It is also helpful for an understanding of the complex political and religious turmoils in which Dante was embroiled, and which showed up continuously throughout his work.

This is an able commentary to Dante, but make sure you are clear on which edition you are purchasing: the most recent (as of this review) is a March 2007 version. Sufficient edits, insights and scholarly arguments (let's not quite call them developments) exist in the 14 years between publications to make it worth being certain what you're buying before you buy.

Then again - the 1993 edition is available used for under three bucks, while the 2007 edition ranges from $25 to $50. So... choose your priority.

Dante criticism has a life of its own: call it vegetable. Then again, this has been the case almost since Dante first wrote his Commedia. Though not the best text for one intending to leap into the Inferno for the first time, this canto by canto commentary, an able addition to the mountain of Dante scholarship, provides clear, interesting, scholarly help to anyone who has spent time with Dante as scholar or teacher or interested reader.

Oh my Wow! Musa's translation is like sooo the best I've ever read. Inferno is like wine em dine em 69em! lol

The Inferno is a book that everybody should read (if they can even read). Mark Musa translates Dante's original pros. into a cloak wheel which is very easy for almost anybody understand. The poetry is lost(as with any translation), but the story Dante will tell shall live forever.

The Inferno is a record of Dante the Pilgrim's first trip through hell. It was Virgil's second. This was my fifth trip through the Inferno, and having Musa along for the ride made it wonderful. Whether this is your first time through or not, you ought to have this critical edition as your guide. As another reviewer noted, Musa isn't nearly as fettered by the rhyme scheme as translators like John Ciardi and Robert Pinsky. Even Ciardi apologizes often for his liberties in the name of rhyme. Musa has gorgeous footnotes on lines that Pinsky and Ciardi neglect for the rhyme. If you have the great fortune to teach the Inferno, it makes great sense, of course to have multiple translations before you, but Musa's critical edition will be the most weathered edition in the end. Your students will gain a great understanding of the importance at looking at multiple sources as well.

Musa is a scholar, not a poet, at least not professionally. But the authenticities of his translation's thunder, juices, epiphanies, and whiffs would indicate that scholarship makes a successful move to a new language more probable than do poetic gifts. Dante, now, was a poet. The infinite riches of his simple simple lines glow from each line of Musa's. While the essential deep love for the poem glows from each line of his commentary. Pinsky, a very good poet, spent his powers on reproducing the virtually unreproducible--the never-ending aba bcb cdc terza rima rhyme scheme. And he did an expert job. But the poetry is the loser. It's in the back seat, trying to stay awake. The real surprise is how careless Pinsky's rhythms are. Musa's pound right along-a fairly consistent, and unobtrusive, iambic pentameter. Dante, of course, rhymes and rhymes and rhymes, but always to profoundest purpose. (It is said he wrote three lines a day. The deeper one goes into the Commedia the easier it is to believe this.) What rhymes with what was clearly something Dante cared a lot about. Take Inferno 34, 34-39. Dante's final six words (and I should point out that my Italian is very limited) for these six lines are: UGLY, EYEBROW, SORROW/ WONDER, HEAD, RED. Pinsky's are: beautiful, brows, well/ was, head, this. Musa's: foul, Maker, him/ up, faces, red. The parallels the rhymes convey, as I see it, are these. Lucifer, now UGLY, is the source of the world's SORROW. (Musa faithfully pairs "foul" and "all grief should spring from him." Pinsky pairs "beautiful" (reversing Dante's careful sequence of beautiful to ugly) with "then all sorrow may well" which depends on the next line to mean anything, which sort of weakens the parallel: Like saying 1 plus 1 = 1.2 and uh oh another eight tenths.) And the second parallel: Lucifer, whose fall to hell began with the raising of an insolent EYEBROW, has become hideous, a three-headed WONDER. From beautiful to UGLY, from the happiness of Eden to a world of SORROW. Musa's "Maker"/"looked up" is admittedly not terrific. Pinsky's "brows"/"How great a marvel it was" is more successful. But compare the two translations' net impact. If you saw what Dante saw, and he was very much writing so that you would, which set of lines below would better convey your reaction?

