Inferno

Uniting the most powerful energies of popular culture and the magnificent gothic edifice of Medieval scholasticism, Dante created a new language that combined an intense lyricism with the intellectual seriousness demanded of his project - nothing less than the creation of a Christian epic addressed to the common reader. Dante's synthesis of epic with lyric has bequeathed to modern artists and translators a permanent imperative to translate his art into contemporary, living speech. In this new translation of the Inferno, Elio Zappulla successfully re-creates the immediacy, directness, and psychological force of Dante's original text. Zappulla's faithfulness to Dante's Italian is matched by an executed commitment to convey to today's reader, through the lyrical cadences of everyday American English, the emotional and aesthetic impact of what he calls Dante's "complex simplicity." At the same time, the reader is never allowed to lose sight of the Inferno's intellectual majesty and moral grandeur.