Now your brief lives have little time to run – through perils without number (Nicholls) – 1, who .

Since childhood they had exchanged in passing the one word their families would allow—Salute! The instructor and several people in the class spoke Italian fluently and pointed out many rough spots in the translation. Permission required for reprinting, reproducing, or other uses. Does anyone have an opinion of which is the better translation of the two? Then one day, the young woman, Beatrice, in reaction to rumors of the poet’s increasingly worldly ways, refrained from the greeting, causing anguish in the young Dante.

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I also liked having the Italian original opposite in the Hollanders edition, to be able to guess the original sounds. ( Log Out / 

Constant as ever, though, was the ceremony’s reflection of our fascination with celebrities, a phenomenon that Philip Lopate—himself the writer of several celebrity profiles—challenged in.

Reading your examples, I invariably prefer Longfellow or Singleton.

This is why one of the few truly successful English translations comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor of Italian at Harvard and an acclaimed poet.

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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 the Inferno culled from forty-seven translations archived in the British Library as of May 2000). The bottom of hell waits for him who extinguished our life”—referring to her husband, the nasty Gianciotto or John the Lame, who murdered Paolo and her on the spot when he discovered them in flagrante after their fateful reading. O brothers, I said (Hollander, Simone, Sinclair, Singleton) – 3, Brothers, I said (Kirkpatrick, Lombardo, Musa, Sisson) – 3, who . Here is the Binyon version: Brothers, I said, who manfully, despite

In my last post I compared John Ciardi and Allen Mandelbaum’s translation of the Inferno by looking at how they handled Canto XXVI, lines 112-120. Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. – I picked up the Ciardi from a library, didn’t like it, and was very glad I had not wasted any money on it. . To feel in, stoop not to renounce the quest Too over-dramatic, overdone, sort of like a modern adventure movie. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, More posts from the AskLiteraryStudies community, Continue browsing in r/AskLiteraryStudies, Looks like you're using new Reddit on an old browser. experience (Ciardi, Lombardo) – 3, do not deny yourselves the chance to know (Hollander) – 1, Do not deny your will to win experience (Kirkpatrick) – 2, be ye unwilling to deny, the experience (Longfellow) – 3, you must not deny experience (Mandelbaum) – 2, do not deny yourself experience (Musa) – 2, you should not choose to deny it the experience (Pinsky) – 2, do not be content to deny yourselves experience (Simone) – 2, choose not to deny experience (Sinclair) – 3, wish not to deny the experience (Singleton) – 3, following the sun (Hollander, Longfellow, Singleton) – 2, that lies beyond the setting sun (Lombardo) – 0, of that which lies beyond the sun (Mandelbaum) – 3, of what there is beyond, behind the sun (Musa) – 2, following the track of Phoebus (Nicholls) – 1, behind the sun leading us onward (Pinsky) – 0, Follow the sun into the west (Simone) – 0, following the course of the sun (Sission) – 1, the world where no one dwells (Esolen) – 2, the land where no one lives (Hollander) – 2, of worlds where no man dwells (Kirkpatrick) – 2, of the unpeopled world (Lombardo, Nicholls, Sinclair) – 3, of the world that hath no people (Longfellow) – 3, and of the world that is unpeopled (Mandelbaum) – 3, in the world they call unpeopled (Musa) – 0, of the world which has no people in it (Pinsky) – 3, of the world that has no people (Singleton) – 3, of that world which has no inhabitants (Sisson) – 2, Think well upon your nation and your seed (Esolen) – 1, Consider how your souls were sown (Hollander) – 1, Hold clear in thought your seed and origin (Kirkpatrick) – 1, Consider the seed from which you were born (Lombardo) – 2, Consider well the seed that gave you birth (Mandelbaum) – 2, Consider what you came from: you are Greeks (Musa) – 0, Call to mind from whence we sprang (Nicholls) – 2, Consider your seed and heritage (Simone) – 1, Take thought of the seed from which you spring (Sinclair) – 2, Consider then the race from which you have sprung (Sisson) – 1, what you were made for: not to live like brutes (Carson) – 2, You were not born to live like brutes (Ciardi) – 2, For you were never made to live like brutes (Esolen) – 2, you were not made to live like brutes or beasts (Hollander) – 2, You were not made to live as mindless brutes (Kirkpatrick) – 2, You were not made to live like brute animals (Lombardo) – 2, ye were not made to live as brutes (Longfellow, Singleton) – 3, you were not made to live your lives as brutes (Mandelbaum) – 2, You were not born to live like mindless brutes (Musa) – 2, Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes (Nicholls) – 2, You were not born to live as a mere brute does (Pinsky) – 2, you were not made to live like brutes (Simone) – 3, You were not born to live as brutes (Sinclair) – 2, You were not made to live like animals (Sisson) – 3, but for the quest of knowledge and the good (Carson) – 1, but to press on toward manhood and recognition (Ciardi) – 0, but to pursue the good in mind and deed (Esolen) – 0, but to pursue virtue and knowledge (Hollander, Singleton) – 3, but go in search of virtue and true knowledge (Kirkpatrick) – 3, but to live in pursuit of virtue and knowledge (Lombardo) – 2, but for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge (Longfellow) – 3, but to be followers of worth and knowledge (Mandelbaum) – 2, but to follow paths of excellence and knowledge (Musa) – 1, but virtue to pursue and knowledge high (Nicholls) – 1, but for the pursuit of knowledge and the good (Pinsky) – 2, but to follow virtue and knowledge (Simone, Sinclair) – 3, but to pursue virtue and know the world (Sisson) – 2.
Exactly what I wanted. They never confess their guilt, the one thing necessary for redemption from sin. Partly for his translation of the description of Minos as the “connoisseur of sin.” Robin Kirkpatrick's translation of the Divine Comedy? sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa, One that is generally agreed upon as the best?