"If he was truly once as beautiful / As he is ugly now, and raised his brows / Against his Maker--than all sorrow may well /

Come out of him. How great a marvel it was / For me to see three faces on his head: / In front there was a red one; joined to this, /

. . . "

"If he was once as fair as now he's foul / and dared to raise his brows against his Maker, / it is fitting that all grief should spring from him. /

Oh, how amazed I was when I looked up / and saw a head--one head wearing three faces! / One was in front (and that was a bright red)."

I think the title of the review says it all.
I am glad I came across this book after knowing and studying the Divine Comedy for many years; Otherwise it may have been pearls before swine.
But if you are a novice, get it and keep it on your bookshelf, and go back to it every once in a while. As your love of Dante, and your faith deepens, you will appreciate it more and more, and like, me may find you need to buy a second copy after the first became so dogeared and fragile.

helen luke is dead now but i wish she wasn't. this
is the best book i ever found about dante. if dante's
comedy seems a mystery to you, if it seems hard to
reach, or if it seems like it has nothing to say to us
now, you need this book. helen luke used dante's poetry
to write a magnificent jungian deconstruction of growth
and love. it makes everything simple. it is magnificent.
i was interested to see that she liked dorothy sayers'
translations (of all the dante translations that there
are) the best. if you have this book, you don't need
any other growth book, you don't need any other literary
analysis of the comedy. she knew dante very well.

The moment I saw the references to Charles Williams and Dorothy L. Sayers I was hooked. Culturely familiar with, but never having studied, Dante's poem, I had always understood it as an allegory of life after death. Wrong! The intersections between Dante's journey as portrayed by Helen Luke and portions of my spiritual journey were intense, meaningful, detailed -- and totally unexpected. The reality of the passage through Hell and Purgatory in this life points to the hope of a portion of the feast to come also in this life. It is not an easy read, but I found myself unable to put it down -- except when the power of a passage would so resonate in me I had to pause to mark it and reflect on it.

This marvellous book opens up Danteland for the contemporary reader. Helen Luke's masterful guidance on the paths of Dante's three-tiered cosmos not only helps us to reenter and relish the Divine Comedy - the towering literary achievement of the medieval imagination - but to use it to enter deeper levels of reality through meditation and active imagination. I have based deeply moving group meditations on this, along the lines of those decribed in my own book "Dreamgates", and we have found that Dante's gates can actually take us into imaginal realms that people appear to inhabit after physical death. As the life dreamer she was, Helen Luke reminds us of the way the radiant guide keeps calling the seeker through dreams, which are so often ignored or forgotten until the BIG moment of spiritual trial and eventual initiation. I would recommend using the middle section of the book in tandem with W.S.Merwin's excellent recent translation of the "Purgatorio", which is more readable than the older versions quoted by Ms. Luke.

for great translation of the Inferno I far prefer the fairly recent The Inferno version done by the husband and wife team of Robert and Jean HOllander, who have now completed all three parts of the Commedia, Purgatorio and Paradiso. They added a better than pedestrian but in fact a very useful commentary to each line, to each canto, plus a great introduction and remarks on the process of translation. I like their faithfulness to the text and to the triplet rhyming as possible while placing it into a living contemporary and comprehensible English which does not in itself need any explanation. For me this is the most faithful and readable version.

Of course the standard version widely used in our schools is the old John Ciardi The Inferno (Signet Classics). If you really require an Oxfordian tone to your translation, then certainly Dorothy L. Sayer's monumental, unmatchable and moving translation of the entire Commedia: The Divine Comedy: Hell (Penguin Classics), The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory (Penguin Classics), and her posthumous The Divine Comedy Part 3: Paradise (Penguin Classics). I especially appreciate the way she courageously, correctly and brilliantly translates the title of the first section in to good old, clear and monosyllabic anglo-saxon.

