The Inferno of Dante Alighieri

About the Book

THE INFERNO OF DANTE ALIGHIERI
TRANSLATED IN TRIPLE-RHYME
WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND COMMENTARY

This vigorous translation of the Inferno, the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy, makes accessible to the modern reader the poet's descent through the nine circles of Hell. Rendered in clear, lively English, it is almost unique in retaining the difficult triple-rhyme scheme of the original, while remaining faithful to the meaning. The introduction, footnotes and commentaries clarify the poem without being burdensome, and an associated web site provides illustrations and further background.

"I was constantly amazed and charmed with the facility with which Zimmerman's translation manages to put Dante's common Italian language into vernacular speech in English, giving it-with no loss of its important classical allusions or its lyrical impact-all the immediacy and suspense of a contemporary thriller."
-Samsara Review

"The major virtue of Seth Zimmerman's translation lies in its idiomatic, direct, unpretentious style."
-Metamorphoses

The cover shows the thief Agnello in the eighth circle. From the mobile Inferno installation of Janet Van Fleet.

About the Author

Seth Zimmerman?s poetry and fiction, as well as his translations of the Inferno and the later poems of Osip Mandelstam, have appeared in dozens of journals. Now a professor of mathematics at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, CA, his version of the Inferno is used there as a humanities text.