Virgil gives Dante a guided tour of hell. There are a lot of figures from medieval Florence experiencing various torments there; maybe some people Dante knew and fantasized that this is where they belonged. The worst torments are for treachery, which means that I can think of at least one ex-President who would end up there, if indeed there was such a place. Dante seems pretty freaked out much of the time, as one would imagine. Sort of like a really, realy bad acid trip. Hard for me to give this a rating, as it is just too weird. ( )

I started one translation of the Inferno then switched to another, resulting in two interestingly different reading experiences. The first that I happened to come across in the library had a 1939 prose translation by John D Sinclair. I read the first few cantos of this in a very slow and unwieldy, yet rewarding, fashion. I have very basic knowledge of Italian, thanks to a short course during Sixth Form and GSCE Latin, both long ago. Sinclair’s translation sacrifices poetry in order to remain close to the Italian, close enough for me to follow. This allowed me the luxury of reading each verse aloud in Italian, then aloud in English, then mapping the latter onto the former. (My Italian accent was inevitably atrocious, but as I was on my own there was no pronunciation police to castigate me for it.) Whilst I enjoyed this process, it was labour intensive and removed the pace and vigor of the narrative, whilst instead emphasising the beauty of the original poetry. Then I told a friend I was reading it this way, they were vaguely horrified and promptly lent me another translation.

The second translation was by Robert Pinsky, who states in his introduction that he prioritised poetry (but not exact rhyme) over literalism in his version. He also didn’t follow the line breaks in the original Italian, as Sinclair tended to do. My very limited Italian could not cope with this, so I ended up reading this version entirely in English and not aloud, which was vastly quicker. This allowed appreciation of what was actually happening, rather than merely wallowing in the sound of words (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that). If I am over-explaining how I read the Inferno, it is largely because I tend to feel incompetent at reading and appreciating poetry, having given up studying literature after GSCE despite a lifelong obsession with reading. The great thing about reading anything for leisure purposes, of course, is that you are not being marked on your response to it.

This is especially fortunate as the Inferno is dense with allusions that went completely over my head. The notes at the end helpfully explained many of them, whilst also highlighting areas where scholars still argue bitterly about what Dante meant. I appreciated this, but frequent moments of incomprehension did not prevent my enjoying the poem. I was convinced to read it by Alberto Manguel’s [b:Curiosity|23168484|Curiosity|Alberto Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1411447672s/23168484.jpg|42713702], which uses the Divine Comedy as a framing device to examine humanity’s desire to know ourselves, each other, and the world. Manguel emphasises the universal themes of the Divine Comedy, which I had in mind as I read the Inferno. Perhaps the most powerful of these themes is the pity and sympathy that Dante has for most of the shades he finds suffering in the various circles of Hell. Although there are several that he has no pity for (including one he kicks in the face), for the most part he wants to know their names and stories. Dante does not question God’s plan for these unfortunate souls, and neither do the sinners themselves, but he nonetheless has considerable empathy for their plight. Virgil is more tight-lipped and hurries Dante on when he gets too deeply into conversation with tortured souls, most of whom consider it a respite to talk to a living being.

Dante’s depiction of the circles of Hell and the punishments meted out within is intensely vivid and horrific. It also retrospectively made me realise the debt owed to the Divine Comedy by, amongst other things, the excellent Lucifer graphic novel series (my favourite volume of which is in fact titled [b:Lucifer, Vol. 5: Inferno|314573|Lucifer, Vol. 5 Inferno|Mike Carey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1309578687s/314573.jpg|305411]) and [b:The Amber Spyglass|18122|The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1329189152s/18122.jpg|1774510]. On the other hand, the narrative also echoes Aeneas’ journey to the Underworld in [b:The Aeneid|12914|The Aeneid|Virgil|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386923968s/12914.jpg|288738], which I remember doodling across my notes at school. (Why did no-one recommend the Divine Comedy to me when I was teenager? I would have loved it!) In fact, the tension between antiquity and Christianity throughout the poem is fascinating. Dante makes it abundantly clear that he loves and reveres Virgil, but Virgil is only qualified to be his guide to Hell because he cannot enter heaven. Having lived in the pre-Christian era, he is doomed by default, as are the heroes, philosophers, and poets of Greece and Rome. The deeper bowels of Hell, however, seem more densely populated by Christians who did terrible things. Two exceptions are Ulysses and Diomedes, whose actions as ‘false councillors’ land them in the Malebolge (what a wonderful word, Malebolge).

