The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno]

by Dante Aligheri

Translated by Charles Eliot Norton




HELL




To

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

E come sare' io sense lui corso?

It is a happiness for me to connect this volume with the memory
of my friend and master from youth. I was but a beginner in the
study of the Divine Comedy when I first had his incomparable aid
in the understanding of it. During the last year of his life he
read the proofs of this volume, to what great advantage to my
work may readily be conceived.

When, in the early summer of this year, the printing of the
Purgatory began, though illness made it an exertion to him, he
continued this act of friendship, and did not cease till, at the