Hell (Inferno) is the first part of the epic poem Divine Comedy, followed by Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Heaven (Paradiso). It describes Dante's journey through Hell, accompanied by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul to God, and Hell describes the confession and rejection of sin.
To mark the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth, Colibri decided to offer its readers a new poetic translation of the first and most published part of the Divine Comedy in ordr to fill an obvious gap in Bulgarian culture. The earliest translation of the work into Bulgarian dates from 1906 and is the work of Konstantin Velichkov. Although the language from the beginning of the last century sounds archaic and in some places even incomprehensible, this first translation with the status of a literary monument has been published and republished for more than a hundred years. After Konstantin Velichkov, other attempts were made, such as those of Kiril Hristov, Lyuben Lyubenov and Ivan Ivanov and several others, but although more understandable to the modern reader, they failed to replace their famous predecessor.
In the person of the poet Kiril Kadiiski, an emblematic figure in Bulgarian poetry and the most translated Bulgarian poet abroad, the great Florentine poet found his talented interpreter to make his speech resonate with the power of the original.
Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, which was accessible only to educated readers. His De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular) was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as The New Life (1295) and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. By writing his poem in the Italian vernacular rather than in Latin, Dante influenced the course of literary development, making Italian the literary language in western Europe for several centuries. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later follow.
Dante was instrumental in establishing the literature of Italy, and is considered to be among the country's national poets and the Western world's greatest literary icons. His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven provided inspiration for the larger body of Western art and literature. He influenced English writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, and Alfred Tennyson, among many others. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, or the terza rima, is attributed to him. He is described as the "father" of the Italian language, and in Italy he is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta ("the Supreme Poet").
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also called the tre corone ("three crowns") of Italian literature.
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