Paradise: Too bright and too noisy. Not my choice for a good retirement spot. I have decided to settle for the Earthly Paradise atop Purgatory, with itParadise: Too bright and too noisy. Not my choice for a good retirement spot. I have decided to settle for the Earthly Paradise atop Purgatory, with its meadows, light music and pleasant breeze. Seems like the best long term investment at the end of this cosmic tour....more
More fun than the cliff notes. Good Illustrations. Useful to read ahead a few cantos here, so that the reader can focus on the poem itself instead of More fun than the cliff notes. Good Illustrations. Useful to read ahead a few cantos here, so that the reader can focus on the poem itself instead of worrying about teasing out the meaning. Recommended.
The valuable notes provided with translations are generally limited (due to lack of space) to brief presentationRaffa’s Pitch
The Pitch goes like this:
The valuable notes provided with translations are generally limited (due to lack of space) to brief presentations of background information and concise explanations of difficult passages.
Danteworlds takes a different approach. The project grew out of a desire to meet two basic challenges facing college students who read and discuss the Divine Comedy, in most cases for the first time, in the Dante course Raffa teaches one or more times each year: first, to become adequately familiar with the multitude of characters, creatures, events, and ideas—drawn from ancient to medieval sources—that figure prominently in the poem; second, to become adept at recalling who and what appear where by creating and retaining a mental map of Dante’s postmortem worlds.
Danteworlds therefore provides entries on major figures and issues arranged so as to help you connect your textual journey through the poem with Dante’s physical journey through the realms of the afterlife. This arrangement allows you to proceed geographically as well as textually, not only canto by canto but also—as Dante and his guides do—region by region through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.
Sounds like a good deal? Yeah. And makes good sense too.
That is how good Hollander’s footnotes were. However, if you are reading for School, Danteworlds is probably more useful. So again, my vote is for the Hollander translation, if you are looking for a good place to start with Dante. ...more
It took me a while to decide on the translation to use. After a few days of research and asking around, I shortlisted Musa and HollanAbout Translation
It took me a while to decide on the translation to use. After a few days of research and asking around, I shortlisted Musa and Hollander. Went with Hollander since it seemed better organized. Turned out to be a good choice.
The translation is fluid and easy on the ear. The Italian version is also available when you want to just read the Italian purely for the sound of verse. I am no judge of the fidelity of the various translations, but this was an easy read and that was good. There is enough difficulty in the poem without the translation adding to it. Besides, Dante’s own Italian is supposed to be written in an unaffected style anyway. To me the more important consideration in choosing the edition was the quality of the footnotes and the ease of accessing them.
About Footnotes
Here the notes are scholarly yet accessible with very little arcane stuff (and mind you this is a classic for which proper footnotes are essential to the reading to keep up with the erudition (classical, political, geographical, etc) displayed by Dante throughout the Comedia).
As an intro to the Longfellow translation (Barnes & Nobles: The Inferno: The Longfellow Translation) says: The best advice to the reader of The Divine Comedy in general and to the Inferno in particular is to pay attention to the literal sense of the poem. The greatest poetry in Dante resides in the literal sense of the work, its graphic descriptions of the sinners, their characters, and their punishments. In like manner, the greatest and most satisfying intellectual achievement of the poem comes from the reader’s understanding (and not necessarily agreement with) Dante’s complex view of morality, or the sinful world that God’s punishment is designed to correct. In most cases, a concrete appreciation of the small details of his poem will almost always lead to surprising but satisfying discoveries about the universe Dante’s poetry has created.
Dante demands more careful reading. Because of that demand, because of the immense and minute scholarship that has been expended upon Dante, and because too few English readers have been pointed in the right direction to him, Dante has acquired a reputation as an immensely difficult poet.
It is true that Dante writes in depth. Though his language is normally simple, his thought is normally complex. But if the gold of Dante runs deep, it also runs right up to the surface. A lifetime of devoted scholarship will not mine all that gold; yet enough lies on the surface—or just an inch below—to make a first reading a bonanza in itself. All one really needs is some first instruction in what to look for. Thereafter he need only follow the vein as it goes deeper and deeper into the core of things.
But of course, footnotes is not all. The footnotes are like our Virgil through these pages, the guide that is Reason. But at some point we have to surrender to the Poet to truly fathom its depth of feeling.
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After I finished Hollander I raced through the Ciardi translation, without pausing for the notes much. I also hope to read Carson (NYRB - Inferno) in the future. Earlier I had read the Inferno with Longfellow, and sad to say I had been left as scared as Dante at the beginning of his own journey after that encounter. Hollander is the one who offered to be this reader’s gentle Virgil. Overall the Ciardi translation is grander and more familiar - since a good chunk of the famous quotes and phrases come from it, and Ciardi also tries to force us into looking at the symbolism of the poetry overtly by pointing it out at the very beginning of his cantos.
This is helpful, but in the final analysis, the Hollander is the better choice for the new reader. So in case you are searching for the right translation and using that as an excuse to procrastinate (like me), you can go with Hollander and get down to it.
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For Comparison
John Ciardi:
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! Its very memory gives a shape to fear.
Death could scarce be more bitter than that place! But since it came to good, I will recount all that I found revealed there by God’s grace.
How I came to it I cannot rightly say, so drugged and loose with sleep had I become when I first wandered there from the True Way.
But at the far end of that valley of evil whose maze had sapped my very heart with fear! I found myself before a little hill
and lifted up my eyes. Its shoulders glowed already with the sweet rays of that planet whose virtue leads men straight on every road,
and the shining strengthened me against the fright whose agony had wracked the lake of my heart through all the terrors of that piteous night.
& ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
MIDWAY upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more; But of the good to treat, which there I found, Speak will I of the other things I saw there. I cannot well repeat how there I entered, So full was I of slumber at the moment In which I had abandoned the true way. But after I had reached a mountain’s foot, At that point where the valley terminated, Which had with consternation pierced my heart, Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders, Vested already with that planet’s rays Which leadeth others right by every road. Then was the fear a little quieted That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout The night, which I had passed so piteously.
& All hope abandon, ye who enter in!
Robert & Jean Hollander:
Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh—
the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so. But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw. How I came there I cannot really tell, I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way. But when I reached the foot of a hill, there where the valley ended
that had pierced my heart with fear, looking up, I saw its shoulders arrayed in the first light of the planet
that leads men straight, no matter what their road. Then the fear that had endured in the lake of my heart, all the night
I spent in such distress, was calmed.
& Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (Inf. 3.9)
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