Divine Comedy + Decameron discussion
This topic is about
The Divine Comedy
Dante's Commedia
>
01-09 Feb.: Inferno I-VII
Bjorn wrote: "When you do a "modern" translation of the Commedia or Hamlet, or even the Bible, should you keep all the doths and forsooths even though it'll make the text sound archaic and difficult to modern readers (which wasn't the intention in the first place) or should you retranslate it to a modern idiom at the risk of making it sound like..."Personally, I think there has to be something in-between. For me, a translation should be as close to the text as possible, but still in a modern language. I find archaicism as evil as exoticisms.
Hartmut Köhler, the translator of the German translation I'm reading, has also a very strong opinion on this (my translation, sorry for the awkwardness).
"Formerly lively characteristics of poetic language have long since become congealed, lignified, cheaply available. And cheaply available inevitably means kitsch. Inversion of genitive ("der Sterne Helle"), word order change ("so schnell, von der Sehne fliegt der Pfeil"), apocoped word forms ("unwirsch und falsch, dass er mußt' niedergeh'n"), which were useful to poets, have become rummage and require of the reader constant lenience, which is a scarce good."
I'm also a Swede, but I'm reading it in English. (I have this notion, that the English market has a larger pool of translators and therefore the odds of getting a good one is better, but I don't know if it's true.) Sadly this time I'm reading a book that I bought mostly for the pretty pictures (Doré's), so I'm hoping to get a lot of information from this group, besides all the googling I'll be doing.
Edit: Btw, it's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow I'm reading.
I'm reading the Ciardi (English) translation and he does a nice job of this in-between as Helmut calls it, using 'you' throughout, except for when those in Heaven speak and again in a declamation from Dante to Virgil, using 'thou,' etc. as a way to express their elevation and in the latter case to show Dante's respect.I recently finished the Kaufmann (English) translation of Goethe's "Faust," and he points out that it was the earlier (Victorian) translators of the work that took away its colloquial, 'modern' feel.
Teresa wrote: "I'm reading the Ciardi (English) translation and he does a nice job of this in-between as Helmut calls it, using 'you' throughout, except for when those in Heaven speak and again in a declamation f..."I'm reading the Mandelbaum(English) translation, and he handles it the way Ciardi does, although I wouldn't exactly call it "colloquial" in that he works to keep the meter and rhyme. But as for the "thou" and "you" (and the British-style "one"), it's as Teresa pointed out.
I have a colleague who's Catholic and teaches philosophy. When we started reading this (two canti a month)a few years ago, he said, "You know? I think I'd rather hang out by the fire with Socrates......sounds more interesting...."
I'm reading the Musa translation. I just finished the first 7 cantos this evening and I'm really enjoying my reading so far.
Bjorn wrote: "You can either be eaten by the symbolism..."That's what I meant when I said in my review that you simply cannot understand that text without notes. Some things can be inferred, like, that the wood is not really a wood, but a some muddled state of mind - but then comes the Panther cat, and at least I didn't know that it was a symbol for the sins described in Jer5,6:
So now a lion from the forest will attack them; a wolf from the desert will pounce on them. A leopard will lurk near their towns, tearing apart any who dare to venture out.
Now, if you know that, you can also infer that the hill the narrator is moving to, is probably Mount Zion, and so on and so on. But I'm not versed well enough in the Bible to notice such things on the spot.
Ali wrote: "I am reading a prose and verse translation, Durling and Hollander. Sinclair and Hollander have a couple of nice features that I think will facilitate discussion, short summations of the canti in th..."Mandelbaum does that as well, Ali, and it does indeed help (though his aren't as concise)
RE: Bjorn - I like your assessment of the opening cantos as well as questions about the Vulgate and translation. I read the first Canto last night and a second this a.m. Such does distract me from the Premier League.
Bjorn wrote: "One question for those in the know: I know the Commedia often gets praised as one of the first major literary works written in the "people's tongue" rather than Latin, but just how colloquial would Dante be to a contemporary reader? Is he writing High Poetry or just telling a story, albeit in rhyme? "One thing the Ciardi translation does later on is transition between "excrement" to more colloquial and vulgar words for the same thing when Dante is deeper in Hell. I think there's a very high level of language manipulation Dante's using to get his point across (though I haven't read Inferno in the original and am going off Ciardi's notes), which is something that each translator has to interpret I guess. (Also, when I first read Inferno in high school it made for some awkward decisions when we read cantos out loud to the class--to be vulgarly colloquial or not?--because these are big issues for teenagers who aren't comfortable swearing in front of their teachers.)
