The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Volume 3

I have never found Longfellow's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy accessible nor readable, but a complete obstacle of this great work. Longfellow's style spans between the florid and bombastic, with much of the original story lost or rendered meaningless through superfluous ornamentation of language. New readers of this great work might discover the modern translation by Anthony Esolen to be a far easier and enjoyable translation, characterized by a neat, elegant writing style, true to the original Italian manuscript. In many editions the Italian is accompanied alongside the English demonstrating transparency and truth of the translation. I applaud Anthony Esolen for bring this story to the twenty-first century. The story stands on its own. What he has accomplished for Dante's Divine Comedy compares as favorably as to what Robert Fagles has done for the translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.