For a flavor of a more recent, and male, Oxford Don we have this present new translation by Robin. I find this translation the least felicitous of all, yet the introduction and the commentary highly informative, uesful and not to be missed. In fact the notes and commentary alone, although limited to the world view of a Protestant Oxford Don, are alone worth the price of the book.

Like the Hollander's, this edition is bilingual, placing face to face the currently most authoritative version of Dante's original vernacular, that published in his native Florence in 1994 by the Casa Editrice Le Lettere as Commedia: Secundo l'Antica Vulgata. [edizione nazionale] from Giorgio Petrocchio. For this we are most grateful, and in fact is our sole object in purchasing this edition.

Please note that unlike the indication in another review's title, Robin does not use the most remembered words "Abandon hope" to translate the closing line of the inscription which opens Canto Three: "Lasciate ogni speranza . . ." Rather Robin writes: "Surrender as you enter every hope you have (p. 21)." I would prefer, without thinking too deeply about the matter, something along the lines of "Let go of all hope, you entering (here)."

In a word please think of this then as a brilliant historical, cultural and textual commentary rather than easy reading translation. For instance we read on p. xxiii: "Dante is never more Christian than when he vibrates in horror at the corruption disseminated by the institutional politics of the contemporary Church, the Whore of Babylon ( . . .) impelled in all its decisions by avarice and violence." Or again we may read on pp. xivff: "Dante comes to believe in a providence that creates and sustains human beings in all aspects of their existence. In the end it is charity that underlies Dante's political vision - a love which seeks not to possess (n)or to violate but rather to promote the good of others ( . . .) Despair then is no part of Dante's vision ( . . .) The awful pain of exile informs Dante's representation of Hell, which is a state of absolute alienation form human and divine companionship. But exile in Purgatory is transformed into the condition of pilgrimage, of a quest for distant truth; and in Paradise it finally becomes clear that exile, in spiritual terms, is a metaphor expressing the true nature of charity: 'caritas' demands nothing less than exile; it is that absolute and willing dispossession of self ( . . .)."

This beings therefore to read much like Pope Benedict's First Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est God Is Love: Prepack of 50 or Thomas Merton on peace or something from Dante's own contemporary Saint Francis of Assisi. The commentary by Robin is well worth the price of admission; the translation is like a host's dreary after-dinner reading of his own poetry. For Dante, read the Hollanders, or the original.

"Midway life's journey I was made aware/that I had strayed into a dark forest..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.

The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.

But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.

If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.

Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.

And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, groan they, 'We were sullen and wroth...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")

More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.

Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated.

Kirkpatrick's translation of the first book of Dante's 'Divine Comedy' is the latest of a series of Penguin editions of Dante's works. It has a good commentary and introduction to the text.

Dante of course really needs no introduction. He is in my view the Western world's finest poet between Virgil and Shakspeare. His visionary genius, incredible intellect and ability to see and integrate several aspects of the medieval world view as a whole are unmatched by any writer or poet of the medieval era. He is the poetic equivalent of Thomas Aquinas.

The Divine Comedy is a journey within and without, to the deepest parts of hell to the highest realms of heaven to the vision of God himself. You get the sense in reading Dante no word is superfluous, every letter has its place in a beautifully precise and organic scaffolding of art. The unity of his poetic vision and his ability to execute it, place him in the same rank of genius as Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton.

The poem is at the deepest level an allegory of the journey into the depths of the egoistic self (hell) to the beatific vision, where God is found within through the means of graced vision. While Dante may be read in other ways (he certainly was influenced by political, social and class concerns, so a Marxist and feminist interpretation is possible) his spiritual and psychological journey is just as important.