This is incredibly useful as I tried to choose a translation. Here I want to expand that exercise, comparing 15 different translations in a more systematic way. You don’t need to know the background, backstory, allusions, sources. And it’s a very famous poem, Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore, “Love always returns to the gentle heart,” a gorgeous medieval lyric by Guido Guinizelli, one of Dante’s poetic mentors in the Sweet New Style, a movement in the late 1200s that nurtured Dante’s emerging artistic sensibilities. A tough call.

But they are incorporeal shades, lacking the one thing that made their passionate earthly love possible: a physical being. I just want (really) the most accurate rendition of the text, which rules our anyone with a political or papal agenda... What's wrong with Ciardi? And then there are all those characters! Overall, I tend to prefer Sinclair, Singleton, Hollander, and Longfellow, and I am delighted to see that they came out near the top of your list. check out the. Here I want to expand that exercise, comparing 15 different translations in a more systematic way. Here I want to expand that exercise, comparing 15 different translations in a more systematic way. .

It did not hurt that Longfellow had also experienced the kind of traumatic loss—the death of his young wife after her dress caught fire—that brought him closer to the melancholy spirit of Dante’s writing, shaped by the lacerating exile from his beloved Florence in 1302. I’ve read a number of translations of Dante (well, Inferno, at least) over the years, and I agree with your positive evaluations of the faithful if not perfectly literal translations.

The lack of English translations before this is due in part to Dante's Catholic views being … 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 Francesca’s demise. . Last year marked the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth in 1265, and as expected for a writer so famous—Eliot claimed “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third”—the solemn commemorations abounded, especially in Italy where many cities have streets and monuments dedicated to their Sommo Poeta, Supreme Poet. Is there a translation that is canonical among you literary scholars?

I realize now that I have been ‘reading’ Dante all my life without knowing it. Of feeling life, the new experience .

– Gutenberg also has the Cary translation, which is more a flight of fancy than a translation. … one of the few truly successful English translations comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor of Italian at Harvard and an acclaimed poet. One translated by Longfellow, and the other by Henry F. Cary (from The Harvard Classics). Think on the seed ye spring from! But Hugo’s attack suggests the particular challenge in reading Dante, whose writing can seem remote and impenetrable to modern tastes.

save hide report. As might be expected, the three prose translations score highest in terms of fidelity, with Allen Mandelbaum close on their heels as the most accurate of the 12 verse translations.

Such extreme faithfulness can make the language of the translation feel unnatural—as though the source were shaping the translation into its own alien image. His word choices were unnatural and vague, his rhymes forced, and the jarring meter ugly to my ears. .

So what’s the contemporary reader to do—how best to approach Dante 750 years after his birth? Steve Moyer is managing editor of Humanities. He wrote in an intensely idiomatic, rhyme-rich Tuscan with a surging terza rima meter that gives the poem its galloping energy—a unique rhythm that’s difficult to reproduce in rhyme-poor English separated from Dante’s local vernacular by centuries. Thus, Longfellow demonstrates the scholarly chops necessary to convey Dante’s encyclopedic learning, and the poetic talent needed to reproduce the sound and spirit—the respiro, breath—of the original Tuscan. http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Bantam...3632154&sr=1-1, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKRma7PDW10, Favorite Quotes from Dante's 'The Divine Comedy'. His translation of the Divine Comedy (especially Inferno and Purgatorio) is one of my favorite translations of anything. Dante requires what Nietzsche called “slow reading”—attentive, profound, patient reading—because Francesca’s sparse, seemingly innocent-sounding words speak volumes about the kind of sinner she is. 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.

Thank you for your work. It may also soften the oft repeated and harsh judgment traduttore, traditore or “translator, traitor.”. This was a fantastic job. In the brief vigil that remains of light

Paolo and Francesca are technically “together,” as they whirl around “like doves summoned by desire” in Inferno’s punishing winds.

The grading is as follows: 3 = perfectly faithful, 2 = defensible paraphrase (same basic meaning), 1 = dodgy paraphrase, 0 = unforgivable paraphrase (putting words in Dante’s mouth).

He remains faithful to the wording, but for reasons of meter he delves into unnatural word order, inverting what Palma has as “dark wood” to become “forest dark.” Palma or Longfellow? (I don’t actually know much Italian, but I do have a dictionary and 15 different translations of the passage in question.) 64 by Dante Alighieri; Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Complete by Dante Alighieri. Joseph Luzzi teaches at Bard and is the author of My Two Italies, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love.

Similarities between Musa and the Hollanders led me to drop them sometime mid-month, though I continued to check their notes for insight. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. .”) that keeps the pattern going forward, naturally to the ear.

Thanks.
In other words: treat the poem as Dante the character treated his journey, something to be undertaken step by step. I think the literal translation permits the power and pain and anguish — and ambivalence, and later joy — of Dante’s feelings to come through to the reader more than a poetic twisting of the wording can.

His annotations are also insightful and relevant to a modern reader, which is particularly helpful if you're not reading in a classroom setting.

Consider well your origin, your birth: Pingback: Three versions of a choral lyric by Euripides « Bugs to fearen babes withall, Thanks, I have recently purchased the 60 volume Britannica Great Books of the Western World, and the Divine Comedy volume is Singleton’s translation.

And it’s hard enough to read Dante without throwing in the additional challenge of 19th-century poetic diction. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Ye were made Cookies help us deliver our Services. ( Log Out /  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. Ciardi's Paradiso will stand the test of time as well. I own a set of Great Books and wanted to know more about the translations. The Comedy is a poem, and any translation has to be true to that basic fact.

In the first place, she’s not “speaking” to Dante in a natural voice; she’s alluding to poetry. Change ).