{"id":30169,"date":"2024-05-07T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30169"},"modified":"2024-05-06T23:41:20","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T03:41:20","slug":"dante-alighieri-the-inferno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2024\/05\/07\/dante-alighieri-the-inferno\/","title":{"rendered":"Dante Alighieri: The Inferno<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Inferno<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Dante Alighieri (1321)<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Italian by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (2000)<\/span>
\nAnchor Books (2002)<\/span>
\n694 pp<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” text_color=””]T[\/fusion_dropcap]he first and last time I read Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/em> was, like most people, in a college humanities class. For me that was the Robert Pinsky translation back in 1998. I thoroughly enjoyed my trek through Hell while learning about Dante\u2019s particularly violent medieval theology. Quite a bit of the imagery has stuck with me over the years. Ever since I have had the intention of finishing the full Divine Comedy . . . but that still hasn\u2019t happened (though a couple of years ago I did read D.M. Black\u2019s translation of Purgatorio<\/em>, published by NYRB Classics. I realized at that time, though, that I\u2019d like to read the whole thing, from the start, and from the same translator(s). So I did some searching and discovered that there was a translation of each part of The Divine Comedy from Dante scholar Robert Hollander and poet Jean Hollander. It still took me some time to finally get going, but over the past month I\u2019ve read The Inferno at the rate of one Canto (plus all of Hollander\u2019s notes) per day. What a nice way to welcome the spring!<\/p>\n

The Hollanders opted for textual fidelity, attempting to help the reader know what Dante wrote, even if it sacrifices some of the poetry. I am okay with that this time, since my main object is to understand, as best as possible, what Dante wrote. So, for example, here is a comparison of the Italian, the Pinsky, and the Hollander translation of the opening two tercets:<\/p>\n

Italian:<\/h4>\n

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita<\/span>
\nmi ritrovai per una selva oscura,<\/span>
\nch\u00e9 la diritta via era smarrita.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ahi quanto a dir qual era \u00e8 cosa dura<\/span>
\nesta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte<\/span>
\nche nel pensare rinova la paura!<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pinsky:<\/h4>\n

Midway on our life\u2019s journey, I found myself<\/span>
\nIn dark woods, the right road lost. To tell<\/span>
\nAbout those woods is hard\u2014so tangled and rough<\/span><\/p>\n

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel<\/span>
\nThe old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hollanders:<\/h4>\n

Midway in the journey of our life<\/span>
\nI came to myself in a dark wood,<\/span>
\nfor the straight way was lost.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ah, how hard it is to tell<\/span>
\nthe nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh\u2014<\/span>
\nthe very thought of it renews my fear!<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We can see that Pinsky\u2019s is more poetic in a lyrical sense (maybe even than Dante himself), but Hollanders\u2019 is a more faithful translation, line by line. They did have the benefit of not trying to work around the terza rima<\/em> rhyme scheme.<\/p>\n

This edition is a hefty one. Reading just the poem itself would probably take only a few hours, but here we not only have a good introduction and copious notes, we also have the Italian on the opposing page. To read a Canto a day took approximately 20-40 minutes, depending on how many notes they had.<\/p>\n

I was always looking forward to my daily quest and was happy with this reading. I\u2019m excited to keep going with another read of Purgatorio<\/em>, and then, finally, a first read of Paradiso<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Have you read any of the Divine Comedy? Any thoughts\u2014or nightmares\u2014you\u2019d like to share?<\/p>\n

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After years of intending to do it, I finally reread Dante’s Inferno<\/em>, this time in the translation by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"true","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,1466],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-dante-alighieri"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Inferno-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7QB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30172,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30169\/revisions\/30172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30169"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}