Rather than rambling further, I will conclude with a quote from the Pinsky translation. I greatly enjoyed the whole poem and found that this translation had a lovely rhythm, so I chose a bit of canto XX entirely arbitrarily.

Reading myself at the cliff’s brink, I looked down
Into the canyon my master had revealed
And saw that it was watered by tears of pain:

All through the circular valley I beheld
A host of people coming, weeping but mute.
They walked at a solemn pace that would be called

Liturgical here above. But as my sight
Moved down their bodies, I sensed a strange distortion
That made the angle of chin and chest not right -

The head was twisted backwards: some cruel torsion
Forced face towards kidneys, and the people strode
Backwards, because deprived of forward vision.

Perhaps some time a palsy has wrung the head
Of a man straight back like these, or a terrible stroke-
But I’ve never seen one do so, and doubt it could.

Reader (God grant you the benefit of this book)
Try to imagine, yourself, how I could have kept
Tears of my own from falling for the sake

Of our human imagine so grotesquely reshaped…

( )

Having read this long enough ago to have largely forgotten it's contents, it was time to go through it again. However, listening to it as an audio book while doing something else reduced the attention that I gave to it and it was less meaningful to me. Perhaps the translation also made a difference

Still, as I passed being 20% of the way through the book it became more meaningful to me. I also thought about the reaction of offended contemporaries; what kind of person was Dante to write with such chance of causing enemies? I began to notice that nearly all of the people mentioned seemed to be Italian. What reaction was there to the book? ( )

Can I pick out a favorite canto? How about canto 14, the division of the blasphemers in circle 7. Some surprises here even as the reader has been growing accustomed to Dante's blending of Classical culture and Christianity. Capaneus, one of the seven mythological heroes who attacked the city of Thebes in support of Polynices, son of Oedipus, as told by Aeschylus in [b:The Seven Against Thebes|752713|The Seven Against Thebes (Dover Thrift Editions)|Aeschylus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328866074l/752713._SY75_.jpg|2474147] and Statius in [b:The Thebaid: Seven Against Thebes|677893|The Thebaid Seven Against Thebes|Publius Papinius Statius|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348522460l/677893._SY75_.jpg|663891], is here for his blasphemy against Jupiter/Zeus. Dante thus treats blasphemy against a pagan god in mythology as equal to blasphemy against his Christian God! One might think that theologically you can't end up in the Christian Hell for defying a pagan god, but here you can, as Dante incorporates the Classical period into his Christian universe that takes in all of human history.

The idea that Hell is really a hell of one's own making is presented here as well. Capaneus continues to lash out at Jupiter: "let him hurl his bolts at me, no joy of satisfaction would I give him!" He is still the same person, unchanged, as he was in life, which is a condition of the shades in Hell: they will not ever change, their pride will never allow them to repent. Virgil speaks back to him that "no torment other than your rage itself could punish your gnawing pride more perfectly." This psychologically astute envisioning of Hell is not one I was expecting to encounter; I had been underestimating Dante.

In the second half of the canto we get a fascinatingly allegorical and resonant description of the Man of Crete. This is a colossus representing humankind that lies underneath Mt. Ida and whose tears, representing humanity's tears, are the source of Hell's rivers. Dante takes the idea of such a figure from the Book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and combines it with Ovid's description of the fall of man from the Golden Age down through silver and bronze and finally to the Iron Age that he presents in [b:Metamorphoses|1715|Metamorphoses|Ovid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622739150l/1715._SY75_.jpg|2870411]; the colossus is fashioned of gold at the head, silver at the chest, brass to his legs, and then iron - except for a right foot made of terra cotta that he places more weight on, which represents the modern Roman Church. Only the gold portion is unbroken, as the tears carve a fissure down the rest of him.

The idea of Hell's rivers being fed by human tears symbolically falling down a figure representing the fall and decay of man is a powerful poetic image. Also very interesting in that it shows how people in every age and every generation think that theirs is a uniquely bad time in history, going all the way back to Ovid! This is nothing new at all; likely in a thousand years people will think that their time is a uniquely bad time, as humanity continues on its way.

