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Informationen zum Autor Dante Alighieri Klappentext "As poetry, Mr. Zappulla's English Dante is successful--. The power of Dante's descriptive poetry should be apparent, and that is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay a translator."--Washington Times In this new rendition of a timeless classic, Italian scholar Elio Zappulla captures the majesty and enduring power of the Inferno, the first of the three canticles of Dante's The Divine Comedy, unarguably one of the masterpieces of world literature. Rendering Dante's terza rima into lyrical blank verse, Zappulla's translation makes accessible to the modern reader the journey of the famed Florentine poet Dante through the nine circles of hell. With Virgil at his side, the great poet descends through horrific landscapes of the damned--dark forests, boiling muck, and burning plains filled with unspeakable punishment, lamentation, and terror--depicted with gruesome detail unmatched in all literature. Richly annotated, this translation takes even the first-time reader on a truth-seeking journey whose imaginative and psychological discoveries make clear why this work persists at the heart of Western culture. "If Dante's Inferno is a cautionary tale of the history of human depravity, it is also an amazingly complex narrative, treating timeless ethical themes, medieval philosophy and religion, tendentious political issues and deeply personal events."--San Diego Union-TribuneNel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura4 esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura! Tant' è amara che poco è più morte;7 ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai, dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte. Io non so ben ridir com' i' v'intrai,10 tant' era pien di sonno a quel punto che la verace via abbandonai. Ma poi ch'i' fui al piè d'un colle giunto,13 là dove terminava quella valle che m'avea di paura il cor compunto, guardai in alto e vidi le sue spalle16 vestite già de' raggi del pianeta che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle. Allor fu la paura un poco queta,19 che nel lago del cor m'era durata la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta. E come quei che con lena affannata,22 uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata, Canto One Lost in a dark wood and threatened by three beasts, Dante is rescued by Virgil, who proposes a journey to the other world. Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wilderness, for I had wandered from the straight and true. How hard a thing it is to tell about,4 that wilderness so savage, dense, and harsh, even to think of it renews my fear! It is so bitter, death is hardly more-7 but to reveal the good that came to me, I shall relate the other things I saw. How I had entered, I can't bring to mind,10 I was so full of sleep just at that point when I first left the way of truth behind. But when I reached the foot of a high hill,13 right where the valley opened to its end- the valley that had pierced my heart with fear- I raised my eyes and saw its shoulders robed16 with the rays of that wandering light of Heaven° that leads all men aright on every road. That quieted a bit the dread that stirred19 trembling within the waters of my heart all through that night of misery I endured. And as a man with labored breathing drags22 his legs out of the water and, ashore, fixes his eyes upon the dangerous sea, ° that wandering light of Heaven: Italian pianeta, "planet." It is the sun, conside...