Dante is timeless, even if his view of the cosmos seems absurd and antiquated in our time when clearly there is no empyrean but only an expanding infinite universe of billions of galaxies. Still, if Dante were alive today, I doubt he would have any trouble incorporating our cosmology into a comprehensive vision, such was this man's genius.

This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization. The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary. Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul. He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century. Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership. The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).

The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife. He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood. Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence. In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life. Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.

Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid. Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid. Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid. Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy. They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud. Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society. These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom. The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins. There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one. For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin. Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.

In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful. In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm. In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law. Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere. She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.

In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship. A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante. Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence. Farinata predicted Dante's exile. Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.

The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God. In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides. The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch. Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members. This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile. Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile. Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.

The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud. In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc. Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices. Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire. Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted. This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile. In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism. He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church. Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation. After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.

Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads. Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind. The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer. The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy. Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.

Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant. By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves. He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.

Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.

I found this book at a bargain book sale and who can pass up a normally $14 book for only 4 bucks. I will admit I am only 3/4 the way through the book and I like it very much. The only problem is that there is no explaination of the magic useage or some of the terms. It's like being in the middle of a series where everything was explained in the first book and the author expects everyone to have read it. It's just a bit disconcerting. But I really do love the idea of military black ops men using magic. MMmmm Yummy!!

This is the second book from this author that is great. She has a way of writing that makes you care for the characters. I can't wait for the next book from this author. The paranormal elements only serve to enhance the entire novel. It's like an alternate universe or a contemporary novel with elements of magic that are integrated into life. It makes me wish we had such a universe here. If you can read both novels-Entangled and Enticed.

Dillon Gavin misses his Black Ops partner John "Lantis" Atlantis who left the field two years ago and is now married to his "heart sister" a pregnant Keira (see ENTANGLED). He is happy for both of them and even played matchmaker between them. Currently Dillon is on an enforced official month of R&R so he goes to the Walson Galleries to see the Jordan Kane exhibit as he is a big collector of her psyprints.

When Dillon and Jordan meet, the attraction is ignitable, but though he wants to pursue it, she refuses as he scares her and her clairvoyance makes her wonder if he is a killer as she envisions a murder when she touches his gloves. He is surprised to learn she is blind as she sees better than most people with 20-20 vision and is jealous of her muse Timothy. Dillon begins his month long courtship with orchids and a mano a mano with Timothy her cat. However, as they see one another, she fears she has fallen in love with a killer while he finds the field no longer appealing, but first someone is trying to kill his beloved Jordan and she thinks it might be Dillon.

Fans of erotic romantic suspense will enjoy this enticing thriller starring likable protagonists though the audience will think of Johnny Cochran's "if the glove don't fit acquit". The story line is fast-paced as the hero wants to become the new muse of his beloved while also keeping her safe from an unknown adversary whose motive surfaces late; his dilemma is that Jordan thinks he is her killer. Kathleen Dante provides a stupendous sequel as it is Dillon's turn to come out of the cold into the heat of love.

Blind artist Jordan Kane uses her psyprint abilities to create works of art. However, because of her clairvoyance, very few people realize she is blind and she likes it that way. During a showing of her art at a gallery, Jordan meets Dillon Gavin, a man she instantly recognizes as a walking, talking breathing upset to her well-ordered solitary life. While Dillon may be sin personified and sexy as hell, Jordan just doesn't want a man in her life upsetting the balance and normalcy she has created. Using her clairvoyance to see Dillon, Jordan can't deny her attraction. His job, however, causes the most distress. Violence comes off him in waves, so much so that Jordan decides that Dillon is strictly off limits. If only he would listen.

