Part of me is still struggling with it, but I can grasp the magnitude of it still. I just wish I was up on my Italian history with all the name-dropping in this poem. But I give it the rating primarily because of the translation. Robert Pinsky did a fantastic job. I remember I bought this book specifically because on the left side of the spread, the original italian text was there, and on the right, it was put into english. I wanted to learn italian at the time, and this was a possible tool.

Now I'd had to read some of this poem before, but the translation didn't feel nearly as accessible. This one's great, and if you want to tackle The Inferno, then this is the version I'd recommend. It's also got tons of endnotes so as to clarify some of the references and names in the telling.

If you've never cracked open a book or tried to understand western literature, then I wouldn't bother reading it--seriously, so much name-and-event dropping that it's crazy. And if you've read the Aeneid, you'll have a leg-up because of the references to Vergil (who is Dante's guide through hell).