Ciardi's word on this issue comes in the endnotes for Canto II, "A note on 'thee' and 'thou': except for the quotations from the souls in Heaven, and for Dante's fervent declamation to Virgil, I have insisted on 'you' as the preferable pronoun form. I have used 'thee' and 'thou' in these cases with the idea that they might help indicate the extraordinary elevation of the speakers and of the persons addressed."
Mod
One question for those in the know: I know the Commedia often gets praised as one of the first major literary works written in the "people's tongue" rather than Latin, but just how colloquial would Dante be to a contemporary reader? Is he writing High Poetry or just telling a story, albeit in rhyme?
I'm asking because translations of older "classic" works (Shakespeare, for instance) often seem to run into this problem: what was originally intended to be fairly simple, at least language-wise, tends to be taken as more complex the older and more revered the source text becomes. When you do a "modern" translation of the Commedia or Hamlet, or even the Bible, should you keep all the doths and forsooths even though it'll make the text sound archaic and difficult to modern readers (which wasn't the intention in the first place) or should you retranslate it to a modern idiom at the risk of making it sound like... well, what I just wrote above. Is the translator working for the reader or the author?"
Bjorn, you should write your own translation. :)
The Ciardi translation touches on the question of style. There's a great translator's note in the edition I am reading. Ciardi notes, "In looking at other translations I was distressed by the fact that none of them seemed to be using what I understood to be Dante’s vulgate. They seemed rather to fall into literary language, the very sort of thing Dante took such pains to avoid. And none of them, above all else, gave me a satisfying sense of Dante’s pace, which is to say, “the rate at which the writing reveals itself to the reader.”" And in his introduction to the volume, Archibald MacAllister writes, "Now in his unfinished treatise on the vernacular, De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dante had established a basic rule that the poet must make his style match his material. In accordance with this we should expect the style of the Inferno to be lower than that of the other divisions—and that is exactly what we find. The poet has used throughout it a low level of diction, common, everyday words and constructions and relatively simple figures. Yet with this prosaic equipment he has obtained incomparable effects, from the poignant sensuality of Francesca (V), the dignity of Farinata (X), the pathos of Ser Brunetto (XV), to demoniac farce (XXI) and revolting ugliness (XXIX). He employed not only ordinary words but, where he thought it useful, those which in our language seem to require only four letters."
That reminds me of the outcry when Raoul Schrott's German translation of the Ilias was published. He had Zeus say to Hera: "Dir hat man wohl ins Gehirn geschissen?" - a very rough and colloquial way to say that someone messed something up. Schrott really got kicked for such things. But then, Homer is very different from Dante, as Kris just pointed out.
Mod
That's what I meant when I said in my review that you simply cannot understand that text without notes. Some things can be inferred, like..."
BTW, Guy Raffa's The Complete Danteworlds: A Reader's Guide to the Divine Comedy provides excellent context for reading The Divine Comedy, even down to sections about allusions for each canto. He also has a website that he developed with an abridged version of his commentary in the book: http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/ (Reem posted about this site on our Links thread too.)
BTW, as a possible sign of my insanity, I'm reading three translations -- Ciardi, Hollander (with facing pages of Italian), and Mandelbaum, as well as Raffa and a few other supplemental texts.
I am enjoying Raffa's book. I'm also going through the Open Yale Course Dante in Translation. Lecture 3 goes into this low vernacular style as compared to other styles. The hint is in the word comedy.
Margaret wrote: "Ciardi's word on this issue comes in the endnotes for Canto II, "A note on 'thee' and 'thou': except for the quotations from the souls in Heaven, and for Dante's fervent declamation to Virgil, I have insisted on 'you' as the preferable pronoun form. I have used 'thee' and 'thou' in these cases with the idea that they might help indicate the extraordinary elevation of the speakers and of the persons addressed." "That's so fascinating to me. I don't know much about the etymological background to this, but I'm pretty sure the ordering of that used to be reversed: thou was not a word indicating respect or grandness, but intimacy. In almost all early religious writing the equivalent of 'thou' is preferred to show an intimate relationship with God, not a grand or elevated one.
