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Editorial Review Amazon.com
The one quality that all classic works of literature share istheir timelessness. Shakespeare still plays in Peoria 400 years afterhis death because the stories he dramatized resonate in modern readers'hearts and minds; methods of warfare have changed quite a bit since theTrojan War described by Homer in his Iliad, but thepassions and conflicts that shaped such warriors as Achilles,Agamemnon, Patroclus, and Odysseus still find their counterparts todayon battlefields from Bosnia to Afghanistan. Likewise, a little travelguide to hell written by the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri in the13th century remains in print at the end of the 20th century, and itcontinues to speak to new generations of readers. There have beencountless translations of the Inferno, but this one by poetRobert Pinsky is both eloquent and tailored to our times. Yes, this is an epic poem, but don't let that put you off. An excellentintroduction provides context for the work, while detailed notes oneach canto are a virtual who's who of 13th-century Italian politics,culture, and literature. Best of all, Pinsky's brilliant translationcommunicates the horror, despair, and terror of hell with suchimmediacy, you can almost smell the sulfur and feel the heat from therain of fire as Dante--led by his faithful guide Virgil--descends lowerand lower into the pit. Dante's journey through Satan's kingdom mustrate as one of the great fictional travel tales of all time, and Pinskydoes it great justice.Book Description
This widely praised version of Dante's masterpiece, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets, is more idiomatic and approachable than its many predecessors. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Pinsky employs slant rhyme and near rhyme to preserve Dante's terza rima form without distorting the flow of English idiom. The result is a clear and vigorous translation that is also unique, student-friendly, and faithful to the original: "A brilliant success," as Bernard Knox wrote in The New York Review of Books.
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Medieval vision of the afterlife
This was required reading for a graduate course in medieval history.
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) "Devine Comedy" weaved together aspects of biblical and classical Greek literary traditions to produce one of the most important works of not only medieval literature, but also one of the great literary works of Western civilization.The full impact of this 14,000-line poem divided into 100 cantos and three books is not just literary.Dante's autobiographical poem Commedia, as he titled it, was his look into the individual psyche and human soul.He explored and reflected on such fundamental questions as political institutions and their problems, the nature of humankind's moral actions, and the possibility of spiritual transformation; these were all fundamental social and cultural concerns for people during the fourteenth-century.Dante wrote the Commedia not in Latin but in the Tuscan dialect of Italian so that it would reach a broader readership.The Commedia was a three-part journey undertaken by the pilgrim Dante to the realms of the Christian afterlife: Hell, (Inferno), Purgatory, (Purgatorio), and Paradise, (Paradisio).
The poem narrated in first person, began with Dante lost midlife.He was 35 years old in the year 1300 and in a dark wood.Being lost in the dark wood was certainly an allegorical device that Dante used to express the condition of his own life at the time he started writing the poem. Dante had been active in Florentine politics and a member of the White Guelph party who opposed the secular rule of Pope Boniface VIII over Florence.In 1302, The Black Guelphs who were allied with the Pope, were militarily victorious in gaining control of the city and Dante found himself an exile from his beloved city for the rest of his life.Thus, Dante started writing the Commedia in 1308 and used it to comment on his own tribulations of life, and to state his views on politics and religion, and heap scorn on his political enemies.
Dante's first leg of his journey out of the dark wood was through the nine concentric circles of Hell (Inferno), escorted by his favorite classical Roman poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid.Dante borrowed heavily from Virgil's Aeneid.Much of Dante's description of hell had similarities to Virgil's description in his sixth book of the Aeneid.Dante's three major divisions of sin in hell where unrepentant sinners dwelled, had their sources in Aristotle and Augustinian philosophy.They were self-indulgence, violence, and fraud.Fraud was considered the worst of moral failures because it undermined family, trust, and religion; in essence, it tore at the moral fabric of civilized society.These divisions were inversions of the classical virtues of moderation, courage, and wisdom.The fourth classical virtue, justice, is what Dante came to believe after his journey through hell that all its inhabitants received for their unrepentant sins.There were nine concentric circles of hell inside the earth; each smaller than the previous one.For Dante the geography of hell was a moral geography as well as a physical one, reflecting the nature of the sin.Canto IV describes the first circle of hell, Limbo, which is where Dante met the shades, as souls where called, of the virtuous un-baptized such as Homer, Ovid, Caesar, Aristotle, and Plato.
In the four circles for the sin of self-indulgence Dante met shades who where lustful, gluttons, hoarders and wrathful.In the second circle of Hell, lustful souls were blown around in a violent storm.In Canto V, one of the great dramatic moments of the poem, Dante had his first lengthy encounter with an unrepentant sinner Francesca da Rimini, who committed adultery with her brother-in-law.Like all the sinners in hell, Francesca laid the blame for her sin elsewhere.She claimed to be seduced into committing adultery after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.At the end of the scene, Dante fainted out of pity for Francesca.
In Canto X, the sixth circle of hell reserved for heretics who are punished by being trapped in flaming tombs, Dante took the opportunity to use the circle to chastise political leaders for participating in political partisanship.A Florentine who was a leader in the rival Ghibbelline political party, Farinata degli Uberti, accosted Dante.Both men aggressively argued with each other, recreating in hell the bitterness of partisan politics in Florence.Farinata predicted Dante's exile.Dante used this Canto to show the dangerous tendencies of petty political partisanship that he harbored.
The seventh circle of hell was subdivided into three areas where sinners were punished for doing violence against themselves, their neighbors, or God.In Canto XIII Dante encountered Pier della Vigne in the wood of the suicides.The shades there were shrubs who had to speak through a broken branch.Pier spoke to Dante about how he had been an important advisor to Emperor Frederick II, and how he blamed his fall, and his suicide, on the envy of other court members.This Canto was especially important because Dante came to grips with his own "future" fall from political power and exile.Pier's behavior served as a strong example to Dante how not to act in exile.Whether he had been tempted to commit suicide is not clear; however, he certainly had been prone to the selfish and despairing attitude that Pier represented.
The last two circles of hell contained the sinners of fraud.In the eighth circle, there were ten ditches for the various types of fraud such as Simony, thievery, hypocrisy, etc.Canto XIX described the third ditch, which contained those guilty of Simony, the sin of church leaders perverting their spiritual office by buying and selling church offices.Simonists were buried upside down in a rock with their feet on fire.Pope Nicholas III mistakenly addressed Dante as Pope Boniface VIII who was the current Pope in 1300, and whose place in hell was thereby predicted.This is not surprising since Boniface was the person most responsible for Dante's exile.In an interesting literary twist, Nicholas "confessed" to Dante, as if he was a priest, his sin of greed and nepotism.He admitted that even after becoming Pope he cared more for his family's interests than the good of the whole Church.Dante responded to Nicholas' "confession" with a stinging condemnation of Simony drawn from the Book of Revelation.After this encounter, Dante came to understand that hell was a place of justice.
Canto XXXIV, the last one in the Inferno, depicted Satan with three heads.Each head was chewing the three worst sinners of humankind.The middle head was chewing on the head of Judas Iscariot, who was a disciple to Jesus and his betrayer.The other two heads were chewing Brutus and Cassius; the murderers of Julius Caesar, and the two men Dante faulted for the destruction of a unified Italy.Dante considered the two ultimate betrayals against God and against the empire as the worst betrayals perpetrated in the history of humankind.
Thus, Dante's intent in his Commedia was to teach fourteenth-century readers that if one wanted to ascend spiritually towards God then one needed to learn the nature of sin from the unrepentant.By doing this, one could learn to overcome the same tendencies found in themselves.He wanted people to realize what he had come to learn that political partisanship would only stand in the way of unifying Italy and keep it from regaining any of its former glory that it enjoyed during the time of the Roman Empire.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in literature and medieval history.
Abandon hope
"Midway life's journey I was made aware/that I had strayed into a dark forest..." Those eerie words open the first cantica of Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," the most famous part of the legendary Divina Comedia. But the stuff going on here is anything but divine, as Dante explores the metaphorical and supernatural horrors of the inferno.
The date is Good Friday of the year 1300, and Dante is lost in a creepy dark forest, being assaulted by a trio of beasts who symbolize his own sins. But suddenly he is rescued ("Not man; man I once was") by the legendary poet Virgil, who takes the despondent Dante under his wing -- and down into Hell.
But this isn't a straightforward hell of flames and dancing devils. Instead, it's a multi-tiered carnival of horrors, where different sins are punished with different means. Opportunists are forever stung by insects, the lustful are trapped in a storm, the greedy are forced to battle against each other, and the violent lie in a river of boiling blood, are transformed into thorn bushes, and are trapped on a volcanic desert.
If nothing else makes you feel like being good, then "The Inferno" might change your mind. The author loads up his "Inferno" with every kind of disgusting, grotesque punishment that you can imagine -- and it's all wrapped up in an allegorical journey of humankind's redemption, not to mention dissing the politics of Italy and Florence.
Along with Virgil -- author of the "Aeneid" -- Dante peppered his Inferno with Greek myth and symbolism. Like the Greek underworld, different punishments await different sins; what's more, there are also appearances by harpies, centaurs, Cerberus and the god Pluto. But the sinners are mostly Dante's contemporaries, from corrupt popes to soldiers.
And Dante's skill as a writer can't be denied -- the grotesque punishments are enough to make your skin crawl ("Fixed in the slime, groan they, 'We were sullen and wroth...'"), and the grand finale is Satan himself, with legendary traitors Brutus, Cassius and Judas sitting in his mouths. (Yes, I said MOUTHS, not "mouth")
More impressive still is his ability to weave the poetry out of symbolism and allegory, without it ever seeming preachy or annoying. Even pre-hell, we have a lion, a leopard and a wolf, which symbolize different sins, and a dark forest that indicates suicidal thoughts. And the punishments themselves usually reflect the person's flaws, such as false prophets having their heads twisted around so they can only see what's behind them. Wicked sense of humor.
Dante's vivid writing and wildly imaginative "inferno" makes this the most fascinating, compelling volume of the Divine Comedy. Never fun, but always spellbinding and complicated.
