This splendid verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum provides an entirely fresh experience of Dante's great poem of penance and hope. As Dante ascends the Mount of Purgatory toward the Earthly Paradise and his beloved Beatrice, through ''that second kingdom in which the human soul is cleansed of sin, '' all the passion and suffering, poetry and philosophy are rendered with the immediacy of a poet of our own age. With extensive notes and commentary prepared especially for this edition.''The English Dante of choice.''--Hugh Kenner.''Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths.''--Robert Fagles, Princeton University.''Tough and supple, tender and violent . . . vigorous, vernacular . . . Mandelbaum's Dante will stand high among modern translations.''-- ''The Christian Science Monitor''