And then on a lighter note, we have the pilgrim, perhaps unconsciously, getting a little jab in at Virgil, who could not get them past the gates of the infernal city of Dis separating Upper from Lower Hell that was guarded by devils - Virgil can handle Classical monsters, but Christian devils are beyond his powers and they had to wait on an angel from Heaven to continue their journey. Here Dante most unnecessarily reminds Virgil of his past failure in introducing a question about their current position: "My master, you who overcome all opposition (except for those tough demons who came to meet us at the gate of Dis), who is that mighty one that seems unbothered...". Petty!
-------

Finally found a translation, Mark Musa’s, that I really get on with. Also watched and read the lectures and notes from Columbia University’s course on the Commedia alongside reading each canto, which are available for free at digitaldante.columbia.edu, an amazing gift. I would have understood a mere fraction of the context, richness, and literary techniques of this work without those. ( )

Psychedelic, strange, extremely physical, and bodily. Dante is the spiritual counterpart of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, ( )

Very Interesting depiction of Hell but the author is full of himself ( )

I am prone to hesitation in reviewing a classic so low. I realize I am in the minority and I don't want to tick people off. I also freely admit my struggles with some of these classics is solely in my naivety and lack of deeper understanding.

That being said -- this was a chore to read. I had an audible version and a print version, neither read the same. It likely helped to "follow along" as I listened, deciphering the print from the audible. Yet still so tough.

I understand the deep religious tone in the book, I still find it uncomfortable. This idea of hell is disturbing and so ... mainstream religious. On the other hand, what an amazing and ornate and detailed description of Hell. Quite impressive.

I also wish I knew more about the many, many people mentioned in the poem. So many times I just skimmed over who they were and sometimes what they did to get to Hell. I wanted to get it.

If I understand the times and atmosphere of the life of Dante, this was a brave work. I admire that. I do not admire, however, where he put Muslims or Jews and those who were born prior to Christ. Doesn't sit well with me. ( )

I can only hope that in a few hundred years my own self-insert fanfic about the people I don’t like getting tortured becomes a cultural touchstone. ( )

Spectacular notes. Translation is good. ( )

This is a great way to learn more about the late medieval view of the world and its ways. ( )

It will forever puzzle me that Cassius and Brutus are put in the innermost circle alongside Judas, seemingly elevating Caesar above the Christ.
( )

Of The Divine Comedy, I only read The Inferno, and found it overrated. Dante does a lot of score-settling about contemporary figures of whom he disapproves. (I am not guessing here; my copy is an annotated edition which explains the references to Dante's contemporaries.)

Analogy: Suppose you're living on Mars 500 years from now and you read a supposedly classic work, written by an American in the early 21st century, which features a Democrat or Republican harshing people in the other party. E.g. it's written a by a liberal taking potshots at Tucker Carlson or a conservative taking potshots at Nancy Pelosi. What a waste! The setting is Hell itself! The thematic material is sin, virtue, punishment, redemption, the afterlife... the Big Stuff! And Dante lets himself get distracted with "this one corrupt politician at the time I'm writing this is going to Hell." Sad! ( )

Progressing through the Inferno
Review of the Random House Audio audiobook edition (July 11, 2017) narrated by Dominic Hoffman of the Jean Hollander & Robert Hollander translation (orig. published in hardcover by Doubleday Dec. 2000) of the Italian language original (1320)

ché non è impresa da pigliare a gabbo
discriver fondo a tutto l'universo,
né da lingua che chiami mamma o babbo.
- Inferno, Canto XXXII, lines 7-9

It is no enterprise taken lightly -
to describe the very bottom of the universe -
nor for a tongue that cries 'mommy' and daddy.'
- Inferno, Canto XXXII lines 7-9 as translated by Jean and Robert Hollander.

I am continuing with gradually reading the Hollander's translation in print with its extensive introduction and notes. The map which they provide is very basic however and hardly provides any help in orientation.
See map at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-URvm89pQeuI/UaPO8Z0FqrI/AAAAAAAAAzg/ESh1EVp-Bw8/s1600/...
Dante's Map of Hell by Jeffrey L. Ward as included in the print editions of The Inferno as translated by Jean and Robert Hollander. Image sourced from the Cutting Edge Conformity Blogspot.