Black ops agent Dillon Gavin has been placed on vacation by his superiors with orders to rest and relax. Since his occupation takes up most of his time, he rarely indulges in simple things like sex and flings. Primed and ready for fast and easy non-committed action, Dillon has no idea that his favorite artist, Jordan Kane, is about to totally change his outlook on romance and love. Desiring Jordan like none before her, Dillon's seduction begins. It's not surprising that it almost comes to a crashing halt when she lets him in on her secret. The thought that Jordan can sense and see what he is doing and what he has done places her in unnecessary risk. Dillon knows that he should let her go - but knowing and doing are two very different things. When Jordan's nightmares are increasingly filled with vile visions of destruction and death, Dillon determines that he will do anything to keep his woman safe.

ENTICED by Kathleen Dante is, for want of a better description, simply enticing. I thought Ms. Dante wove an intriguing tale of suspense that kept me wondering at the identity of the antagonist. I treasured Dillon from the moment he met Jordan. Chivalrous from his first glance at Jordan, I thought him a most patient lover; his seduction and enticement of Jordan was one of the most romantic scenes I have ever read.

Jordan was a strong and independent heroine and I loved how she tried to talk herself out of seeing Dillon many times over but to no avail. The secondary character, Timothy, Jordan's fat feline pet, was written so realistically that most cat lovers will relate to the ball of fur's stubbornness and curiosity.

ENTICED is a must read in my book. Suspenseful, intriguing, and doused with a bit of magic, this story sated my paranormal loving heart. This second book of Kathleen Dante's En series was exactly what I was craving. ENTICED is a keeper and I look forward to future installments.
***Natasha Smith for Romance Junkies***

This a a great companion for Pearl's Dante Club. Keep it close by.

I have read and taught several different translations of Dante's Inferno, but I was not aware that Longfellow had been the first to translate it into English. Although it is not written in Terza Rima, it is a beautiful, flowing and elegant rendition of Dante the Pilgrim's descent through the nine levels of hell. I teach Inferno in college, and although my books are ordered for this semester, I intend use the Longfellow translation for the next course.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is the man most responsible for bringing Dante to the new world, where The Divine Comedy had long been held as superstitious Catholic hogwash by the largely Protestant population that settled here. In translating the Comedy and bringing into respectable circles in the United States, Longfellow not only reintroduced a great poet to a lost audience but created a great translation himself.

Longfellow's is not the best translation of Dante's work, but it is one of the finest as a poem in its own right. The language is stilted and difficult at times to the modern ear, but its tone and grandeur are perfect for capturing the vision of the world's greatest poet. This is a good introduction to Dante for the student and the casual reader alike. Longfellow's notes are good, but not great. Look to another edition, like Mark Musa's or Charles Singleton's, for more extensive notes.

Highly recommended.

I'd just like to point out that notwithstanding the reviewer below, Longefellow was not the first to do an English translation of Dante. That was Rev. Henry Cary's black verse version, published 1810 (?). Readers who are looking for accuracy should check out John Singleton's prose translation with extensive commentary, but in my opinion Longfellow's version is the most satisfying overall. In only makes sense: Longfellow had the most innate talent of all Dante's English translators (at least that I've read).

I really enjoyed this book as it shedded light on parts of my family I had not known about. Despite the personal connection, I believe the book provides a unique perspective on the hazards of coal mining [particularly timely read based on the Sago mining disaster], life in a company coal town and the struggles of a work force to unionize to raise wages, benefits and increase safety issues.

"Memories From Dante: The Life of a Coal Town" is far more than just a trip down memory lane of a small town in the coal fields of SW VA. The detailed oral histories and the huge number of photographs do provide those living in the area with the chance to renew old memories but it also provides researcheers and scholars with a social, economic, political, religious, and family history of the town and area. Anyone interested in a comprehensive study of a coal town needs this book. I especially recommend it for libraries and archives. Kathy Shearer has done a remarkable job of helping the people of Dante tell their story. Perhaps she never saw a lumb of coal before she came to the area (all the Dante mines are closed now) but the town and its elderly residents live in her book. Without any sense of superiority she has enpowered these people to tell the world what it was like to live in a time and a place now largely forgotten.

