'For readers already familiar with Dante, this is a rich, playful, and insightful poetic reading, true to the spirit if not the word.' - Library Journal

This will be the Dante for the next generation.' - Publishers Weekly Bang has done for Dante's most famous poem something akin to what Baz Luhrmann did for Shakespeare in his 1996 film of Romeo and Juliet: updated the presentation of a classic for a contemporary sensibility without sacrificing its timelessness. With haunting illustrations by Henrik Drescher, this is the most readable Inferno available in English, a truly remarkable achievement. Bang's version is true to the original: lyrical, politically astute, occasionally self-mocking, and deeply moving. In its time, the poem was stunningly new. The Inferno - the allegorical story of a spiritual quest that begins in a dark forest, traverses Hell's nine circles, and ends at the hopeful edge of purgatory - was also an indictment of religious hypocrisy and political corruption. She's matched Dante's own liberal use of allusion and literary borrowing by incorporating literary and cultural references familiar to contemporary readers: Shakespeare and Dickinson, Freud and South Park, Kierkegaard and Stephen Colbert. Bang has similarly created an idiomatically rich contemporary version that is accessible, musical, and audacious. I was lost.Īward-winning poet Mary Jo Bang has translated the Inferno into English at a moment when popular culture is so prevalent that it has even taken Dante, author of the fourteenth century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, and turned him into an action-adventure video game hero.ĭante, a master of innovation, wrote his poem in the vernacular, rather than in literary Latin. Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig.

Of what we call a life, I looked up and saw no sky. An innovative and fascinating new version of Dante's Inferno as it has never been rendered.

The inferno by dante alighieri