I had a question for all of you, as well: how do your translations deal with the phrase 'mi ritrovai' in line 2 of Canto I? The Durling translations conveys it as "I came to myself" in the sense of a deeply inward moral awakening, but it seems like an important and interesting phrase for all that comes after. From the Italian I get the impression that it translates literally as something like 'I found myself' but I'm not sure how the ri- affects that. It almost looks a bit like 'I rediscovered myself' but that seems like it may be too dramatic a reading.
Mod
Ciardi: "I woke to find myself"
Hollander: "I came to myself"
Mandelbaum: "I found myself"
ETA: I think there is a sense here of Dante's rediscovering himself, in terms of rediscovering his soul, his commitment to being saved, after he went astray.
Kris wrote: "BTW, as a possible sign of my insanity, I'm reading three translations -- Ciardi, Hollander (with facing pages of Italian), and Mandelbaum, as well as Raffa and a few other supplemental texts. "This is the FIRST time I haven't fell behind the first week while reading with a group. It's only day two and I'm actually ahead. I decided to go with Ciardi because Hollander wasn't formatting correctly on MoonReader; I switched to Mantano and it works fine. :-s
So I'm going with Ciardi, Durling and the Raffa book. Not as crazy as your schedule, but I feel like I arrived. It didn't take but like four years or so.
Did I mention I'm on schedule? hehe Let's see if I can keep it up.
I'm also reading William Chester Jordan's Europe in the High Middle Ages. It provides some good background on the period, without going into too much detail.
Mod
Katie wrote: "I had a question for all of you, as well: how do your translations deal with the phrase 'mi ritrovai' in line 2 of Canto I? The Durling translations conveys it as "I came to myself" in the sense of..."I´m relying on my French here, but yes, ¨retrouver¨would be different than ¨trouver¨--as you said, ¨Found myself once again¨, as though it had happened before.
Thanks, Kris! That's very helpful. I like the Ciardi translation there.(And thanks as well, Linda!)
One theme that really interested me in this reading was the idea that Francesca imitating the stories of courtly love and Lancelot. Specifically her desire to "be the heroine she reads about" (Giuseppe Mazzotta). This brings up the idea of author's intention versus readers understanding and the dangers associated with it. This idea stood out to me, along with how Dante depicts Fortuna. I should break out Orff's "Carmina Burana". LOL
Kris wrote: "Katie wrote: "I had a question for all of you, as well: how do your translations deal with the phrase 'mi ritrovai' in line 2 of Canto I? The Durling translations conveys it as "I came to myself" i..."In my German translation: "...fand ich mich in einem finsteren Wald wieder..."
...which somehow carries a meaning of awakening from a dream, or suddenly becoming aware that you're lost. "wiederfinden" is quite a literal translation here.
Mod
Hollander has a fantastic close reading of the scene with all of its ambiguities and pitfalls in his Introduction to Inferno, with close attention to the shifts in point of view. Here are his questions about Francesca's lines: "What about Francesca herself, the most loquacious of the four? She has thirty-eight verses to tell her story, well over half of the scene (88–107; 121–138). What she tells is moving and beautiful, like the woman herself, we imagine. In this reader’s view, one common element in both her speeches is that someone or something else is always being blamed for her unhappiness: the God who will not hear her prayers, the god of Love who made Paolo fall in love with her beautiful physical being and made her respond similarly to his, her husband for killing them, the book that, describing an adulterous kiss, encouraged them to engage in an adulterous embrace, and the man who wrote that book. I admit that I am here taking a dour view. Are we meant to read the scene this way? Most people do not. (A. B. Giamatti, with whom I used to converse endlessly about Dante, loved the Romantic reading of this canto. He once cursed me, complaining, “Are you going to try to ruin this scene for me too, Hollander?”) I hope it is clear that we all need to watch more carefully the actual exchanges among the various characters that might help establish a point of view from which we can study the events brought forward in the poem. Whatever else we can say, we should all be ready to admit that this is complicated business. Dante is beautiful, yes, but he is complicated."