This Book took me back to a childhood that many of us only wish we could revisit. Kathy Shearer was able to catch the history of a wonderful little coal town and bring it to everyone's attention. People who grew up in a small town will be able to relate and relive the pleasures of a hometown community. Kathy Shearer took us all back to a time of childhood happiness. This is a wonderful book to read and learn of the struggles these people lived while trying to make a living mining coal and how they held on to each other for support and survival.

I bought this book thinking it's just another novice trying to write about something they know little about, but what a suprise when I started reading it. Kathy has done a thoroughly wonderful job describing these hard working, hard living and honest people in such vivid color you become friends with them instantly.
They become your family, and you love them, laught with them, cry with them, and hate them but you cannot forget them.
She is a first class writer and deserves high praise for a book which is both entertaining and historically founded.
I am just waiting for the sequel.

As a whole, Dante's COMEDY (a title later amended by the Church to DIVINE COMEDY) is arguably the greatest work in the history of World Literature. As an artist, his only competitor might well be Shakespeare. Despite all that, I will confess that the PARADISE is not a terribly easy book to read. INFERNO in particular but also PURGATORY is filled with a host of extraordinary scenes with unquestionable universal appeal. The highpoints of INFERNO have become part of the intellectual furniture of Western literature, not least because one reads it with rapt attention and a sense that one is dealing almost with a contemporary rather than a person writing seven hundred years ago. PURGATORY lacks some of this universal appeal, but nonetheless features a host of marvelous moments and extremely human details.

Unlike INFERNO and PURGATORY, however, PARADISE is rather narrower and specialized in its appeal. It is not merely that it assumes that the reader is a devout Catholic; one must be a devout Catholic of the early 14th century, sharing completely the view of the universe accepted at that time. I think I have an unusually complete understanding of the cosmological views of the late medieval period, but while this meant I was able to read this work with some familiarity of the details, it also guaranteed that much of my interest was merely academic.

There is an expression that "You do not judge Dante; Dante judges you." This is undoubtedly true, but it it definitely true that this final book is going to strain the interest of most readers, even if you know enough about the intellectual worldview behind his work. In fairness to Dante, the work was nearly impossible to pull off. That he managed to do so nonetheless is nothing short of a minor miracle. For one thing, most of what made the many remarkable characters of INFERNO so fascinating was the struggle that existed in their lives. But in PARADISE there is no conflict, no struggle, no "agon." Instead, it is a realm of perfect bliss, with few qualities apart from love, happiness, and praising God through singing and dancing. These are some pretty stiff limitations that any writer would struggle with. That Dante managed something remarkable despite this is fairly amazing.

Also, there is a major theological limitation placed upon the work. At this particular point in the history of Christian thought, the assumption was that after death humans would be without a body (though they would be reunited with their body at the final judgment). So all of the denizens of heaven were disembodied spirits (though Beatrice does seem to possess a body, but that is a detail that we'll pass over). Dante represents all of the souls he meets in heaven as brilliant shapes of light. In fact, everything in heaven is represented as brilliant shapes of light.

C. S. Lewis remarked that PARADISE was the first Sci-Fi novel, and while he intended this hyperbolically, there is nonetheless a great deal of truth in it. Dante's imaginative depiction of the physics of the superlunary realm is a truly enormous achievement. I won't go into all of the details of medieval physics, but given the assumptions of Aristotelian science, the way his body reacts in the heavens is not merely consistent with the science but pretty much necessitated by it. For instance, moving on the assumption that things above the orbit of the moon have an ineluctable attraction to God, whenever Beatrice wants to take Dante from one sphere to another she merely gazes upon the divine beauty and they are transported as quickly as, as Dante puts it, a bolt from a crossbow. It is a wonderful touch, only one among many found in the book.

