A new translation by Jason M. Baxter
About the Book
This vivid new translation of Dante’s immortal classic, Inferno, opens a new vista and offers a fresh experience of this milestone in human literary genius. Throughout his life, Dante struggled with the question of how to convey the solemn gravity of the Latin classics into the “vulgar” language of his native Italy. At the same time, he was convinced that the vernacular of his time and place had color and vibrancy that the “heady,” more cerebral, classic literature lacked. Writing the Inferno was Dante’s breakthrough moment in wedding these two very different “personalities” of poetic expression. Jason Baxter’s new, pulsing, rhythmic translation is alive with spiritual energy from both these streams. Here we have an Inferno that we feel in our nerves and in our blood, as well as in the heart and head.
“If you feel lost in the middle of a dark wood, or if you feel like the world is entering an apocalyptic time, it turns out that Dante got there long before you. Jason Baxter’s new translation is the perfect way into an ever-relevant story.”—PAUL KINGSNORTH, author of Buccmaster Trilogy and Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays
“In his new translation of Inferno, Jason Baxter is less concerned with the polished lines of an English poem than with the experiential vividness of Dante’s. For those familiar with other translations, the effect of Baxter’s offering is like bread hot from the oven.”—GLENN ARBERY, President Emeritus and Professor of Literature, Wyoming Catholic College
“Jason Baxter’s wonderful introduction evinces his learning; his deft translation will captivate (whether anew, or for the first time) a grateful audience for Dante’s poetry.”—ANN W. ASTELL, University of Notre Dame; author of Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages
“Like Dante himself, Jason Baxter has brought back to life Dante’s righteous indignation through our own vernacular, the English language. As Virgil is to Dante, let Baxter be your guide.”—MATTHEW BARRETT, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; director of the Center for Classical Theology; author of Simply Trinity
“Here is a translation with Dante’s aims in mind, bringing freshness, directness and, in the case of the Inferno, grim illumination. Baxter’s notes are well-judged, too, with leads for seasoned readers and novices alike.” —MARK VERNON, author of A Secret History of Christianity and Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey
“Jason Baxter makes the case for the Inferno as heady but blood warming, encyclopedic but ‘rough as sandpaper and sharp as broken glass,’ heart-rending noir that can ‘save Dante from the classicists.’ He invites us to follow—in a humbled but lithe language—the one who first harrowed hell, daring to bring beauty subterranean, through the species of evil that ‘all win the hate of heaven,’ measuring big-talking, eternally-embittered sinners against the lordly, lowly Word.”—JOSHUA HREN, founder of Wiseblood Books; author of Blue Walls Falling Downand Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto
“Jason Baxter, a scholar with a commanding understanding of Dante (as evidenced in this book’s magisterial Introduction), has done us all a great service with his marvelous new translation of the Inferno.”—SEBASTIAN MORELLO, Senior Editor, The European Conservative; author of The World As God’s Icon: Creator and Creation in the Platonic Thought of Thomas Aquinas
“Few translators are up for the challenge, but in this new Comedy, Jason Baxter intones a ‘music’ that captures the originality and mission of arguably the greatest poet of all time, Dante Alighieri.”—MARCIE STOKMAN AND COLLEEN HUTT (WELL-READ MOM)
“Jason Baxter’s new Inferno bristles with an energy fueled by a thoroughgoing embrace of Dante’s vernacular, the language of embodiment. No reader of Baxter’s Dante could dare forget the body, or neglect its capacity either for abjection or for glory. Here, perhaps—with its muscular diction, forceful staccatos, and visceral, fierce turns of phrase—is translation as incarnation.”—JENNIFER NEWSOME MARTIN, University of Notre Dame; author of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought
