What Fresh Heaven: An Interview with Mary Jo Bang on her new translation of Dante’s Paradiso

(LA Review of Books)

“Mary Jo Bang’s new translations of Dante, culminating with Paradiso, revitalize the Divine Comedy for a contemporary audience. Bang states her objective ‘to make the poem as radical and as intelligible as it was to Dante’s original readers, while showing utmost respect for the original text.’ Dante’s original readers would have been astounded by the poet’s nerve: both his decision to write an epic, sacred poem in his Tuscan mother tongue (rather than Latin), and his presumptuousness in making himself the hero of the story. Both acts were unprecedented. This is a poem of daring, of electric possibilities.”

Read more on LA Review of Books, November 2025