Best translation of Divine Comedy?

August 2, 2008 11:23 AM

What translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to recommend?

A friend picked up the Longfellow trans. I read Ciardi's in high school and remember loving it. (Well, I only read The Inferno, but still: loved it.) My 10th grade English teacher told us to avoid Longfellow, but I can't remember why. What's the "best" translation, and why? "Best" meaning either "most accurate, but still retaining the poetry and atmosphere" or "most poetic and closest to the atmosphere, but still accurate enough." Or however you want to define it.

posted by goatdog to writing & language (6 comments total)

This was the version of Inferno that I read in a graduate-level comparative literature course.
It really depends on what you're looking for, of course. I would recommend this book if you want a critical version. It contains glosses and notes after each canto, several critical essays at the end and a summary of each canto. Mark Musa (the translator and editor) is a well-known scholar of Italian classical literature (though I can't really go into much detail, as neither comparative literature nor Italian literature are my areas of study).
posted by queseyo at 12:35 PM on August 2

Anthony Esolen

From a review in the Claremont Review:

Thanks to Esolen's superb rendition, one can finally delve into the Divine Comedy in English and catch the rigor of Dante's style and the polyphonic range of his voice. The unusual success of this translation is due, no doubt, to Esolen's gift as a poet in English. But it is also due to his ear as a critic. It is a pleasure to notice that he regularly catches the subtle echoes linking together deeply different scenes, such as, for instance, the words Francesca speaks in Inferno V and the words of Ugolino in Inferno XXXIII. On the face of it, Francesca, the heroine of romantic passion who is punished for her moral incontinence, is a far cry from Ugolino, a traitor who has plunged into the abyss of hatred and is caught in the fiery ice of fraud. Yet Dante wants the reader to perceive the invisible moral chain binding them together. And so Ugolino sounds like Francesca as both are made to speak "through my tears." Esolen forges the link between the two characters. He conveys that Ugolino—this is his tragedy—cannot tell the difference between love and hatred, anymore than Francesca can realize the tragic consequences of her love.

Inferno. You can find the rest from there, I think.
posted by odragul at 12:37 PM on August 2

I've always loved this translation of Inferno, by Elio Zappulla. It's translated in the vernacular, as it was written in Italian, so there's lots of great language and slang. It's also annotated so you can understand who certain characters are and why they have been condemned to hell.
posted by autojack at 12:38 PM on August 2

There is no One Best Translation; everyone will respond to different things. I happen to like a version that preserves something of the original verse structure, so I am fond of Laurence Binyon's old Viking Portable Dante version, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who prefers a more modern poetic style. Anyone who wants to read Dante should look at as many translations as they can find and pick the one that suits them best in terms of both poetry and annotations.
posted by languagehat at 1:36 PM on August 2

I love Robert Pinsky's Inferno. If you're interested in how a poet translates poetry, that's the place to start. Purgatorio and Paradiso are a struggle, no matter who you're reading.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:15 PM on August 2

Seconding Pinsky although I also grew up with and loved the Ciardi. Pinsky has recreated in English a gentle consonantal terza rima that's lovely to read.
posted by nicwolff at 4:50 PM on August 2