Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265, into a family with a modest noble lineage but no great wealth. He received an education in philosophy and rhetoric, fell in love at nine with Beatrice Portinari (whom he saw twice and spoke to rarely), and became involved in Florentine politics at a time when the city was violently divided between the Guelph and Ghibelline factions. In 1302, while he was on a diplomatic mission to Rome, the Black Guelphs seized power in Florence. He was charged with financial corruption, found guilty in absentia, sentenced to death if he returned, and banished. He never returned to Florence. He died in Ravenna in 1321.

The Divine Comedy was composed during his exile, probably between 1308 and 1320. It follows Dante (the character) through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Heaven (Paradiso), guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice. It is at once a Christian allegory about the soul's journey toward God, a political satire in which Dante places his enemies in Hell and his heroes in Paradise, a philosophical treatise organized around medieval cosmology and theology, a love poem, and a technical demonstration of what the Italian vernacular could do. That it achieves all of these simultaneously is part of what makes it irreducible.

The Inferno is the most read section, and for good reason: its narrative energy is highest, its characters are most vivid (Francesca, Farinata, Brunetto Latini, Ugolino), and its principle — each sinner's punishment is the fitting consummation of their sin, the contrapasso — is immediately comprehensible. Fraudsters are in ice (the material that works by appearing to be something else). Suicides are trees (they refused their human form, so they have it stripped from them). The principle is not punishment but revelation: Hell shows each soul as what it chose to be.

The Purgatorio is the most humanly moving section: souls who are saved but not yet ready for Heaven, moving upward through a mountain in a spirit of effort and hope. It is the section that most rewards slow reading.

The Paradiso is the most challenging, partly because its subject — the beatific vision, direct knowledge of God — is by definition beyond language, and Dante is explicit about this limitation throughout. It is also, for those who persist, the section that attempts the most: to describe an experience that has no earthly counterpart using only earthly tools.

The translation question is consequential. The poem's terza rima — interlocking three-line rhyme scheme (ABA BCB CDC) — is extremely difficult to render in English without forcing the sense. Modern translators generally abandon the rhyme scheme and focus on accuracy and rhythm. Clive James's 2013 verse translation, Robert Pinsky's 1994 Inferno, and Allen Mandelbaum's complete Comedy are among the most useful for English readers. Reading with a facing-page Italian text, even without Italian, helps convey the sonic texture that translations necessarily sacrifice.