A good map is extremely useful in understanding the characters, the geography and the structure of the book. This one by Ryan Flynn is the best one that I've found. There are dozens of others available via google image search. You can click on the source url below in order to zoom in on the details.
See map at http://i.imgur.com/WF60rN4.jpg
Map of Inferno by Ryan Flynn sourced from http://i.imgur.com/WF60rN4.jpg

You really do need an extensive list of notes to understand the characters that Dante has placed in Hell, many of which were his late contemporaries. This is a sort of medieval trolling where he gets to condemn them to eternal torments. The most shocking element (aside from the closing obscenity of Canto XXI's closing line ed elli avea del' cul fatto trombetta. (Italian: And he made a trumpet of his asshole.) is that the inner circles of hell are reserved for forgers and traitors, rather than for more vicious physical crimes or blasphemy.

Overall the translation flowed well and was given an excellent, but mostly somber reading, by Dominic Hoffman.

This audio edition provides no introduction or notes. The Hollander translation in print also provides the original Italian on each facing page. ( )

Classic poem of a journey through hell. I did not read the other two in the trilogy. ( )

In the journey of my life I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path.

Thus begins Dante’s descent into Hell, where, with Virgil as his guide, he sees the punishments meted out to those who have sinned and felt no remorse. Even in the upper levels, the punishments seem horrendous, but each is cleverly designed to fit the sin itself and, while I might have ranked the seriousness of the sins in a different way, the justice of the punishment is always evident.

There is no need for me to say Dante’s poetry is masterful and his work a masterpiece. Time has established that beyond doubt. And, his work is still alive and allusions to it are all around us. Heck, I ran into a crossword puzzle two days ago with a Dante inspired clue. He has become a part of our collective consciousness, even for those who have not read him for themselves.

I read the translation that was done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and I think that the poet in Longfellow’s soul was directly connected to the poet in Dante’s. The translation was quite beautiful, the descriptions vivid.

I am now on to read Purgatorio. The Comedy will no doubt take me the better part of this year, but I am hoping to enjoy the rest as much as I have enjoyed The Inferno.
( )

It was a real slog for me. I can appreciate the significance of the work, but I've never been big on poetry to begin with. ( )

I am not prepared to debate the canonicity of this work, though my initial suspicion is that its political agenda is far too historically particular to render the kind of transcendent satisfaction I expect from a canonical work. That aside, I simply prefer realism, and the Inferno has the distinct flavor of a fever dream. ( )

Wonderful John Ciardi translation, elegant and meaty. Notes are speculative and interesting, much better than the Mark Musa version. ( )

I had no idea this was such a small piece of literature. Yet its words have such an impact and cannot leave you unchanged. Where do your desires, hatreds, loves, habits put you when you die and face what you have been?

Dante has two other members of the series that are not as popular, Purgatorio and Paradiso. With Inferno, the three together are called "The Divine Comedy."

If this allegory still interests you I suggest reading, "Inferno" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. They have made it up to date and the series is riveting. ( )

A unique classical poem in which the 13th-14th century poet Dante journeys through Hell with the roman poet Virgil as his "tour guide".

Although the version I have read is a prose translation of the original Italian, the brilliance of this literary work shines in Dante's depiction of Hell, its punishments, as well as its inhabitants, so to speak. He divides Hell into 9 circles, each of which houses those who committed a particular sin. The order of the circles reflects Dante's personal opinion on which sins should be punished more severely. Furthermore, for each of the sins mentioned he describes punishments that he thinks are just and reflective of the nature of that particular type of sin.

Most baffling of all, Dante even had the guts to place his different contemporaries (presumably political rivals or simply those whom he did not like for one reason or another), among other historical characters and mythological creatures, into the different circles of Hell as he mentions how he encounters their suffering souls throughout the journey.

This piece of work is unique and audacious. One should not forget that Dante's original was, in fact, a poem! And while this work might be blasphemous and conflicting at times with my views on Hell and Divine Judgement, I think this is still worth a read.

