Dante's Divine Comedy

[Mandryka]

Is this a great poem, in English translation?

I can do a course on The Inferno -- a long course, 22 hours. That's a lot!  But every time I read it I think that it may be interesting from the point of view of medieval history and theology, but from the point of view of poetry and ideas which speak to a 21st century dude, there's nothing there.

Am I wrong?

[JBS]

There's certainly lots of very good poetry in the Comedy.  But on the other hand, it needs to be heavily annotated for the modern reader just to know who each new character is, and why they are found in whatever section of the afterlife Dante thought suitable for them.
I have a bilingual edition--the Italian with a prose translation on facing pages, and explanatory notes after each canto.

The other problem with the Comedy is that it distracts people from reading the Vita Nouva.

[JBS]

This is the translation I have, but in an older edition.


The covers remind me that Dore's illustrations are worth having in their own right, as are Blake's.

[Mandryka]

I'm beginning to see that one challenge for me is to learn to read allegorically. I don't know that I've ever studied this type of writing before.

[Jo498]

I think one problem is that the special kind of verse with eternal chains of final rhymes is impossible to translate (maybe into Spanish, but not German or English) and the harder it is tried the more stilted it will sound whereas it supposedly sounds rather "natural"/flowing in Italian.

And the history/philosophy/mythology/theology overload is so strong that one cannot ignore it, or even if one does one cannot escape it.

I think I tried first (always in translation) at about 17 and got stuck in Purgatorio (no pun), next time in my 20s and got stuck in the early cantos of Paradiso and then in my 40s and got through. In 2015, I think, I then planned to learn enough Italian to eventually read it again at least in a bilingual edition but I haven't gotten so far.

Poetically, Paradiso is as good as the other parts but the theology overload is worst, so one is always looking up something in the margin/bottom/end notes.

Inferno is easiest because it's the most picturesque, sometimes grotesquely funny and these aspects don't suffer so much from translation, I think.

[San Antone]

I have a number of translations of The Divine Comedy (John Sinclair, John Ciardi, Longfellow, Charles Tomlinson, and Robert Pinsky) - and enjoy them all.  I rank Dante with Shakespeare and read both often. 

Even though I am 100% Italian, I can't speak or read the language, and regret not being able to read Dante in his language (not that I haven't tried several times to educate myself; I am lousy with languages).

Despite my ignorance, his books have given me many hours of pleasure and wisdom.