The Inferno

The first of the three canticles in "La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), this fourteenth-century allegorical poem begins Dante''s imaginary journey from Hell to Purgatory to Paradise with his sojourn among the damned. His encounters with historical and mythological creatures--each symbolic of a particular vice or crime--blend vivid and shocking imagery with graceful lyricism in a monumental work of world literature. This acclaimed and accessible translation was rendered by the beloved nineteenth-century poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.