The Divine Comedy III: Paradiso

The second part and the radiant climax to Dante's awe-inspiring epic, in a definitive new translation

Having plunged to the utmost depths of Hell and climbed Mount Purgatory in the first two parts of The Divine Comedy, Dante now ascends to Heaven, guided by his beloved Beatrice, to continue his search for God. As he progresses through the spheres of Paradise, he grows ever closer to experiencing divine love in the overwhelming presence of the deity. Examining eternal questions of faith, desire, and enlightenment, Dante exercised all of his learning and wit, wrath and tenderness in his creation of one of the greatest of all Christian allegories.

Leaving Hell and Mount Purgatroy far behind, Dante in the Paradiso ascends to Heaven and crosses the planetary spheres that circle the Earth, now guided by his beloved Beatrice. Here Dante encounters spirits, from Thomas Aquinas to Saint Peter, who engage him in passionate conversation about history, politics and Christian doctrine. Ascending finally to a sphere beyond space and time, Dante miraculously sees the faces of human beings with greater clarity than ever before and prepares to contemplate the face of God. The Paradiso is an account of the order, harmony and beauty of the universe, in which Dante offers a deeply personal and unfailingly inventive exploration of divine truth and human goodness.

Robin Kirkpatrick's new translation captures the sublime imaginative power of the final sequence of the Commedia and the vigour of the original Italian, which is printed on facing pages. This edition includes an introduction, a map of Dante's Italy and a plan of Paradise. Commentaries on each canto explain the work's ethical, theological and political subtexts.

Robin Kirkpatrick, a poet and widely published Dante scholar, is a fellow of Robinson College and a professor of Italian and English at Cambridge University.