4/5 ( )

I read this once before (with a different translator) and it didn't have near the impact it did this time. I credit Dorothy L. Sayers for that. Her translation is lively, her interpretations and notes are helpful and inspiring. Possibly the fact that I have more knowledge of Greek myths and life in general than I did the first time is also helpful. I look forward to reading the rest of Dante's Comedy as translated by Sayers. ( )

I'm not intelligent enough to give this work the review it deserves. I can say that the story absolutely captivated me. I can say that it's eminently quotable. I was also pleasantly surprised to find out this is where the "abandon hope all ye who enter here" quote comes from. I also love the "These of death no hope may entertain" quote as well.

I'm also sure I missed a lot of the nuance in the story as well, which saddens me.

One final thought. It's very obvious this work served as an inspiration for Clive Barker. His work seems to draw so much from this. I just wish he'd revisited it one last time before he wrote [b:The Scarlet Gospels|23014674|The Scarlet Gospels|Clive Barker|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1426127782s/23014674.jpg|984888]. That book would have been much richer for it.

( )

I never thought I'd say it, but I think I'd rather have read this for a literature class so as to get a better understanding of it. I felt as though I simply didn't have the context to appreciate it, and my world view is sufficiently remote from Dante's that I didn't have much personal insight. If fire, brimstone, and devils with pitchforks are your thing, you'll love this. Unfortunately, they're not mine.

I was pleased to have the extensive notes in this edition, however, and Pinsky's clean, modern translation was also greatly appreciated. ( )

Great Book!

"I came around and found myself now searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost. How hard it is to say what that wood was, a wilderness, savage, brute, harsh and wild… My theme will be the good I found there…" (pg. 3)

In my belated quest to acquire, over the course of my adult life, an appreciation of culture that was once considered the responsibility of our education system – but long since abdicated – it pleases me to be able to say that I've now read Dante's Inferno. However, I must also say that, in contrast to my previous encounters with Homer, Milton, the scribes of the Bible and others, I rather struggled with this one and did not enjoy it.

This struggle was in part because of my Penguin Classics edition. These are usually dependable, readable editions accessible to the layman – that, in fact, was the imprint's initial raison d'être – but I found this edition of Dante's Inferno plodding. It begins with a dense, 100-page introduction that did more to get me lost in the weeds than bring me out of the forest, and it ends with another 130+ pages of commentaries and endnotes. I know that a reader isn't obliged to read these, of course, but I usually like a deep delve into the scholarly analysis. Here, it sapped my will.

This edition also disappointed in its translation by Robin Kirkpatrick, which is a technical feat, no doubt, but in my opinion a rather tasteless one. From what I understand, Dante's verse is particularly hard to translate – it seems like every word in Italian ends with a vowel, which makes it easier to rhyme than in English – and his austere, unlyrical style does a translator no favours ("his plain style and syntax," Kirkpatrick writes, almost ruefully, "has yet to be absorbed into the repertoire of English poetry" (pg. ciii)). But, even with these caveats, it's still disappointing when the most famous phrase of Dante – the inscription above the gates of Hell, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" – is delivered as the rather more flaccid "Surrender as you enter every hope you have" (pg. 21).

But, translators and editions aside, I also struggled with Dante himself. The narrative was often laborious; the descent into a literal Hell which Dante pursues was lacking in orientation. Many of the denizens of Dante's Hell are political and religious figures from his own time, and to understand the context of their role the reader must undergo a restless flicking backwards and forwards to the endnotes. I got lost in the procession of monstrous creatures, and the thread of narrative was slight. Dante has great ideas, as I shall come onto presently, but these are not easy to discover for yourself as you read. Just about every line, it seems, requires scholarly divination. That plain, unlyrical style I mentioned above was not only unexpected (I was anticipating an Italian Milton), but it meant that in the moments when I was adrift I didn't even have the benefit of a killer phrase to sustain me through a rough patch.

Nevertheless, after the inauspicious journey through the outer rings of Hell, I did start to get a tenuous grasp on what Dante had achieved. The deeper he goes through his infamous Seven Circles of Hell, the better it gets, and by the end my impression of the poem was a favourable one. The poet Dante – as opposed to the character Dante in his Inferno – was an exile from his native land, and his conception of Hell is a sort of mind map for the paths a human soul can find themselves on. Barred from his literal homeland, he navigates the "construct in his mind [of] an intellectual and spiritual homeland" (pg. xxiii).

