Dante Alighieri, Allen Mandelbaum (Translator)
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: A Verse Translation.
University of California Press, 1980/1982. First editions. With introduction and commentary by Allen Mandelbaum, drawings by Barry Moser. 0520027124/0520045165/0520045173 xxiv/307, xxviii/303, xxi/307 pages.
Large-format three-volume set. Each volume, measuring approximately 7.5" x 11.5", is bound in yellow cloth, with gilt-stamped red/green/light blue spine label.Books display very light shelfwear. Bindings are firm. First volume has previous owner's gift inscription on front flyleaf. Interiors are otherwise clean and bright. Intact dust jackets are well preserved in mylar covers. This set offers the Italian text, with a parallel English translation.
""The Divine Comedy" begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.
Allen Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets."