Dante Alighieri

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Peter E. Bondanella

The first part of Dante's classic poem of faith follows the author with his guide Virgil through the circles of hell, describing the sinners and punishments witnessed there.

The Inferno

Inferno dominates western culture’s consciousness, so I knew that regardless of my enjoyment it is a work that would grant me access to literature and philosophy at large. This was true, from understanding the Virgil-Dante relationship in Bardugo’s ‘Ninth House’ to the reason Nimrod is an insult. The story itself was not so horrible for being centuries old as well as translated, especially as my edition’s foreword explained the pains Dante went through to compose his works, three in the entire story, into 33 cantos in triplets with persisting rhythmic patterns and syllables. It was not a relief to be done, instead I had the desire to learn Italian and hope that once my physical TBR gets shorter that I can rejoin Dante and Virgil in Purgatorio and Paradiso

The Inferno

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