Join two of Dante’s preeminent translators — Joseph Luzzi and Michael Palma — for a reading and conversation with poet and critic Adam Kirsch on the art of bringing Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy into English.

Dante’s Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy constitute two of the most towering achievements in the history of poetry — epics that redefined the possibilities of the art form and have captivated readers across the globe for over 700 years. Dante’s poetry, notoriously difficult to translate into English, comes to vivid life in Joseph Luzzi and Michael Palma’s new English translations. Luzzi’s Vita Nuova — fresh, contemporary, and approachable, as vital and vivid as Dante’s original Tuscan dialect — rendered in a voice that entices a new generation of readers to swoon over one of the most heartbreaking stories of unfulfilled love ever told. Michael Palma’s new translation of The Divine Comedy takes Dante’s complex terza rima rhyme into fluid English — a monumental achievement.

In a special reading and conversation on Dante and the art of translation, hear three major translators, scholars, and critics on the art of channeling Dante’s sublime Medieval poetry into a virtuosic works of contemporary English poetry.