1Of the three sections of Dante s Divine Comedy, the first section, Inferno, has always been the most popular. The medieval equivalent of a thriller, Inferno features Dante and his faithful guide Virgil as they traverse the complex geography of Hell and confront many hair-raising threats before reaching the deep chamber where Satan resides. Now, in this dazzling translation, described as a remarkable achievment by Stephen Greenblatt, Clive James communicates not just the transcendent poetry of Dante s language but also the excitement and terror of his journey through the underworld. Instead of Dante s original terza rima, a form that, in English, tends to show the strain of composition, James employs fluently linked quatrains, thereby conveying the seamless flow of Dante s poetry and the headlong momentum of the action. As James writes in his introduction, Dante s great poem can still astonish us, whether we believe in the supernatural or not. At the very least it will make us believe in poetry. "