The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri (Simplified Chinese version) - Hardcover

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri (Simplified Chinese version) - Hardcover

Written between 1307 and 1321, Dante Alighieri's masterpiece is organised into three canticles — Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso — of thirty-three cantos each; with the introductory canto, the poem comes to one hundred. It is the high point of medieval European literature and one of the most ambitious poetic structures ever conceived.

The narrative takes the form of the allegorical dream vision common in the Middle Ages. At dawn before Easter in 1300, the poet loses his way in a dark wood and three beasts — the leopard, the lion and the she-wolf, standing for lust, pride and greed — block his path. Virgil then appears, sent by Beatrice, the woman Dante loved in his youth. Virgil leads him through Hell, where guilty souls are punished, and through Purgatory, which receives the repentant; Beatrice then guides him through the nine heavens to the presence of God. Among the souls Dante meets are many historical figures and contemporaries of his own, and every episode carries allegorical, theological and political weight.

This edition uses Zhu Weiji's verse translation, the classic Chinese rendering of the work, and belongs to the 企鹅布纹经典 (Penguin Clothbound Classics) series, second set, devoted to epic poetry. Hardcover volume of 720 pages.

Recommended level: advanced learners of Chinese, as a rough guide from HSK 6 upwards. This is a poetic translation with literary vocabulary and demanding syntax; it is not a graded reader.