The Divine Comedy
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When Michael Palma’s translation of the Inferno appeared in 2002, it defied the conventional wisdom of literary commentators who had long argued that Dante’s intricate terza rima form simply could not be rendered in “rhyme-poor” English. But Palma’s achievement in rhyming tercets was quickly received as a spectacular feat of poetic artistry that was “accurate . . . admirably clear, and readable” (Richard Wilbur) and that, “in capturing the sense, sound, and spirit of the original... comes close to perfection” (X. J. Kennedy).
Now, more than two decades later, Palma has applied the same virtuosic attention to the form and flow of the Purgatorio and Paradiso, attending to both the tiniest details and the grand design of the entire Commedia and offering a fluid and readable English version that reveals to contemporary readers the sound, sense, and awe-inspiring beauty of Italian literature’s greatest poem.
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Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence to a family of minor nobility. He entered into Florentine politics in 1295, but he and his party were forced into exile in a hostile political climate in 1301. Taking asylum in Ravenna late in life, Dante completed his Divine Commedia, considered one of the most important works of Western literature, before his death in 1321.
Michael Palma has published six collections of original poetry and nearly twenty books of translations of modern and contemporary poets. He has received numerous awards, including the Italo Calvino Award from the Translation Center of Columbia University. His most recent book is Faithful in My Fashion: Essays on the Translation of Poetry. He lives in Vermont.
