Two new translations of Dante Alighieri's 'The Divine Comedy' spark a discussion on why this classic work continues to resonate with readers centuries after its creation.
Dante Alighieri is one of the pillars of Western literature. And his texts have been translated into English dozens of times. With two new translations of his work out now, it's worth asking – why do we keep returning to this well? The Divine Comedy, and then this December, Palma took it a step further with a translation of the full poem, including tweaks to his original.
The original poem is written in three lines where the first and third lines rhyme, and the second line sets up the rhyme scheme for the following tercet. Here's how Palma's version Canto 1 of the book 2,The challenge to approaching a translation of Dante's original Italian this way is that it means you can't concentrate on three lines at a time – you have to take larger chunks into consideration. Many other English translations opt for free verse, or a looser rhyme scheme.'And many of them are quite fine,' said Palma.'But I think without reproducing the rhymes, you're certainly losing a lot of the sound value. You're losing the music of the poem.' 'And – perhaps this will sound a bit, you know, anal, – but just from a purely literal point of view, you're not showing the reader what Dante actually did in his poem,' he said.'Translation is a form of autobiography,' said Joseph Luzzi, professor of literature at Bard College, and author of a number of books about Dante. 'There's no rules in translation. There's no rule that says the good translation has to be half accurate, half accessible, or 83 percent accessible, and 17 percent accurate,' he said.. It depicts a young Dante falling in love with his muse, Beatrice, who dies in the middle of the book. represents this young poet's first monumental encounter with death in a way that changes his life,' said Luzzi. Love, death, sin and salvation – these are big themes that'll always be of concern to readers. And while translating Dante's work is a way of keeping his texts alive, his relevance is somewhat self-eviden
LITERATURE TRANSLATION DANTE DIVINE COMEDY WESTERN CULTURE
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