I think the question of how as readers we respond to the damned is fascinating to explore -- here and throughout Inferno. Any thoughts or reactions to specific cantos?
I have finally begun the Ciardi translation and have finished the first two Cantos. I do like the translation but I'm very thankful for the intro to each canto as well as the notes. I'm also glad I read the intro to the book and translator's note.Thanks to all for the insights.
Mod
In my German translation: "...fand ich mich in einem finsteren Wald wieder..."
..which somehow carries a meaning of awakening from a dream, or suddenly becoming aware that you're lost. "wiederfinden" is quite a literal translation here.
I love this translation -- it plays off the images of darkness and impaired vision, which arise again in some of the circles of hell.
Mod
Wasn't the translator's note fantastic? I love how he led us through his decision-making process and approach.
Kris wrote: "Green Troll wrote: "One theme that really interested me in this reading was the idea that Francesca imitating the stories of courtly love and Lancelot. Specifically her desire to "be the heroine sh..."That's definitely something I have to bring up later when we get to Cantos VIII and XIII--in terms of one amazing example of poetic justice and also of how views on evil and violence have changed since Dante wrote The Divine Comedy.
Besides, it always took me a little bit of work to understand why those born before Jesus automatically go to Hell despite their actions in life (except for the Old Testament figures who manage to leave when Christ dies). I get it in terms of Catholic doctrine of this period but I always thought that lacked some element of forgiveness or understanding. But, Dante's God is very different in some ways from modern constructions of the same figure.
Mod
(And thanks as well, Linda!)"
Katie, more from Hollander's notes on that phrase:
"mi ritrovai (I came to myself) has the sense of a sudden shocked discovery. “It is the pained amazement of one who has only now, for the first time, become aware that he is in peril” (Padoan, comm. to Inf. I.2). The grammatical solecism (“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai” [Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself…]), mixing plural and singular first-persons, is another sign of the poet’s desire to make his reader grasp the relation between the individual and the universal, between Dante and all humankind. His voyage is meant to be understood as ours as well."
Mod
Besides, it always took me a little bit of work to understand why those born before Jesus automatically go to Hell despite their actions in life (except for the Old Testament figures who manage to leave when Christ dies). I get it in terms of Catholic doctrine of this period but I always thought that lacked some element of forgiveness or understanding. But, Dante's God is very different in some ways from modern constructions of the same figure. "
I agree with you, Margaret -- some understanding of historical background and cultural context makes all the difference in reading The Divine Comedy.
Margaret, I have to admit that I was struck by this construct which left Virgil in Limbo and Limbo as a part of HellWhen I was a child I think I believed that Limbo was it's own separate entity, certainly not part of Hell. If the Nuns had tried to convince me, I think they would have failed. Thank goodness some things have changed since the middle ages.
Kris wrote: "Green Troll wrote: "One theme that really interested me in this reading was the idea that Francesca imitating the stories of courtly love and Lancelot. Specifically her desire to "be the heroine sh..."I think that Kris has brought up an interesting question: looking at it from today´s viewpoint, and far removed in time and space from the politics of the day, we´d be ready to forgive many of those who are in Purgatory or in Hell (or do as my colleague, and choose to ¨hang out¨by the fire with Socrates because it would be more interesting). Maybe this is a spoiler, but the idea that some of these will eventually be okay, since they have people on Earth praying for their souls, will make us feel a bit better, as well. As did Sue, I always imagined Purgatory as a separate place (but then, I have the excuse of not being Catholic--where I grew up, there was no absolution--there was a list accruing against you from the day you were born, so you´d better be as good as possible all the time. That, mixed in with the Native American on my mom´s side...you don´t do that because ´it just isn´t done´, not because you fear retribution or punishment).
Kris wrote: "Katie wrote: "Thanks, Kris! That's very helpful. I like the Ciardi translation there.(And thanks as well, Linda!)"
Katie, more from Hollander's notes on that phrase:
"mi ritrovai (I came to my..."
Thank you again! Between all of these I think I'm starting to get a sense of it. It almost reminds me of that feeling you get with a jolt when you first wake up, as if you've forgotten something terribly important.