Dante's journey is not crude religious iconography of brimstone and winged hellspawn, but instead a lucid meditation on the moral challenges people face in their lives. His Hell is not a place for irredeemable sinners, but instead a banal dwelling-place for those who have erred in their lives and have not sought remedy, whether through apathy, sin or ignorance. As Kirkpatrick's introduction puts it, "the sinners in Dante's Hell… have all in some way denied themselves a full realization of their human potentiality and fallen into an alliance with dullness and death" (pg. lxxv). With this orientation in mind, we recognise that Dante's poem is not a gleeful condemnation or vindictive settling of scores, not even when the people he meets in Hell are people he has known in real life. He is gripped by "great sorrow" when he comes across the tortured, bewildered souls, "for many persons of the greatest worth were held, I knew, suspended on this strip" (pg. 31).

Mistakes on these paths of life lead to spiritual and psychological Hell. Dante's construction is a forerunner of Milton's Hell – in Paradise Lost, it is a place you end up if you make bad decisions in your life (which is why Milton's Satan is the lord there – you can't conceive of a worse decision to make in your life than to scorn and rebel against God). Dante was perhaps even more committed to this conception of Hell than Milton. Whereas Milton's Lucifer is rather compelling – a representation of the seductive appeal of secular, or anti-God, reasoning – Dante's Satan, when he finally appears at the end, is without fanfare. He is nothing, a void, an anticlimactic and – were it not for his grossness – pitiable creature, more like a hairy, bovine slug than a threatening demon. Evil is, for Dante, not sin or violence but "sheer banality and tedium" (pg. lxxv), as the Introduction puts it; a void inside that results from false life choices carried to their end. His Hell is made of ice, not fire. It is a deadening bureaucracy, rigorously organised into ossified strata, not a chaotic pandemonium of licentiousness and sin. When Dante emerges into the light of the mortal world at the end of Inferno, representing the decision to pursue a fulfilling (Christian) life, the reader shares his relief. (Kirkpatrick's commentary notes this beautifully: once the banality and tedium of evil is witnessed firsthand, even sin becomes insignificant, and "correspondingly the enjoyment of light is the essential duty of any created being" (pg. 448).)

Dante (both the poet and the character) is, in traversing this landscape, undergoing a courageous meditation on how to live properly. This adventure is, the Introduction says, "an attempt to see what the human mind can achieve when… it anatomizes its own psyche and adjusts its own ethical apparatus to achieve a better performance" (pg. lxxix). That's less thrilling, perhaps, than a tumble into a turbulent, out-of-control, fire-and-mayhem inferno (just how did that word come to mean what it means today? Its popularisers must not have even read Dante). But the mechanics are profound, even if – to a modern English-speaking audience – the execution is not.

I found myself admiring Dante's storytelling choices, even when the poem itself was failing to capture me. To end the story with such an anticlimactic adversary – the banal Satan figure – is a decision that I don't think any writer would have the courage to make today. It's perfect for Dante's message in Inferno, but I suspect most writers would prefer to sabotage their own painstakingly-built philosophy rather than conclude with something so lacking in a crowd-pleasing element. I admired the conception of the Seven Circles of Hell – once I understood it – and the decision by Dante to have Virgil, the Roman (and therefore pagan) poet, as his literal guide through the Inferno – is perhaps one of the great magnanimous acts of any artist in history. Given Dante's influence, the central role of Virgil in his story advocates for the moral legitimacy of pagan, Classical tradition in a Christian world, leading to a harmony between classical and Christian thought. Dante's Inferno is, in this crucial respect, a foundation stone for the Renaissance and the Age of Reason.

I would like such a noble conclusion to be my dominant thought, and I am sure that in time my appreciation for Dante's Inferno and its foundational role in Western culture will be my enduring memory of the book. But, for the purposes of review, it is worth reiterating that I found the book and its translation an often unsatisfying trial. I apologise for being such a heretic, and I don't know which circle of Hell such a statement puts me in (I suspect the sixth), but it's my honest, immediate response to finishing the book. I hope – to return to the quote from Dante with which I opened this review – that my theme has been the good I found here, but I was more stimulated by the ideas when they were unpacked in the introduction and the endnotes, even though these were denser than they needed to be. Dante's conceptual genius seeded all this, of course, but it was hard for me to reap. ( )