What I love most about this work, however, is the way that it expands and completes the work as a whole. On one level, the COMEDY is essentially a tour of the entire known cosmos excluding the surface of the earth. He begins by descending into hell, travels all the way down through the circles of hell to the gravitational center of the earth where Satan is encased in ice, and then ascends literally up Satan's legs (which are on the opposite magnetic pole from his torso) to the Southern hemisphere (contrary to popular myth, all educated medievals were perfectly aware that the earth was round), to the base of the seven-storied Mount Purgatory, up it to its top and the Garden of Eden, and from thence to the various spheres of the heavens until he gazes directly upon God. No, PARADISE is not as fascinating to read as INFERNO, but the paradox is that the COMEDY as a whole is far more fascinating than INFERNO on its own. Therefore, anyone who fails to go on from INFERNO to read both PURGATORY and PARADISE is not only going to shortchange themselves: they are going to neglect completing one of the genuine masterpieces in the history of literature.

As with the first two volumes, Mandelbaum's translation is both remarkably faithful to the original and magnificently poetic. There are many excellent translations of this masterpiece, but I would probably recommend Mandelbaum's over any other complete translation to someone desiring to experience this masterpiece in translation.

As with the other two books of the Divine Comedy, Paradiso could be a stand alone work of literature in its own right. The Grande Finale of Dante's massive poem ends with a flourish and upholds the tradition of masterful writing set forth by Inferno and Purgatorio.

This book should only truly be read upon completing Inferno and Purgatorio as many of the asides and relationships were first developed there. Allen Mandelbaum does a wonderful job of translating the poem but of also providing the reader with numerous notes and explanations on certain phrases or objects within the Cantos. This version is by far the easiest and most complete and can be enjoyed by both the casual and experienced reader.

Paradiso is another good book in the Divine Comedy trilogy. However most people never get past Inferno. The first two are good, and Paradiso most definetly holds up to its counterparts. I would also like to add that Allen Mandelbaum does an excellent job translating the Divine Comedy, as well as the Aeneid of Virgil. Paradiso, translated by Mandelbaum is easy to read, and very poetic. I am sure it is just how Dante himself would have written it, had he written the Divine Comedy in english.

Paradiso is inherently dull. The very nature of heaven makes it so. Not only is there no flesh, there is no conflict and there isn't even any change. With the stuff of drama absent and only bliss to look upon, what is there to say? Or rather, what is there to listen to?
In this case, as the story of our poet recedes and as Virgil is replaced by the ethereal Beatrice, the substance of the poem becomes the poetry. That is, the voice of Dante becomes paramount. If you read this in Italian, that's reward enough. I would guess that Paradiso is the canticle most often quoted in the original language.
In English however, this is tough sledding. The wily Ciardi didn't quite pull it off and all the earlier translations are hopeless. Then along comes Mandelbaum. The language is elevated without being unreachable. It is still not a volume that's impossible to put down, but it is a volume that you have to pick up again and again.

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG: A Novel

On elegance, Dante is equalled by the Bard, and the capturing of Dante's evocations of more than the eye can see or the mind understands, still, we are CAPTURED-( remember Love is a "falling') but not imprisioned- rather enlarged (as we are at St. Peter's in Rome: the enormity of the places does not make us feel small but EMBRACED by a beauty unexpected and taken up in it)
Dante is the first to make himself the center of the story,(as Christian witness) following the 13 year old women who was his muse right unto heaven, where his love of Beatrice is not diminished but enriched
The Princeton Dante Project will release the Paradiso in August, and go to the website and read Canto 1, you will be hooked
maybe the best translation, it feels the best one to me

The Hollander's translation is akin to the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and altar for english speaking lovers of Dante not yet able to read his works in italian. A work of tremendous beauty has been made available - this after generations of only being able to experience a forbidding, darker version of the original.

This scholar/poet team has given us a wonderful gift. Thank you Robert and Jean Hollander.