The attitude towards the inhabitants of Hell is one of my favorite parts of Dante - it will swing back and forth between pity and callousness as things go along and (a bit of a spoiler, I guess) the attitude does not really match up with how far down into the pit Dante goes. There are some fairly far down who Dante almost seems to view with wistfulness.
From what I recall, there were some medieval people who were rather upset by the fact that 'virtuous pagans' (as they liked to call them) never got to make it into Heaven. I think there were even some who tried to suggest that Virgil should be able to make it in on the grounds that he was a proto-Christian through his writing of the Fourth Eclogue. There were a couple of others that Christians attempted to adopt as their own, particularly one Roman who we'll meet a bit later on.
What did you all make of the neutral or the "lukewarm" from Canto 3? I always felt as they got a bit of a rough deal, all things considered. I'm also not sure if Dante is being original here, or if there's some precedent for setting these people on the boundaries between heaven, hell, and purgatory.
I'm reading the Robert Pinsky verse translation of Inferno for the second time. I've read the Ciardi twice before and kind of miss the familiar lines but I'm hoping it might give me a little better idea of what's going on in the Malebolge cantos in a few weeks. I think his approximation of terza rima makes the translation more of a puzzle for the reader than in the case of Ciardi despite being a few decades more recent.He translates that part of the first Canto as "I found myself" also.
I agree w/ Katie about the third canto: does being uninvolved merit wasps and pus-slurping maggots?I am wrestling with a number of such architectural/cosmological aspects, then again I inhabit a different world-view.
I think I remember from an old class that I took that it's a reference to Revelation, something like "because you are not cold or hot, I will spit you out of my mouth" (!). And I guess, given the political situation in Italy around this time, neutrality was probably frowned upon more than it would be in other periods. But it still seems very harsh for Dante, relatively speaking.
Ciardi notes at length about the precision of divine punishmentin La Commedia; yet the apathetic and those crazed by love appear to both catch it in the neck. I KNOW I am being histrionic and cynical, but I find this distracting. Paraphrasing Ivan Karamazov, if such is the nature of the Divine Light then I'll return my ticket.
Jonfaith wrote: "Ciardi notes at length about the precision of divine punishmentin La Commedia; yet the apathetic and those crazed by love appear to both catch it in the neck. I KNOW I am being histrionic and cyn..."
I understand that! I probably take Canto 3 too personally because it's one of the potential places that I would wind up in Dante's universe. I take pride in my ambivalence! (So I supposed I could wind up with the proud as well).
It's a really unnerving scene, though. In some ways worse than all the rest of Hell. I think it's the only time that Dante meets a group of sinners and doesn't give a name to any of them or let them speak.
Mandelbaum's agrees with you, Katie, on the Revelations. Also, that in the Aeneid, Aeneas sees similar souls on his descent into the underworld (the unburied). And the Aeneid having been produced by Virgil....guess it was too much of a coincidence for Dante to pass on...
Mod
But I have only read until Canto 3 (will try to do a canto a day).
The verse translation is superb. Abilio Echevarría has managed to keep the consonant rhyme in "tercetos encadenados". In Canto 2 there was one verse more beautiful than the original.
amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare (verse 72)
The translator with repetition and alliteration..
movióme Amor, y Amor mueve mis labios
Both the Italian and the verse translation have also a very interesting note on the "uninvolved" and in particular to "il gran rifiuto" (verse 60).
This could be a reference to the Pope Celestine V (1215-1296), who resigned from his position five months after his confirmation in 1294. This led to the succession of Boniface VIII, one of Dante's enemies.
Dante would be indirectly blaming Celestine for his own and later misfortunes.
It occurred to me last night, while reading Canto 4, that Dante's audience would have been delighted to find Seneca, Ovid, and Virgil himself consorting with Homer, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, PreSocratics like Heraclitus and Euclid, Greek physicians conferring with Arabs.Even if, like Virgil,
For such defects, and for no crime
More grave, we're lost: for something left undone
We're doomed to live without hope for all time.
(verses 45-47)
the thought of the lively conversations these great minds were having in Limbo was such fun to contemplate! Dante must have had a thrill, imagining himself in conversation with them:
They said that I was with them from now on,
Sixth of their school, the college of the wise.
