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Title: The Divine Comedy-Hell by Dante Alighieri, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dante, Dante Alighieri ISBN: 0-14-044006-2 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71
Rating: 2
Summary: A poor translation
Comment: Penguin is a great company, but they've allowed their greatest vice (outdated translations) to effect their edition of no less a figure than Dante. Sayers's translation is hopelessly archaic and dry as dust -- for instance, the crude body language used by Dante is softened for protestant sensibility. Its also completely restrained by suffocating adherence to Dante's rhyme scheme.
Modern attempts at translating Dante, which are much more modest, honest, and mature, start with John Ciardi. Allen Mandelbaum also did a fine translation put out by (if I recall correctly) Signet Classics, with the Italian text facing the English. I haven't personally read Mark Musa's translation, but he's a fine scholar and I hear its pretty good.
All that having been said, this edition is nicely presented at least. Diagrams, detailed notes, and legnthy introductions. Its just unfortunate that Penguin couldn't provide a more fresh approach to the great poet.
Rating: 3
Summary: A readable translation with helpful notes and introduction
Comment: Having wanted to read Inferno for a long time, I was glad to find Dorothy Sayers' translation since I value her own writing. I'm no scholar, so I can't compare this critically to the numerous other translations available. I just come looking to enjoy reading and understanding great classic literature on occasion. It takes a great deal of background information to appreciate this work. The Divine Comedy can be examined from many different angles: Poetry, allegory, theology, a spiritual journey, a love story. Sayers' introduction and notes, and the diagrams and drawings in this book were a great help to me. Some may argue that the scholarship is a bit dated, but Sayers clearly loved The Divine Comedy and wanted her readers to appreciate it also. The result of her work was a very interesting reading experience for me, better than I expected. I particularly enjoyed the insights she incorporated into the notes from Charles Williams' book, The Figure of Beatrice. (Sayers dedicated her translation of The Divine Comedy to Williams.) The verse might make it a little more difficult to get the meaning until you get used to it, but I think it's worth the effort. Once I found a good reading pace, I didn't find the rhyming forced as some readers have. (It might seem that way if you look for it.) It must be a difficult thing to try to give readers of English the same experience that Dante's Italian readers had and I think that was Dorothy Sayers' goal. She got me interested enough to take seriously her claim that readers of Dante are cheating themselves if they stop after Inferno. On through Purgatory to Paradise ... It must only get better from here.
Rating: 2
Summary: A very outdated translation
Comment: Dorothy Sayers was a fine mystery author and a knowledgable scholar of medieval literature. And once upon a time, this *was* one of the best available translations in English. Times change, however, and new English translations have come along that do a far better job than Sayers' does.
The biggest problem with Sayers translation, in my humble opinion, is her attempt to preserve Dante's rhyme scheme. In her introduction, The fact of that matter is that Italian is a language in which rhymes are frequent, easy, and melodious. In English, having every other line rhyme just sounds cloying and contrived. It also makes the reading more difficult, because of the inverted syntax, archaic vocabulary, and awkward rhythmsand that Sayers has to use in order force the rhymes in there. Oh sure, the fact that she was able to it at all is impressive. But it still doesn't make for a palatable rendition Dante's supple language (which, even to modern Italians reads smoothly and vernacularly, and not at all awkward.) Those who really want some retention of Dante's rhymes would do far better with Robert Pinsky's translation (which uses 'soft rhymes' and doesn't force them when they won't fit). Alan Mandelbaum's and John Ciardi's translations are good too.
Another problem with Sayers edition are the notes. While, on the one hand, they can very helpful to a first-time reader, they are also outdated. If you want to know what Oxford scholars thought about Dante a half-century ago, Sayers notes are great for that. And I don't say that to be dismissive, those 1940's Oxford medievalists had a lot of very good things to say. However, the fact of the matter is that Dante studies-- and medieval scholarship have changed a lot in the past half-century-- and reading her notes is something like reading a half-century old textbook of American history. They leave out a lot of things that probably ought to be discussed.
An even bigger problem with the notes here, I think, is that the author too readily presents her notes as "The Truth" (with a capital "T") about the poem-- as if there were only one correct way to interpret it and its details. Her interpretations are often insightful, suggestive, and they will greatly help the first-time reader-- but they are so didactic in their style that they may overlyy contrain the reader's freedom of interpretation. It's more like she's trying to use her notes to tell you, "The poem means this", rather than using them to background information and context so that you can figure out what *you* think it means on your own.
And, at the risk of sounding like I'm "politically correct", the fact of the matter is that there also are some biases in her notes that, to me, seem rather glaring today. This is particularly evident where she explains why Dante places Mohammed in the part of Hell with the schismatics. Rather than simply pointing out that medieval Christians erroneously believed that Islam began from a schism within Christianity, Sayers uses the occasion to make a few denigrating comments about Islam (which she insists upon referring to as "Mohammedism"). Again, I don't hold this against Sayers per se... She wrote this book among and for a coz y community of Oxford Christians over a half-century ago.... and it's naturally going to be show its colors in that regard. But, for us folks who are reading it today, in the 21st century, well... maybe the notes just need to be updated a bit.
Anyway, when all's said and done, Dante's work is masterful, and even Sayers' awkward translation and outdated notes can't completely conceal that. However, I really think readers would be better off sticking to the Ciardi, Mandelbaum, or Pinsky translations of the _Inferno_. (My preference is for the Pinksy, but to each his own...)
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Title: The Divine Comedy, Part 2: Purgatory by Dorothy L. Sayers, Dante Alighieri ISBN: 0140440461 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: January, 1970 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Florentine/Cantica III: Paradise (Penguin Classics) by Alighieri Dante, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dante Alighieri ISBN: 0140441050 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1962 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Canterbury Tales, in Modern English by Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill ISBN: 0140440224 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 31 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: City of God (Penguin Classics) by St. Augustine, David Knowles, Henry Bettenson ISBN: 0140444262 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: June, 1984 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Portable Milton by John Milton, Douglas Bush ISBN: 0140150447 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: August, 1976 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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