Speranza
It's always a good thing to have a new edition and translation of Dante’s
Inferno, with its depictions of ghouls and demons,
doomed souls of those whose love was tragically misplaced, and Satan himself
embedded in a frozen lake in Hell’s innermost circle.
With the new Penguin
Classics edition of Dante’s Inferno, translated by Robin
Kirkpatrick, the question arises that confronts anyone who is thinking of
purchasing a copy of any work of great literature, such as the collected works
of Shakespeare, the Bible, or any previously published work of literature is
re-published.
What is it that makes the new edition different enough, or
special enough, to make me want to buy it?
For
anyone who may not be at all familiar with the plot of Dante Alighieri’s
Inferno, in a nutshell it involves the narrator’s descent, while
still alive, into the circles of Hell.
The reason for this descent is a matter
of speculation which translators aren’t in complete agreement with.
From the
very beginning of any version of the Inferno, then, if a consumer
is trying to decide which version is best for his/her needs, one is confronted
with differences in translations and opinions.
The ghost of the poet Virgil, who
authored the Aeneid, serves as Dante’s teacher and guide as he
travels each of the nine circles of Hell and ten areas called, in Robin
Kirkpatrick’s edition,
“Rottenpockets,” though I prefer “Badpockets” (the
Italian is “Malebolges”).
He has to do this in order to escape from the Inferno
and eventually attain salvation.
Robin Kirkpatrick’s translation has notes at its conclusion on each segment
or Canto, while other editions, such as the one co-translated by the husband and
wife team of Robert and Jean Hollander, have notes at the end of each Canto.
Another way some translators have approached notes is Mark Musa’s in The
Portable Dante, which contains not only the Inferno, the
first book in Dante’s trilogy The Divine Comedy, but also the other
two volumes, Purgatory and Paradise, and other
writings of the great poet.
Of these three ways of handling notes, I favor the
Hollanders’, though Musa’s is a close second, and Kirkpatrick’s third.
Which one of these is the better translation from the Italian?
This is
extremely subjective, and I am not an expert in the Italian language by a long
shot; but it is useful to have the Italian side-by-side with the English, to
compare various versions, and to have at least one good Italian dictionary to
check on the definitions of some words.
Also, artistic and poetic license should
be taken into consideration concerning a translator’s choice of one word or
phrase over another, and the translator’s desire (or lack of same) to maintain
Dante’s rhyme scheme in English or to go with an unrhymed, more directly
“accurate” translation.
Now, for the answer to the above question.
While none of them is perhaps
completely “accurate,” due to each translator trying to follow his/her versions
of how strictly to adhere to Dante’s rhyme scheme, and influential translators’
past versions which each admires or not, I will say: it really depends. While
considering the versions in their totalities, I prefer the Hollanders’ (which is
heavily influenced by Musa’s version); but, when taken Canto by Canto and line
by line, at times I liked Kirkpatrick’s or Musa’s better.
For one example of the sometimes fairly large differences between the three,
Canto V has one of the most famous scenes in the Inferno, where
Francesca da Polenta and Paolo MALATESTA, detto il Bello, two historical lovers (and in-laws), are in Hell together.
Auguste Rodin
immortalized these lovers and many other people Dante describes in his sculpture
of The Gates of Hell.
This immense sculpture also contains the
original versions of The Thinker and The Kiss, as well
as Adam, Eve, and Ugolino.
A book is the
undoing, the falling into sin, of the lovers, the reason why PaoloMALATESTA kisses
Francesca DA POLENTA.
Kirpatrick translates:
“This book was
Galehault--pander-penned, the pimp!”.
The Hollanders’ version is:
“A
Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.”
And, Musa’s:
“Our Galehot was that
book and he who wrote it”.
The words implying that the book was written by a
pimp, a panderer, are only in Kirkpatrick’s of these three, and are not in the
Italian.
There are many good to excellent aspects of Kirkpatrick’s translation,
however, that in my opinion make it still an extremely good version. I liked,
for the most part, his translation of Canto 33, which contains the tale of the
historical Count Ugolino, imprisoned in a tower called the Starvation Tower with
his children and grandchildren in the dark. The ask him to eat them to keep
himself alive, and Kirkpatrick does a good job of filling the lines with pathos:
“Father, for us the pain would be far less/if you would choose to eat us. You,
having dressed us/in this wretched flesh, ought now to strip it off.” Though he
does not want to succumb to the temptation, Ugolino eventually does eat them,
when the children themselves die of starvation.
What relevance does a work of literature written in the early 1300s have for
people living in 2006? Plenty. The words of Dante are eternal, much like the
gates of the Inferno (Hell) itself, which Dante writes about in Canto III: “e
io etterno duro,” or in English: “And I endure eternally.” Shakespeare,
Milton, the Bible, and Dante are all at the summit of man’s literary
achievements. They hold vast depths of meanings that touch their readers in many
ways. If you question Dante’s relevance, look to his influence on the lives and
art of Michelangelo (who carried two books with him always--the Bible and the
Inferno) and Rodin. Read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland,
Ezra Pound’s Cantos, or Matthew Pearl’s The Dante
Club. If you’re looking for an edition that has the Italian and English
side-by-side, is a pretty good translation, and don’t mind if the notes are in
the back of the book, I would recommend Robin Kirkpatrick’s edition highly.
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