And so it was, until the light was gone,
We walked and talked of what I must surmise
Were best left unsaid now, but when said then
Was fit, and, dare I say it, flattering:
Such words I hardly hope to hear again
But just to hear them once meant everything.
(verses 120-128)
I always wanted to have a few drinks with Socrates, although he was apparently capable of drinking his companions under the table (see the Symposium).
Katie: I hadn't thought of the reticence towards the neutrals. Such is significant in itself.Lisa: I liked your thoughts on the conversations of the pagans, however lugubrious.
Kalliope wrote: "Both the Italian and the verse translation have also a very interesting note on the "uninvolved" and in particular to "il gran rifiuto" (verse 60).This could be a reference to the Pope Celestine V (1215-1296), who resigned from his position five months after his confirmation in 1294. This led to the succession of Boniface VIII, one of Dante's enemies.
Dante would be indirectly blaming Celestine for his own and later misfortunes. "
The Durling notes suggest that as well. It fits doubly well considering that Dante had a lot of sympathy for the more extreme branch of the Franciscan Order (often called the Spirituals), who were largely lacking in papal support until Celestine showed up. Celestine was somewhat of a miracle choice for pope at the time: he was not remotely involved in the Roman curia, and when he was elected many thought that it was a bit of a miracle, and some thought that he was the fabled 'Angelic Pope' who would be a harbinger of the Last Days.
Unfortunately poor Celestine was not up for the undoubtedly rough political life of the Roman curia and he wound up retiring (or, as some would later suggest, wound up being forcibly removed by Boniface VIII). His retirement meant bad news for the Spiritual Franciscans, whose problems were continually escalating as Dante was writing the Commedia. So this may be another example of the current situation making Dante appear rather harsh to a figure that we (with a solid bit of historical distance) would probably pity more than condemn.
Mod
This could be a reference to th..."
This is wonderful. Thank you, Katie.
I've never read any version of The Divine Comedy before (have read the first three Cantos as of right now),but all of your comments and discussions are giving me such great insights. You make it so much easier to understand and engage in. So, thanks! I might not be adding much of my own insights (as I currently have none), but I really love reading everyone elses!
Katie wrote: "I had a question for all of you, as well: how do your translations deal with the phrase 'mi ritrovai' in line 2 of Canto I? The Durling translations conveys it as "I came to myself" in the sense of..."Katie, here is the transcription of what my friend, an Italian professor living in Italy had to say about the first stanza comparing different translations.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Sayers: Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.
(Sayers is obviously attempting to save the metrical aspect, but while doing so, she is compromising the literal text. Our life is a collective statement, rather than a sort of collective "prescription" - bound upon - there is no shade of meaning which would include "waking up" oneself from the lack of consciousness regarding previous acts but, rather, sort of active erring. It is not an issue of one moment of being shocked to be there, if you get what I mean, rather than just stating where he was. The biggest problem, though, is in "where" - che has a function of indicating causality in this case rather than a function of a relative pronoun. He is not lost in the dark wood WHERE the right path is gone, but he is in the dark wood in the first place BECAUSE he had lost the right path. Feel the difference?)
Pinsky: Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
In a dark woods, the right road lost.
(Literally, good. The text doesn't quite "flow" to me, though, and the form is sacrificed to convey a literal meaning.)
Mandelbaum: When I had journeyed half our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
(A perfect compromise of form and meaning, but not really compromising anything: the first line is maybe somewhat drastically restated, but the meaning is the same, the effect of causality is saved, he opts for paraphrasing "the right way", BUT, while doing so he uses the meaning of smarrito which is found in the text, so the paraphrasis cannot be considered out of line. An exemplary translation.)
Musa: Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
(A bit less fortunate solution than the previous one: the literal meaning is perfectly saved, but the form is compromised to save it. I believe Mandelbaum was right to slightly enter paraphrasing, this is a case of a nearly perfect faithfulness to the text, but it "flows" less nicely.)
Ciardi: Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.
(The third line is problematic: other than "woke" which I already commented - but okay, we can overlook that one - the problem is in adding alone. Yes, he IS alone there, but that is a totally a new piece of information, not an unfortunate sacrifice in translation.)