This beautifully bound, cleanly translated Dante has the clearest, most teachable set of notes of any English edition. Hollander, who knows this vast territory as well as anyone, has a gift for presenting it in just the right detail. This is to be highly recommended for those teaching Dante as well as for those who are making their way into Dante's overwhelmingly complete, beautiful world.

Having just read the Modern Libraries edition of Purgartory and comparing it to this excellent new translation from Princeton's Dante expert Robert Hollander, I must say that Hollander out does himself with this new, insightful edition of Dantes' second part of the Divine Comedy. If you want to be own one of the best editions of Purgatory then this is the edition you must get. FYI Hollander is the Dante Scholar for this generation...it wouldn't be right to do any sort of essay or criticism without consulting at least one book that this husband/wife team have written.

Saban and The Ancient was a great read. It was a very intriguing novel that was entertaining as well. There were a lot of unsuspected events in the story and it kept me glued to the book until I was finished reading it. I can't wait for book two because I really want to find out what happens with Saban, Margo and the rest of Alpha Team. What is really going on in the Ancient organization?

I was more than a bit surprised at the quality of the dialogue and the backstory that the author is creating. As an earlier reviewer mentioned, the characters are eminently likeable and engaging. I could't agree more. There is action aplenty, but not at the expense of plot and character development. It reads a bit like a cross between a graphic novel (for the thematic elements) and an espionage novella. The characters' motivations and personalities are consistent, given the setting. The snarky, Whedon-esk dialogue is damned funny at times, without seeming forced. That is not easy to achieve. Bravo, Dante. I am anxious to read many future installments in the series, and getting to know Saban, Margo, John and the rest as the ride continues.

Reviewed by Ian McCurley (age 13) for Reader Views (4/07)

Saban Smith is just a regular college student who is practically unnoticeable, or so they think. That is until one day when he and his friend Margo Weissmann are outside the library and agents in blue start falling from the sky. The agents carry guns that fire mercy bullets. Mercy bullets are glass bullets that shatter upon impact and contain chemicals that leave you unconscious. Saban and Margo are fleeing when they see their other friend, Mikey, face down in the bushes. As they check his vital signs, they are attacked by two men in camo who are also carrying mercy guns. When Saban defeats the two agents using the advanced martial arts, Margo wonders how such an unremarkable person can be so remarkable. Saban learns from Ford, camo guy #1, that there are 10 other camo-dressed agents and that they are up against the Ancient, a group of agents who have never been exposed and very little is known about them. As Saban and Margo continue their escape, they come to the wall of the campus. The campus wall is 14-feet high, and Margo, in a standing jump, nearly clears the top. Saban wonders how she did that. Failing in the wall jump, they move towards one of the three exits when they are confronted by a blue-clad agent code-named Franklin. When Saban gives a password and the blue-clad agent stands down, they are joined by other members of the Ancient. The group they are in is the Alpha, one of the Ancient's teams of agents. While Margo is wondering how Saban knew the password, they are being led beneath the headmaster's house to a bunker where they must find one of the five U-crystals. The purpose of these crystals is unknown, but it is discovered that everyone in the Alpha is a Talent. A Talent is someone with enhanced capabilities is strength, speed or other less-obvious skills. Who is Saban? Is he a Talent? And for that matter, who is Margo? Is she a sleeper left behind during a failed mission?

This book is for readers ages 13 and up who enjoy novels about spies and secret organizations. Dante Amodeo really shines in this book. "Saban and the Ancient" is creative, intriguing and a real page-turner. I'm looking forward to the next book in the Transformation series, "Saban and the Betrayer."

I was pleasantly surprised that such an action packed book also explored the relationships between friends and more-than-friends (and wasn't too sappy). The characters were also very likeable. The dialogue sounded the way young adults actually talk, which a lot of writers screw up, and a lot of it was really funny. I also liked that it wasn't full of sex and profanity. Anybody that likes sci-fi, and especially sci-fi for young people, would like this book. It was really good, and I will definitely read the next one in the series!