The Inferno
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4.8 • 17 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The epic grandeur of Dante’s masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years, and has entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance. Robert Hollander, a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante, and Jean Hollander, an accomplished poet, have written a beautifully accurate and clear verse translation of the first volume of Dante’s epic poem, the Divine Comedy. Featuring the original Italian text opposite the translation, this edition also offers an extensive and accessible introduction and generous commentaries that draw on centuries of scholarship as well as Robert Hollander’s own decades of teaching and research. The Hollander translation is the new standard in English of this essential work of world literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The opening canzone of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy has appeared in almost every imaginable variety of English translation: prose, blank verse and iambic pentameter; unrhymed or in terza rima; with and without the original Italian; with commentary ranging from a few notes to a full separate volume. The translations have been produced by poets, scholars and poet-scholars. In the past six years alone, six new translations of the Inferno have appeared (including Robert Pinsky's 1994 rendition for FSG) and at least 10 others remain in print, including Allen Mandelbaum's celebrated 1980 translation (Univ. of Calif. Press and Bantam) and the extensively annotated editions of Charles Singleton (Princeton Univ. Press) and Mark Musa (Univ. of Indiana Press), the latter two unlikely to be surpassed soon in terms of extensiveness of commentary. Dante scholar Robert Hollander and the poet Jean Hollander bring to this crowded market a new translation of the Inferno that, remarkably, is by no means redundant and will for many be the definitive edition for the foreseeable future. The heart of the Hollanders' edition is the translation itself, which nicely balances the precision required for a much-interpreted allegory and the poetic qualities that draw most readers to the work. The result is a terse, lean Dante with its own kind of beauty. While Mandelbaum's translation begins "When I had journeyed half of our life's way,/ I found myself within a shadowed forest,/ for I had lost the path that does not stray," the Hollanders' rendition reads: "Midway in the journey of our life/ I came to myself in a dark wood,/ for the straight way was lost." While there will be debate about the relative poetic merit of this new translation in comparison to the accomplishments of Mandelbaum, Pinsky, Zappulla and others, the Hollanders' lines will satisfy both the poetry lover and scholar; they are at once literary, accessible and possessed of the seeming transparence that often characterizes great translations. The Italian text is included on the facing page for easy reference, along with notes drawing on some 60 Dante scholars, several indexes, a list of works cited and an introduction by Robert Hollander. General readers, students and scholars will all find their favorite circles within this layered text.
Customer Reviews
Not What I Was Expecting in the BEST Possible Way
I didn’t believe in hell before I started this book, and I certainly don’t believe in it now. This is actually a great piece for the Halloween season. Some of it comes off as cartoonish and more like a fun house. None of it is scary. I don’t see how this made anyone fear hell or made anyone more devout, but to each their own, I guess.
I put off reading this book for about a decade because I was expecting to be confused and overwhelmed. That is not at all what I found within these pages. The translators do a marvellous job making this approachable, clear, and very understandable. I’m sorry I didn’t read this sooner, but I’m glad I chose this translation over others.
One of the great translations, but...
The two Hollanders, Jean an established poet, and Robert a scholar of Italian literature and Dante, make for a powerful team in translating the Inferno. They preserve, to a far greater degree than most, not only the sense of the text but details of imagery that are often lost. My criticisms of the book are purely technical. I miss the the ability and ease of side by side Italian and English. While tools are there to quickly switch back and forth (just click on the line number), it still is much less functional than a simple side by side presentation. I also find the use of large printed arrows in place of footnote numbers to be visually intrusive, and while numbering may be superfluous in iBook's hypertext scheme, its absence makes teaching use needlessly difficult - though this is true of both print and etext editions.