Esolen: Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wilderness,
for I had wandered from the straight and true.
(Even if we can technically allow it, something still rubs me as wrong here: he is entering into too much interpretation... how to explain it, yes, selva oscura would essentially mean the wilderness of sin rather than literally a dark forest, and the via diritta is the straight and true "path" in an allegoric sense, but what Esolen does is to already interpret the text while translating it... I believe imagery should be retained and interpretation be separated from translation.)
Hope that helps! Sorry I didn't answer earlier but this thread is moving fast!
Oh, and after comparing the translations, she preferred Ciardi because she said, even though he compromised meaning at times, he was the only one who captured the "flavour" of Dante. Mandelbaum she also liked for his balance.
That's definitely helpful, Cleo! Thank you so much for that, it gave me a much better understanding of the nuances.
Katie wrote: "That's definitely helpful, Cleo! Thank you so much for that, it gave me a much better understanding of the nuances."You're so welcome! I'm going to try to read along with you all, but I'm swamped during this month with other reads, so you'll probably all pull ahead.
I am reading the Ingvar Björkeson Swedish translation as well and like it! The book also got just the right amount of commentaries on stuff you need to know.I keep it as my morning book, read one canto with a cup of tea to wake up.
Mod
A 19th-century interpretation of Charon's crossing by Alexander Litovchenko.
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (/ˈkɛərɒn/ or /ˈkɛərən/; Greek Χάρων) is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person.[1] Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. Wikipedia
"Charon the demon, with eyes of glowing coals,
beckons to them, herds them all aboard,
striking anyone who slackens with his oar.
Just as in autumn the leaves fall away,
one and then another, until the bough
sees its spoils on the ground,
so the wicked seed of Adam fling themselves
one by one from shore, at his signal,
as does a falcon at its summons." (Hollander 53)
The imagery of the autumn leaves falling is just beautiful.
Divine Comedy + Decameron
Books mentioned in this topic
Invisible Cities (other topics)Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present (other topics)
Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750 (other topics)
Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (other topics)
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Euan Cameron (other topics)Michael D. Bailey (other topics)
Darren Oldridge (other topics)
Kathryn A. Miller (other topics)
John Tolan (other topics)
More...
OK, so first three cantos then:
- Where Am I... Help! Three allegorical beasts! Help! ...Dude, you're Virgil! I'm, like, totally a fan!
- 'Sup. You can either be eaten by the symbolism, or come with me to hell.
- Hell...?
- It's OK, your girlfriend sent me. We're on a mission from God.
- Oh, alright. Are we in hell yet?
- No.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER *enters*
- Are we in hell yet?
- No.
- So who are these people?
- They're the ones who were too chicken to pick a side and can't go to hell or heaven. At least if you choose to sin, Satan's got your back and you'll be featured in The Commedia, but if you can't even do that much nobody remembers you at all.
- Oh. Are we in hell yet?
- We have to take a boat ride first.
- Hey, it's Charon! I know him!
- On second thought, let me do the talking.
...Sorry. I'm just excited to get started with this. I'm loving the setup so far and looking forward to what others have to say.
One question for those in the know: I know the Commedia often gets praised as one of the first major literary works written in the "people's tongue" rather than Latin, but just how colloquial would Dante be to a contemporary reader? Is he writing High Poetry or just telling a story, albeit in rhyme?
I'm asking because translations of older "classic" works (Shakespeare, for instance) often seem to run into this problem: what was originally intended to be fairly simple, at least language-wise, tends to be taken as more complex the older and more revered the source text becomes. When you do a "modern" translation of the Commedia or Hamlet, or even the Bible, should you keep all the doths and forsooths even though it'll make the text sound archaic and difficult to modern readers (which wasn't the intention in the first place) or should you retranslate it to a modern idiom at the risk of making it sound like... well, what I just wrote above. Is the translator working for the reader or the author?
The Swedish translation by Ingvar Björkeson, so far, straddles that divide quite nicely IMO - it definitely doesn't read like a 20th century work, even though he's dropped the rhyme and kept the meter, but the language itself is very clear and inviting. (Any other Swedes reading this?)