-So many versions of the Divine Comedy exist in English that a new one might well seem needless. But most of these translations are in verse, and the intellectual temper of our time is impatient of a transmutation in which substance is sacrificed for form-s sake, and the new form is itself different from the original- No poem in any tongue is more informed with rhythmic life than the Divine Comedy. And yet, such is its extraordinary distinction, no poem has an intellectual and emotional substance more independent of its metrical form.-
At the age of thirty-five, Dante is lost. Metaphorically by temptation and the turns of life-s ever-changing path; and literally, in a dark and ominous wood to which there seems no escape. Attacked by three beasts of Hell, Dante has no recourse but to retreat into the hopeless darkness of the wood, saved only by the light of the Roman poet, Virgil sent forth to guide him through the underworld and to salvation by the Divine Sym
