Dante's Divine Comedy: Paradise

I'm sure I must have given up on my original copy of DIVINE COMEDY after "Inferno." But the lucid editing of this edition, with abundant footnotes, make clear and easy that which I could never decipher. With Virgil, Beatrice & Kathryn leading the way, the trip through Inferno, Purgatory & Paradise was a thrilling excursion.

At the time he was writing the Comedy nearly seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri intended to present to ordinary people the eternal Christian truths of damnation, redemption, and salvation in a work of marvelous splendor. Today, most people are unfamiliar with these truths as they are wrapped in the images Dante used, and the hundreds of contemporary references which enrich the work have been lost to common memory. Kathryn Lindskoog's retelling of the Comedy superbly achieves Dantes aims for our age. She has created an English rendering of poignant, poetic beauty, both inspiring and accessible; and her thorough and detailed knowledge of Dante's life, work, and times comes through footnotes which are expertly written without being intrusive or condescending. The footnotes, alone an impressive accomplishment, afford even a casual reader with sufficient background to the personalities and events of Dante's day which are vital for understanding his work. However, the greatest insight Lindskoog has, not only into Paradise but into the entire Comedy, is that it is a "journey to joy." Her use of these words as the subtitle shows that the Christian Way, so often caricatured as being restrictive, threatening, punishing, or opiative, is rather always to be seen as the Way to the radiant and invincible joy of eternal communion with God. This is the deep and abiding, guiding principle in the Comedy which Lindskoog recognized and never lost sight of. In Paradise, the joy of the redeemed comes through Lindskoog's rendering with almost painful incandescence. This was the great gift of Dante to his time, and Lindskoog has made it new for our own, which has desperate need of it.By David M. Baumann