They both occupy singularly definitive places in their respective languages and literatures as well as in world . Compare translation samples from the Divine Comedy, specifically Inferno, Canto I: 1-12 blank tercets blank verse defective terza rime free verse prose terza rime Dante Alighieri John Ciardi Robert Durling Anthony M. Esolen Robert and Jean Hollander Robin Kirkpatrick Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Allen Mandelbaum Mark Musa Robert Pinsky Dorothy L . Dante and The Divine Comedy: He took us on a tour of Hell I've only read one, but Mark Musa's Penguin classics translation seemed pretty good to me What's the consensus on Allen Mandelbaum's translation? To understand why Dante faints in Inferno 5, you have to realize just how surreal it was for him to hear Francesca cite the poetry of his youth, the words that helped make him poet and that hastened Francescas demise. Rodgers translation reads When, reading that her captivating smile/ Was by the Lover she adored kissd;/ But from that day we never read int more, which is awkward to read for a modern day English speaker. by Dante Alighieri and Clive James. Take, for example, the last few lines of the the fifth Canto, the famous: Dante In the Inferno, it is well known, Dante singled out corrupt leaders and political enemies, but the poem as a whole was actually inspired by unrequited love. or complete the Report Accessibility Barrier or ed. I heard a voice cry: "Watch which way you turn: I heard this said to me: "Watch how you pass; I heard a voice cry out, "Watch where you step! The critic Walter Benjamin wrote that a great translation calls our attention to a works original language even when we dont speak that foreign tongue. SUBSCRIBE FOR HUMANITIES MAGAZINE PRINT EDITION Browse all issuesSign up for HUMANITIES Magazine newsletter. In her own time she was better known for her hydrangeas. Dante Alighieri's great work tells the tale of the author's trail through hell each and every circle of it purgatory and heaven. I'm a bit biased in favor of Sayers' translation, as that's the one that introduced me to Dante in the first place. By clicking SIGN UP,I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random Houses, certain categories of personal information, discloses, sells, or shares certain personal information. As of 2021, Dante's magnum opus has been translated into English . Dante asks her why such a courteous and well-spoken creature as shea highborn lady who had fallen for Paolo innocently enough one day when they were alone together readingcould find herself among the damned. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia; Italian pronunciation: [divina kommdja]) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. ". Dante Alighieri (12651321), Italys greatest poet, was born in Florence and belonged to a noble but impoverished family. 12> I agree that Ciardi is the most readable. The hinder foot still firmer. He's seeking absolution, redemption and certainty. The Divine Comedy, Part 1: Hell (Penguin Classics) Paperback - June 30, 1950 by Dante Alighieri (Author), Dorothy L. Sayers (Translator, Introduction) 105 ratings See all formats and editions Paperback $16.00 Other new, used and collectible from $1.43 The first volume of Dante's Divine Comedy The best translation I've found -- end to end -- is by John Ciardi. The Divine Comedy. And the challenge for the translator is to reproduce Dante's fascination with theology, which for him was just as exciting as all that action that he left behind in 'Hell.' Start by treating The Divine Comedy not as a book, with a coherent, beginning, middle, and end, but rather as a collection of poetry that you can dip into wherever you like. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. T. S. Eliot called such poetry the most beautiful ever writtenand yet so few of us have ever read it. It can be overwhelming to see so many versions all lined up, spine to spine, along a shelf in a literary bookstore, or to scroll through pages and pages of different editions online. This page allows you to compare five passages from seven verse translations side by side. Canto V is when Dante has descended into the second circle of hell. I agree, Dorothy Leigh Sayers translations are done wonderfully. The Books Alexis Patterson Is Loving Right Now, 27 Childrens & YA Books Written by Asian Authors, Browse All Our Lists, Essays, and Interviews. I really loved Robert Pinsky's translation of the Inferno, for readability. Your email address will not be published. In spite of first impressions favoring Sayers, most readers who choose to make the entire journey from inferno to purgatory and finally paradise ultimately find the Mandelbaum translation more satisfying. hide caption. New Jersey, Report Accessibility Barrier or encouraged to direct suggestions, comments, or complaints concerning any accessibility issues I just saw the great discussion about the Iliad and I thought I'd ask my question about. For example Divine Comedy was written around 1308 A.D. to 1321 A.D, in which he has depicted many Popes as suffering eternal damnation in hell namely Pope Anastasius II and Pope Nicholas III. by the love that moves the sun and the other stars. His translation keeps the nel mezzo element up frontandduplicates the terza rima, continuing the next stanza with, How hard it is to tell of, overlaid . Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. In exile, he paid homage to his true love, Beatrice, and by choosing to write in his Tuscan vernacular instead of Latin, transformed the Italian language. That there have been a lot of translations of the Comedy can be seen by glancing at the Wikipedia page "English translations of Dante's Divine Comedy. Rutgers is an equal access/equal opportunity institution. Allen Mandelbaums translation goes like this: When I had journeyed half of our lifes way. So, which translation should you read? So much depends on whats outside his text: the mass of other books, other stories, other issues that lie submerged beneath the actual lines of The Divine Comedy. In the very first line it is noticed when Dante writes Cos discesi del cerchio primario(34), Rogers translates it to From the first circle we descended down(17), which is a more faithful translation than Dayman writing So I plunged downwards from that upper ring(35), which is a more communicative way of translating. io venni men cos com io morisse. The setting allows him to utilise the past symbolically, exploit the present politically, and anticipate the future in . Provide Feedback Form. Best Translation of The Divine Comedy? - LibraryThing Yet Dante has the unenviable fate of having become more known than read: his name is immediately recognizable, his achievements justly acknowledged, but outside the classroom or graduate seminar, only the hardiest of literary enthusiasts pick up his Divine Comedy. Ultimately, its great to read a few and decide which version you like best, each has strengths and weaknesses. Compare limitless combinations of the poem, translations, and commentaries; Filter over 300,000 lines of text; Perform up to four individual searches simultaneously; Browse 700 years' worth of commentaries; Read the poem with facing-page translation gi volgeva il mio disio e l velle, 1994), was edited by Giorgio Petrocchi. She is beloved for her sweeping Wolf Hall trilogy, for which she won two Booker Prizes. Divine Comedy - Wikipedia New Jersey. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is an epic poem in Italian written between 1308 and 1321 that describes its author's journey through the Christian afterlife. It brings together literary and theological expression, pagan and Christian, that came before it while also containing the DNA of the modern. That link is to the hardcover that contains all three works, but even though that one is in my bookcase I never read it. What's the Best Way to Read the Divine Comedy If You Don't Know Italian I'm going to third the choice of John Ciardi. List of Ten Best Dante Divine Comedy Translation Top Picks 2023 Reviews or complete the Report Accessibility Barrier or Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a8f4a384ba33ac344b9ce9fe46addd00" );document.getElementById("dbe0089594").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. TheDivine Comedy, finished by Dante Alighieri in 1320, is one of the most famous literary works of all time, and its author is considered the father of the Italian language. While the one spirit said this, the other was so weeping that through pity I swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a dead body falls. A little less structured than the original (although differences in the languages are responsible for that) It's a recent translation, so you don't run into the archaic usages you'd find in Longfellow. Inferno, Canto I. Prose translations are great for communicating the story and its nuances, however any poetical structure is lost. Which translation of The Divine Comedy is the best? - Quora The first translation was written by Charles Rogers in 1782. As the day stands when the Sun begins to glow. Just like a musical score to someone who cant read music. The Divine Comedy in translation - Welcome to My Magick Theatre I wasn't aware of Benigni's TuttoDante -- sounds very interesting. Pinsky does leave you hanging after the Inferno, though. Alighieri Dante. He did most of the translation work before becoming seriously ill, "but I could feel the end of my life coming. - user66974. Just as, there where its Maker shed His blood, As the first rays were trembling in the dawn, As when his earliest shaft of light assails, It was the hour the sun's first rays shine down, As when it strikes its first vibrating rays, Now was the sun so stationed, as when first. Mandelbaum is writing in blank verse (although here the first and third lines rhyme, that is not indicative of the whole), so youre faced with a choice: Do you trust the efforts, strained at times, of the translator who remains loyal to the form, or opt for a more natural-sounding version? We'll go over the different features and what to look for when you're shopping. As a young man, Dante tried to woo a beautiful and devout Florentine girl of his own age. Fifteen translations of Dante compared | Boisterous beholding Also, Anthony Esolen has an interesting article published: Esolen, Anthony. Taking a look at two translations that are 120 years apart can shed light on some of the differences that translators have used when interpreting this famously complex and intricate text. PDF Dante and Islam: a Study of The Eastern Influences in The - Iupui Another example would be in line 7 8, Dico che quando lanima mal nata li vien dinanzi, tutta si confessa, which it s quite fully translated in Nortons, I mean, that when the ill born soul comes there before him, it confesses itself wholly whereas in Rogerss, Wheneer a guilty soul before him comes It all confesses :: (He the proper place). I agreebut Dante is the opposite. for I had lost the path that does not stray. We'll go over the different features