I've been re-reading Dante's Inferno. For fun. (I know, I know. I am that deeply geeky.) And I am madly in love with my translation of it, and wanted to share it with you, Gentle Readers.
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| Dante's 9 levels of Hell, by Sandro Botticelli |
A
few words about translations: I am a self-confessed translation snob. Perhaps it’s the training in Shakespeare,
which makes me reticent to accept subpar renditions. For example, I have seen many editions of
Shakespeare where footnoted modernizations turn Hamlet into hamburger. Shakespeare says:
…
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all…. (V.ii.)
If I were to “translate,” I might say: “God
controls everything, even something as small as a sparrow’s death. If something happens now, it’s supposed
to. If it’s not happening now, it will
happen later. All we can do is
prepare.”
Now, the first passage gives me goosebumps, and
makes me *happy sigh* a little each time I hear it; it’s truth-in-poetry. The second one is mere explanation: dry,
soulless, lacking.
I don’t want to dislike a book or an author because
the translation is bad. The translation
should give the ideas of the original author a chance to affect a larger
audience. That’s why we translate books…
So I can read Dante, when I don’t read Italian.
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| Rodin's "Gates of Hell" |
When
it comes to choosing a translation edition, I have a process: choose a
passage, find it in each book, compare.
It’s how I buy translations, dictionaries, even travel guides. When I chose my Dante a few years ago, I
spent about two hours sitting on the floor in Very Distinguished University’s
bookstore, surrounded by every translation they had on hand. As I pondered, I had a few criteria:
1) The translation needed soul. So all prose translations were put back on
the shelf. This girl was not
interested.
2) I wanted, but did not require, a facing-page
translation. (You know, original
language on one page; translation on the other.) Because of my Romance language background, I
like to look at the original language and see how much I can parse it. Some editions have the original text in Part
I of the book, followed by the translation in Part II, but that’s pretty clunky
to navigate.
3) Scholarly notes.
I prefer footnotes to endnotes, but I definitely wanted the occasional
editorial comment on context or word choice.
Since I’ve never taken a class on Dante, and I was reading for education
as well as pleasure, I wanted someone to give me a little guidance.
After a few hours of consideration, I chose Michael
Palma’s translation of Inferno.
This was a wonderful decision, as the book is fabulous. This was a terrible decision, as he has not
published Purgatorio or Paradiso.
And I need them!
I have such a crush on Palma’s translation. It’s not word-for-word exact. But the soul is right. So many writers are intimidated by
translating poetry. It’s with excellent
reason—good poetry is hard enough to
write oneself, let alone trying to capture the essence of someone else’s poetry
while remaining true to the original rhyme scheme. Dante in particular has been a challenge, and
so many translators have thrown up their hands and reverted to prose!
O the humanity. Translators have
done Dante in free verse, blank verse, and bastardized terza rima with
elimination of the linking rhyme.
[For those who are unfamiliar, Gentle Readers, terza
rima is a poetic rhyme scheme collected in tercets, or lines of three, much like a couplet is collected &
rhymed in twos. Each middle line—for
example, the “B” of an A-B-A tercet—is the main rhyme for the following
tercet. To wit: A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D, etc. Terza rima is traditionally iambic (an unstressed syllable followed by a
stressed syllable), which sounds like a heartbeat (duh-DUM). Shakespeare is also traditionally iambic.]
Palma keeps Dante’s terza rima (including the linking rhyme), so the
rhythm and the rhyme pull your reading forward.
He also keeps the beauty, so when you read about Paolo and Francesca,
you’re struck with the hopelessness of their passion and their punishment. (Did you know that Rodin’s The Kiss is
figured after Paolo and Francesca? The
statue illustrates the moment of the first forbidden kiss, when “that day we
did not read another line.”)
In his introduction, Palma explains why his
translation is a little less flowery than some others. He reminds the reader that Dante is famous
for writing in Italian—the vernacular—rather than Latin. In Dante’s lifetime, “serious” works of
literature were written in Latin, partly so that other intellectuals could read one another's ideas without translation problems (O the irony!), and partly so
that authors appeared to be extending classical lines of inquiry. Latin showed that these authors were taking
up the torch, so to speak. Dante changed that.
He wrote a “serious” work of literature, a piece with religious
overtones, classical bones, and political significance, and he wrote it in
everyday speech.
So Palma keeps his translation pretty lean and
mean. The words are well-chosen but the
manipulation of language seems effortless.
It’s clear, it’s readable, and it’s still lovely.
It’s not perfetto. I have a few niggling problems: Palma’s “All
you who enter, let no hope survive” does not hold a candle to John Ciardi’s
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Frankly, Palma's rendition of the most famous of all Dante quotations is pretty clunky. But all in all, I’m a big fan.
I won’t get even more pedantic in this post, but
please don’t let Dante frighten you.
He’s canonical because he’s good, not necessarily because he’s
hard. If reading a prose translation
gets you into reading Inferno, use it!
(Just don’t tell me. My heart
will bleed.) Please give it a shot. It’s lovely, it’s frightening, it’s
intense. And each Canto is pretty short,
so each “chapter” is readable.
Don’t abandon all hope… give the poetry a chance.
Palma has two publications of his Inferno: the facing-page translation which I own, and the Norton Critical Edition, with additional essays and explication. Both are available relatively cheaply.
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