A quote for any occasion
The best translation I’ve found — end to end — is by John Ciardi. It’s a poetic translation that’s very faithful to the original, insofar as that’s possible when translating Italian terza rima into English. No archaisms, very straightforward, every bit as much power as the original.
MLA (7th ed.) Dante, Alighieri, and John Ciardi. The Divine Comedy . New York: W.W. Norton, 1970. Print.
Inferno Quotes “In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.” “Amor, ch’al cor gentile ratto s’apprende. “There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.” “They yearn for what they fear for.”
The message in Dante’s Inferno is that human beings are subject to temptation and commit sins, leaving no escape from the eternal punishments of hell. However, human beings have free will, and they can make choices to avoid temptation and sin, ultimately earning the eternal rewards of Heaven.
Yes, definitely. It shaped the way the literary world viewed purgatory, hell, and Satan. It also was the inspiration for most of the well known art in the world concerning hell and the devil alike. It is a very important historical piece of work, same as the rest of the Divine Comedy .
The simple answer is—not particularly difficult , but with some help. I would say, for instance, that (in medieval and Renaissance literature) it’s more of a challenge than the Canterbury Tales, but much less of a challenge than The Faerie Queene.
Translated Work Author/editor. Year of translated publication (in round brackets). Title of book (in italics). Translated by Place of publication: reprint publisher.
Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l’amour che move il sole e l’altre stelle’The love that moves the sun and the other stars.”
The setting is important because the organization of Hell into nine circles reflects Dante’s belief in an orderly universe. The setting is important because its layout resembles the landscape of Florence, Dante’s home city.
In Dante’s work, the pilgrim Dante is accompanied by three guides: Virgil (who represents human reason), Beatrice (who represents divine revelation, theology, faith, and grace), and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (who represents contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary the Mother).
The abiding moral lesson of the Inferno is that evil is always punished. Throughout his journey into hell, Dante the pilgrim comes across numerous people who, when they were alive, were rich and powerful. Many of them probably thought that they could act as they pleased without fear of any consequences.
Each work postulates that human suffering comes as a result of choices that are made: A statement that is not only applicable to the characters in each of the works, but also to the readers. Similarly, in Inferno , Capaneus is a man whose punishment comes as a result of his own defiance.
Contrapasso (or, in modern Italian, contrappasso) is derived from the Latin words contra and patior, which mean “suffer the opposite.” Contrapasso refers to the punishment of souls in Dante’s Inferno, “by a process either resembling or contrasting with the sin itself.” A similar process occurs in the Purgatorio.