and what to look for when you're shopping. That's why we've put together this ultimate guide to help you make a decision. September 26, 2019 During one Spirit was relating this, You dont need to know the background, backstory, allusions, sources. I will use this prose translation the next time I do a complete reread of Dante. Excellent notes, too! One Final Dante Post: A List of Helpful Resources But long before rehabilitating Thomas Cromwells reputation, Mantel was unparalleled in her crystalline dissections of power, whether between girls at the University of London or Dantonists in the French Revolution. That's the version I read and those bleak covers, Barry Moser ink washes, were ubiquitous in freshmen dorms. Born in 1265 in Florence, from which he was banished in 1302, dying in Ravenna in 1321, Dante set the Divine Comedy in the year 1300, when he was thirty-five years old and 'in the middle of our mortal life'. Her methodology comes from picking up a book of poems by Caroline Bergvall and reading Via (48 Dante Variations), a found poem, she writes, composed entirely of the first three lines of theInfernoculled from forty-seven translations archived in the British Library as of May 2000). She may have only translated the Inferno Im not certain on that. List of Top Ten Best Dantes Divine Comedy Translation Top Picks 2023 Please try again later. Then one day, the young woman, Beatrice, in reaction to rumors of the poets increasingly worldly ways, refrained from the greeting, causing anguish in the young Dante. Love absolves no beloved from loving, she explains, adding: Love brought us to one death. Despite her prettiness, her sweetness, and her eloquence, she is like every other sinner in hell: its never their fault, always someone elses. New Jersey. This provides the reader with the sounds of the original as well as Musa's translation, which captures the meaning but reads with a different spirit. Many have translated the work, and there are many ways to go about translating Dante. And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week. The Pinsky is usually (maybe exclusively) sold parallel to the original, so you'll get a sense of that as you go along. How? Dante wrote his masterpiece on the move, banned from Florence by political enemies. Which in the very thought renews the fear. By starting with Midway this way of life were bound upon, she remains faithful to the starting point, nel mezzo, while Mandelbaum pushes this to the middle of the first line. Privacy Policy, Photo-illustration from Sandro Botticelli's portrait of Dante by Stephanie Bastek (Wikimedia Commons), Hilary Mantel, one of Britains most revered novelists, died last year at the age of 70. This particular translation is characterized by a rather faithful adherence to the the original source texts physical structure. Sayers adds bound upon (not, strictly speaking, in the original), which allows her to make the rhyme in the third line with gone. But Mandelbaum is more faithful to the directness of the original, not stretching the meaning or introducing words to make the rhyme. "There is no young man's version of this translation. He wrote in an intensely idiomatic, rhyme-rich Tuscan with a surging terza rima meter that gives the poem its galloping energya unique rhythm thats difficult to reproduce in rhyme-poor English separated from Dantes local vernacular by centuries. A major consideration is the topic of rhyme. Dantes The Divine Comedy is one of Italian Literatures most frequently translated texts, it has literally been being translated for over hundreds of years. Dante's Inferno -The Webpage of Author David Lafferty. Rutgers is an equal access/equal opportunity institution. "So there we were, actually duplicating the situation in the canto, because the two lovers are reading a book that's what brought them together. I heard somebody say: "Watch where you step! Want to know what people are actually reading right now? Too bad it doesn't look like there are any recordings of the show. Famed translators Pevear and Volokhonsky reach another milestone. The surprising historybehind the worlds most famous collection of folk tales. "That will, of course, be clear to you," he said. To him in front the biting was as naught. Lit Genius - Comparison of Divine Comedy Translations | Genius By Sergio M. Brattich | Dante's Commedia. Rogers Hear Dante's Inferno Read Aloud by Influential Poet & Translator John "If you're going to do it in English, you need, I think, another approach, and I used quatrains. And then there are all those characters! This format allows freedom to communicate the work without rhyme, yet maintains a metrical structure. "Which is that of the three books of the Comedy that's 'Hell,' 'Purgatory' and 'Heaven, 'Hell' is the most fascinating, in the first instance, 'cause it's full of action, it's got a huge three-headed dog, it's got a flying dragon, it's got men turning into snakes and vice versa, it's got centaurs beside a river of blood; you name it, 'Hell' has got it. Long translations from the Divine Comedyare provided following the original Italian verse, and where necessary in the analysis the Italian is referenced. What, for us, would really be paradise? Thus began Dantes famed journey, one that would take him through the depths of hell. The Divine Comedy, after all, is a poem, and its meanings are contained as much in sound as in "sense." Verse translations require more courage, and more thinking, because they are generally .
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