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Bill Kerwin's Reviews > The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation
The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition)
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An excellent translation--even better than John Ciardi. Like Ciardi, Pinsky is a real poet and makes Dante the poet come alive. His verse has muscularity and force, and his decision to use half-rhyme is an excellent one, since it allows us to attend to the narrative undistracted.
by
An excellent translation--even better than John Ciardi. Like Ciardi, Pinsky is a real poet and makes Dante the poet come alive. His verse has muscularity and force, and his decision to use half-rhyme is an excellent one, since it allows us to attend to the narrative undistracted.
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The Inferno of Dante.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
June 1, 2007
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Finished Reading
June 30, 2007
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Jon
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rated it 2 stars
Oct 29, 2011 04:14PM
I agree. I'm just disappointed that Pinsky has no plans to do the rest of the Comedy.
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Oh, Yes! Another winner, Bill. I have to read this one. I've been so excited to get back to Chaucer (in both the original and 'translation') and this will be the perfect coda to my medieval reading mini-marathon.
I think Chaucer should always be read in the original. the Modern English version is a good way to help high school seniors into it, but everybody else should read it in the original Middle English. It isn't really that difficult: learn about 120 common Middle English words and you probably won't have to consult the glossary or the notes as often as you have to for Shakespeare.
Bill wrote: "I think Chaucer should always be read in the original..."I totally agree with you, Bill. I confess I succumbed to a moment of intellectual and linguistic laziness and tried The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling by Peter Ackroyd. What a disaster!
But the good part is that his bizarre version pushed me back to reading the original--with a little help from the web and this interlinear version that re-oiled my rusty Middle English skills: /book/show/2...
Can't agree on Pinsky. Dante seems lght n talan, always unending in English/Germanic trans. I've read Dante forty years in improving Italian, and the only trans close to D's ease and faciiity is Norton's Michael Palma. Consider the third tercet, which is light and easy:"... being so full of sleep
Whatever moment it was I began to blunder
Off the true path. " AND:
"So full of sleep when I began to veer
That I did not see that I had gone astray
From the true path."
Alan wrote: "Can't agree on Pinsky. Dante seems lght n talan, always unending in English/Germanic trans. I've read Dante forty years in improving Italian, and the only trans close to D's ease and faciiity is No..."Thanks for the tip. I'll give Palma a glance sometime!
You can almost see on any bilingual edition how short Dante's lines look next to English. (And they're full of vowels which speed them.)Sorry about my spelling: half my keyboard's dead. I supplement wit one on a USB, but miss many i's and h's, esp.
I agree. For sheer immediacy and emotional impact, this is the best. I was very disappointed when Pinsky said he had lived with Dante long enough and wouldn't be doing translations of the other two cantos.
