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Zusatztext “Opening the book we stand face to face with the poet! and when his voice ceases we may marvel if he has not sung to us in his own Tuscan.” —William Dean Howells! The Nation Informationen zum Autor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , American poet, educator, and linguist, wrote many long narrative poems, including The Song of Hiawatha , Evangeline , and The Courtship of Miles Standish . Matthew Pearl is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, The Technologists, The Last Bookaneer, and The Dante Chamber, and the editor of the Modern Library editions of Dante’s Inferno (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales . His books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and his nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and Slate . Lino Pertile is a professor of Romance languages and literature at Harvard University. He specializes in Dante and the Latin Middle Ages. Klappentext In 1867, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow completed the first American translation of Inferno and thus introduced Dante's literary genius to the New World. In the Inferno, the spirit of the classical poet Virgil leads Dante through the nine circles of Hell on the initial stage of his journey toward Heaven. Along the way Dante encounters and describes in vivid detail the various types of sinners in the throes of their eternal torment.Nel 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
