It was partly being uncomfortable with Dante's spectacular arrogance at playing God, deciding who was going to Hell. It was partly shock at the Pilgrim's unpunished bursts of abuse at perceived sinners, at one point hilariously pulling a buried man's hair out to his guide's tacit approval. it was mostly that Dante's high-minded conception was tainted by frequent pot-shots at various personal and ideological enemies. I'm all for pungent satire, but consigning someone you don't like to Hell because they're in the wrong political party seems, to me, to undermine an artist's integrity and credibility.
One way to defeat Dante's procedures is to de-allegorise the allegory. In other words, instead of reading every event for its theological significance, enjoy it for what it is on the surface. Reading about an exile lost in a wood after taking a wrong turning, frightened away by savage animals, is much more intriguing than reading about a man blocked in his spiritual life by earthly interests.
You can enjoy the astonishing precision of Dante's architecture, not just of Hell, and its various circles, but the poem itself. You can read it as a fascinating compendium of mythology, history and art - how cool is it in any work to meet Homer and Ovid on your travels, with Virgil as your guide? Dante's references to gruesome contemporary history suggests his vision of hell has nothing on reality.
You can enjoy 'Inferno' for the pictorial vividness - not just the 'hellish' scenes (souls turned into weeping trees; the proto-Cronenberg mutation of a man and a snake; the surreal sight of an ice floor covered in heads; the Fu Manchu-like appearance of Lucifer); but also the beautiful pastoral similes referring back to a lush, green, fertile Italy unavailable to the damned.
You can relish the fact that, though a Comedy in the classical sense, the poem is frequently comic, either in the over-emphatic repulsiveness of some scenes, or, more usually, in the Pilgrim's gauche lack of etiquette. You can enjoy it as a sci-fi/horror adventure/ghost story with two intrepid sidekicks.
I would recommend most strongly Steve Ellis's awesome translation 'Hell', a case of needing 600 years to get it finally right. Dante's mixing the epic and the vernacular is freshly, often provocatively, realised, making the narrative as immediate and exciting as it once was, not a bogged down cultural icon.
Even better, the clause-heavy clumping of his competitors is replaced by clean, simple English, with a hurtling, fluid rhythmic momentum that compels you to continue; notes are kept to a functional minimum, and there are NO distracting maps. I notice with sadness that this is out of print, probably explaining why the subsequent volumes haven't been tackled. If you're out there Professor Ellis, get cracking! Even if your reward will only be in the next world.
Be sure to get the "Purgatorio" and "Paradisio" volumes too; they are equally essential.
"The divine comedy" is such a grand piece of work that it deserves to be read in different translations, but for God's sake, make the Sinclair version one of them... ...A good alternative is the Mark Musa translation.
Another good idea is to get the book "The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy", because, to me at least, the imagery of Doré has become an integral part in fully appreciating the medieval way of thinking, portraited in Dante's Comedy.
"La Commedia Divina" has had such an impact on me, that I at some point actually considered learning Italian to get the full splendour out of Dante's poetry... ...Well, there's still time...
The "Inferno" is one of the most important poems ever written. Doomed lovers, murderers, traitors, liars, Dante's political enemies (including a Pope), righteous heathens, all of them have Hell as their final address. Dante talks to many of them, and they tell him their stories. I loved this poem. I found Odysseus where he belongs (with the liars), and Dido and Cleopatra, together in suicide. Most of all, I found an arrogant, self-centered Florentine poet who truly believed that the world revolved around him and wrote a monument of Western Literature just to prove it: I had to like Dante and his poem. The only reason I give this version four stars is because I do not think it is as good as the verse translation by Laurence Binyon. I have read both by now, and the old Binyon rendition of Florentine Italian into English is simply beautiful, where Mandelbaum's more businesslike version is clear if rather unpoetic. I wish a Binyon's version were available, but his translation of the Commedia seems to be out of print and I am the only person I know that has the "Divine Comedy" translated by Laurence Binyon. Still, I read the Mandelbaum for class and I enjoyed it almost as much as my favorite one. Whichever translation you choose (Ciardi's is in rhyme verse, too, while Musas's is not) I think you will enjoy this dark, wonderful journey that Dante took in 1300. If he is right about his poetic vision of the netherworld, most of us will be there in one circle or another, with medieval Florentines all around us. Enjoy.