Editorial Review:
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Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the infinite torment of Hell, up the arduous slopes of Purgatory, and on to the glorious realm of Paradise-the sphere of universal harmony and eternal salvation.
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Reader Reviews for The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso):
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: DVD or Cassette?????
Comment: Good audio but I had to find a cassette player for this to work. Who would have thought people were still selling cassette's?? That's what I get for going low cost.
No I wasn't real happy. Discription said audio book, maybe I should of asked some questions first.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent, readable translation for first-time readers
Comment: This is a review of the translation and edition, not of the Commedia itself, which would be ludicrous. Read reviews of every translation available on Amazon.com, and you'll find rave reviews as well as tirades. My approach is to recommend different versions for different stages of Dante appreciation. To my mind, your first translation should satisfy the following: 1. It must be, above all, readable. Obscure words (other than historical/mythological characters) and twisted syntax will throw up a roadblock in the very first canto. 2. It should give some sense of the poetry of the original. 3. It had better convey the emotion of the original. 4. The notes should aid, not overwhelm, the curious reader.
Mr. Ciardi's translation treads a marvelous balance among these directives. Literalists will lament Ciardi's word choice and will assert inappropriate meaning changes. Purists will assail the abandonment of terza rima. (Ciardi's compromise rhyming scheme, as recounted in his introduction, is that of a practicing English-language poet.) The notes are enough - with just that little extra - to make a first reading interesting and comprehensible. (Mark Musa's notes to his translation are too detailed for a first go-around, though Ciardi's get a bit much, too, in the last two canticles.) And the reader feels the emotions of Dante the pilgrim as well as those shades he meets along the way.
For a deeper reading, I suggest going on to Charles Singleton's Text and Commentary volumes for each canticle. These literal prose translations and notes will ensure you don't miss very much the second time around. And if you have some Italian, or any other romance language for that matter, you can follow along on the opposite page.
If you want more than that, you can try a terza rima version like Pinsky's Inferno, or other poetic efforts like Longfellow's or Dorothy Sayers'. Most versifications sacrifice clarity and readability to shoehorn the text into Dante's rhyming or metrical scheme, and I'd tackle them only after getting a good handle on the Commedia.
Finally, a word about the edition. The text has been reset into very clear, sharp type, and the original illustrations are much cleaner than in the mass-market paperback edition. The page layout is relaxed, and the look is a joy to my fiftyish eyes. It is printed on alkaline paper and will probably age better than I am managing to do. And the book lies flat when open. An index to characters, locations, and allusions is all that's missing. Buon viaggio!
Addendum: Amazon has evidently posted this review on some listings of Divine Comedy translations other than John Ciardi's. My review does not apply to these. It refers only to ISBN 0451208633.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ciardi-- Divine Comedy
Comment: Superb, Ample prefatory notes for each Canto supplemented by explanatory end notes which fill in the historical content.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Too difficult to read
Comment: I guess I was too naïve to think that I would be able to read this book. But the language used is very difficult to follow and I abandoned the book on the first pages.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good so far...
Comment: Dante's just made his way to the sixth circle of Hell. Proved to be an interesting story so far.
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