Alighieri, Dante

Durling's rendering is serviceable, capturing Dante's rhythm and vigor but not his rhyme scheme and structure. Overall, it does not live up to the poetic power of the versions by Ciardi, Musa, and Hollander; Durling's lines are at times oddly literal, missing the idiomatic. Still, this accessible version of Paradiso might appeal to the serious general reader.

James offers here a vigorous, poetic paraphrase of the Comedy rather than a translation. Those interested in something closer to the formal properties of the original should stick with translations by Allen Mandelbaum, Mark Musa, Robert Pinsky, or Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander.

A competent translation that does not supersede any of the others that are currently available. While Raffel is a good poet and his translation is accurate, Musa's and Pinsky's translations remain the preferred choices for general readers and students owing to their fluency and vigor.