Divine Comedy:

[finnmccool46]

Hey, everyone, I've been wondering if anyone has a particular Translation of the Divine Comedy that they would recomend. I've read Dorothy Sayers, which I enjoyed, though I wonder whether it was a bit uninspired after the Inferno, though I suppose until I read one or two more (or, um, learn the Italian) that I don't really have much of a standard

Comments

[percivale]

I trust Mandelbaum pretty well. I think his translation of Ovid is marvellous indeed. And he's probably the best option for Vergil. I would read him for Dante, although I think it doesn't succeed as well as his other translations.

Anthony Esolen has a new translation. I'm not really familiar, but I have doubts.

At UD they read Mousa or Musa(?), I have no idea, but that might be worth looking at too.

Sayers tries to do terza rima, but I don't think it ends up having the same affect as the sound or force of the Italian poetry. It's enjambed, and feminine, so it seems to flow all over the place, and slow down the sense of what its saying, causing the reader to lose a tempo that will carry him through. (That's anyhow how I understand Pound's idea of the effect of Sayers as opposed to Dante.) He has an interesting essay on translating Dante in which he ends up seeing a lot of value in one of the older english translations.