Infernal Translating
The Inferno of Dante is undoubtedly a book worth reading because of its historical influence and impressive poetry, but without a skilled translator the meaning or poetic form is lost. Robert Pinsky manages to find a perfect balance between Dante's message and style. Combined with notes that explain Dante's many historical references, this balance allows The Inferno of Dante to continue to be a great piece of literature. In order to maintain the necessary balance between Dante's message and style, Robert Pinsky uses a looser form of rhyming than most people use. He rhymes leads with sides and defer with there. Although these may not rhyme as well as heat and sheet, they have enough in common that they are able to demonstrate the rhythm of the tertiary rhyme in The Inferno of Dante. Pinsky's loose rhyming gives him more choices, which allow him to better preserve Dante's message.
This message, however, would be lost on today's readers if it were not for notes that help further translate the meaning of events within The Inferno of Dante. Most of the characters Dante meets along his journey have long been forgotten by the average reader. How many people would understand the significance of the name Bocca? Upon hearing this Dante says, "I have no further need to speak with you" (Pinsky 347). This leaves the reader completely clueless as to who Bocca was. This is remedied by using the notes Pinsky provides in his translation. These notes tell the reader that Bocca betrayed his party in battle causing their defeat (Pinsky 423).
This extra information is essential to Robert Pinsky's translation, which retains the amazing rhythm, beauty, and message that Dante designed.
Works Cited
Dante. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 1994.
Best book I've ever read
Ignore any negative reviews of this translation of Dante's Inferno.The only negative thing I can say is, after reading Pinsky's translation of Inferno, the non-Pinsky translations of Purgatorio and Paradiso were not so interesting by comparison (Mr. Pinsky!Please!Translate the other two books!).
Pinsky is a former U.S. Poet Laureate, so the few people here who bashed his work are in the minority.
Forget the boring rules of poetry you learned in high school.Read the introduction/prologue in which Pinsky explains the type of poetry Dante used and how Pinsky chose to follow that method.I then suggest you read the whole book twice.Read it once, stopping to check the end notes so you will know who the characters are and their importance in history, and their relevance to the story.Then read it again, with just an expectation of pure enjoyment.
Also, ignore the expectations of meter your high school teacher may have taught you (like mine did).Just read and follow punctutation, rather than the ends of the lines.
Doing these things allowed me to more fully enjoy Inferno, and I still marvel at the literary beauty produced some 700 years ago.
touring Hell in cargo pants
Pinsky has alighted on the translation solution that will eventually give rise to the definitive English Dante.Rather than forgo ryme altogether or force his English into perfect terza-rima, Pinsky employs slant rhyme.Pinsky calls his version Yeatsean, but of course other poets have embraced slant rhyme to great effect--Dickinson stands out for me.
But reading Pinsky's "Translator's Note" prepares you for the failings of his translation.For he has also aimed for a more compressed version, one with more enjambment, to convey something of Dante's own compression and, I suppose, swiftness.The problem arises in the very first tercet, where Dante spends three full lines on waking up lost in that dark wood.Pinsky dispenses with those lines in 18 syllables, then interrupts Dante's startling recollection at the end of the second line to rush the next tercet into the first one.The enjambent conceals the slant rhyme, mooting Pinsky's otherwise brilliant poetic solution, and also shucks the essential weight of Dante's opening.It reads like a prose translation, embarrased by even its own of-rhymes (which are actually a great idea!) and blasting through Dante's thought without recognizing Dante's own choices about end-stopping his thoughts more frequently.Unless English is 20 percent more efficient than Italian, or translators care for sense at the exclusion of the original's poetics, this book disappoints.
And it's a swift, compressed opening even at three full lines.Three lines--just three--for Dante to depict himself as spiritually waylaid:further compression simply detracts, and it dishonors the poem's already admirable economy, not just its efficiency but also how it chooses to spend each tercet, the careful filing of each one with this step or that in his journey, or to run over into the next tercet.
Pinsky's is a bilingual translation, allowing you to just visually register how much more ready he is than Dante to break Dante's thoughts before the end of a line and start Dante's next phrase or sentence with two or three or four syllables left.All that enjambment is perfectly natural to English poetry, maybe even to Italian, but the facing-page presentation of Dante's actual words reveal that Dante employed rhyme togeth with the regular ryhthm of the line-endings to generally honor his rhetoric.
That compression, by the way, makes most of the cantos radically shorter than Dante's own verse.Canto after canto is 20 to 30 lines short of Dante's Italian, and when a Canto is maybe 120 or 130 lines long, the translation becomes more like a discount version of Dante than an English Dante.Allen Mandelbaum, who translates into blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), offers the poem the dignity Dante's Italian merits.You can use the facing page Italian to see that.Dope out what those latinate words obviously mean, and see how much reordering and reduction Pinsky offers--here turning a descriptive phrase into a single adjective, there shrinking a long appositive or subordinate clause.
Pinsky's diction is more fluent, more readily grasped than other translations, but it often feels off-hand, hasty, artless, undramatic--a tour of Hell in cargo pants.The story still conveys its tone, but mostly through incident, not via Pinsky's poetry.
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Efficiently written and occasionally exciting thriller