The Divine Comedy

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What to expect

Blackstone Audio presents a new recording of this classic masterpiece, originally published in 1320, read by award-winning narrator Ralph Cosham.

No words can describe the greatness of this work, a greatness both of theme and of artistry. Dante’s theme is universal; it involves the greatest concepts that man has ever attained. Only a genius could have found the loftiness of tone and the splendor and variety of images that are presented in The Divine Comedy.

The story is an allegory representing the soul’s journey from spiritual depths to spiritual heights. As mankind exposes itself, by its merits or demerits, to the rewards or the punishments of justice, it experiences “Inferno” or hell, “Purgatorio” or purgatory, and “Paradiso” or heaven, a vision of a world of beauty, light, and song. Dante’s arduous journey through the circles of hell make for an incredibly moving human drama, and a single listen will reveal the power of Dante’s imagination to make the spiritual visible.

In this edition, “Inferno” is translated by John Aitken Carlyle, “Purgatorio,” by Thomas Okey, and “Paradiso” by Philip H. Wicksteed.

Critics Review

  • “The Divine Comedy expresses everything in the way of emotion, between depravity’s despair and the beatific vision, that man is capable of experiencing.”

    T. S. Eliot

  • “The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world.”

    Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • “Dante’s greatest work…It is, in essence, a compassionate, oral evaluation of human nature and a mystic vision of the Absolute toward which mankind strives.”

    Masterpieces of World Literature

  • “One of the world’s greatest works of literature.”

    Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

  • “It moves one to virtual awe.”

    Los Angeles Times

  • “A modern reader, uninformed, could peruse the whole Commedia, satisfied with the mere literal story and entranced by its unparalleled beauty of language and imagery, but he would miss the inspiration of that higher message which so clearly merits the name of divine.”

    C. H. Grandgent

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