The Divine Comedy

I'm fighting my way through the end of Purgatorio in the Italian original, with Singleton's English prose translation on the opposite page as a crutch. I'd be lying, though, if I said that I could go two stanzas even now without needing a glance at the English rendition.

Okay...I just finished Canto XXIX of Paradiso. Almost...there...

Man, the whole thing is just too darn long for my patience. That thing is over 900 pages, and most recent Bibles are mostly around 920 pages. >_<

I'm reading the Cary translation (via ebook from Project Gutenberg) and finding it very slow going - I've been midway through Inferno for ages and keep restarting because I forget which point was at.

It's not that I dislike it, but I feel badly in need of annotations - the experience is rather like someone watching The Daily Show 500 years from now with only the most general knowledge of 21st-century polirics and culture.

edited 28th Jan '18 3:33:32 PM by Galadriel

And when y'all are done with the original try the modernized version written by Niven and Pournelle in the 70s.

I'm reading Longfellow's translation, which sadly has no notes (at least in my hardcover edition), but I'm reading it with the generous notes provided by [[http://dantelab.dartmouth.edu/reader?reader%5Bcantica%5D=1&reader%5Bcanto%5D=2 the Dante Lab website).

It is going to be a long read, clearly.

I ended up starting from the beginning with a different translation - I don’t remember which one (possibly John Ciardi), but it was great for understanding the meaning, symbolism, and context, due to the comparatively more modern wording and the copious footnotes. Between that and a couple websites (the websites really helped in terms of keeping track of the levels of hell, purgatory, and heaven), I had a good idea of what was going on.

I learned that no one is really sure what the wolf, leopard, and lion at the beginning symbolize, though one common theory is that they stand for the vices of indulgence, violence, and deceit respectively. I went to Italy last year and, in the church at Siena, there was an inlaid floor showing the animal symbols of different Italian city-states - including a wolf for Siena, a lion for Florence, and a leopard for Lucca. Since many of the Tuscan cities come in for a fair bit of criticism from Dante in Inferno, I’m wondering if that might be the symbolism.

Since then, I’ve read at least Inferno and Purgatorio in the Cary translation and the Longfellow translation. The older and more poetic translations have some excellent phrasings, but they are trickier, and go smoother once you’ve read it once and already know what is happening.

I definitely enjoy Purgatorio the most, with its organization around the Beatitudes and around Biblical and historical examples of vices and virtues, and people’s reflections on their lives and deeds. It’s the only one I sometimes reread just for enjoyment. Inferno is rather too vindictive for me. Paradisio is quite heavy on medieval scholasticism but has some parts I liked very much, especially the account of the life of Saint Francis.

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 23rd 2019 at 10:22:01 AM

Great theory on the three animals! Write a paper about it, and some day you can be a Dante footnote, too!

From what I read, most scholars seem to agree that the wolf stands for incontinence, though of course this is contested as well.

I should really re-read this book, at least the Inferno and maybe Purgatorio. I'm not going to bother with Paradiso, it was too much of a struggle last time. XD