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Carol asked this question about The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso:
Anyone have an opinion as to what is the best English translation? I bought a volume of the Cary translation (still in the mail) which I realize is written in archaic English, but it might be nice to have a more modern version as well.
Dan McSweeney I’m reading Dorothy L. Sayers’ Penguin Classics version now. It’s the first time I’ve read the Divine Comedy so I can’t compare it to any other transl…moreI’m reading Dorothy L. Sayers’ Penguin Classics version now. It’s the first time I’ve read the Divine Comedy so I can’t compare it to any other translation, but I love it.

She, as you will know, was best known as a British detective fiction writer, working from the 1920s through the 1950s. But she was no slouch when it came to the classics, and she got a first-class honours degree at Oxford in 1915, at a time when women weren’t even awarded degrees. (She eventually received it when the college evolved to the point where they allowed them.) Despite becoming a household word for her popular fiction, she always felt that the Dante translation was her life’s best work.

Although I can’t compare this to other translations, here’s what I like:

• It sticks to the original Italian terza rima structure (ie, three-line stanzas in the ABA, BCB, CDC… format). That might sound a gimmicky way to translate and a hard trick to pull off, but she does it very well. It never feels forced.
• I’m pretty good with vocabulary but have started writing down the words I've met whose meanings I didn’t know. The average per canto is well over one. (Brits of course seem to have instinctive access to a deeper vocabulary pool than Americans do, but they’re all valid English words.) Empery… Havering… Wight… Diuturnal… Blether… And that’s just Cantos II and III. OK, some of these are going to be archaic, but there’s no harm learning them. And they’re just a very tiny fraction of the overall poem.
• I think both the general background notes and the explanatory notes accompanying each canto are superb. There’s a 47-page Glossary that gives helpful notes on just about anyone – actual human or mythical being – or anywhere – actual place on Earth or mythical location – that appears in the story. And there’s a long essay describing the Italian politics of the time, and how they ensnarled Dante and eventually led to his exile and this book. I’d never heard of the Guelphs before. Rounding it out are maps of where the action takes place, and short essays mapping Dante’s journey to real-time starting on Holy Thursday 1300, and on Ptolemy’s theory of how the sun and planets interacted (the accepted explanation of the day).
• Again, I can’t compare this to other translations, but you get a real sense that Ms. Sayers tried to honor Dante’s vision of this being primarily a spiritual work. It wasn’t intended as a rip-roaring story told for its own sake, it was a serious reminder that our earthly lives are the only chance we get to make the choices that will decide what happens to us after we die. This translation makes it very clear that for Dante, our time here is just a short and relatively trivial moment on the spiritual journey our souls are struggling through.

Finally, this translation is about seventy years old (the first volume, Inferno, came out in 1949), and is still in print, easily obtainable, and relatively cheap. I think the fact that it’s lasted so long also speaks to its substance.
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The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
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