Dante Alighieri_0045.01 9/14/05 7:09 PM THE ONLINE LIBRARY OF LIBERTY © Liberty Fund, Inc. 2005 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/index.php DANTE ALIGHIERI, THE DIVINE COMEDY, VOL. 1 (INFERNO) (1321) URL of this E-Book: http://oll.libertyfund.org/EBooks/Dante Alighieri_0045.01.pdf URL of original HTML file: http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0045.01 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dante was a Florentine poet and philosopher who wrote at the end of the Medieval period and the beginning of the Renaissance. His most famous work, The Divine Comedy, is a literary landmark and a synthesis of his political religious and social views. His embrace of individuality and happiness and the use of Italian instead of Latin are often considered to mark a transition to a new way of thinking about humanity. ABOUT THE BOOK Dante’s masterwork is a 3 volume work written in Italian rather than Latin. It embraces human individuality and happiness in a way which suggests the beginning of the Renaissance. Vol. 1 (Inferno (Hell) describes what happens to the souls of the wicked who are condemned to suffer the torments of Hell. THE EDITION USED The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text with a Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary by Courtney Langdon, 3 volumes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918, 1920, 1921). COPYRIGHT INFORMATION The text of this edition is in the public domain. FAIR USE STATEMENT This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. _______________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS AVE DANTE http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/EBook.php?recordID=0045.01 Page 1 of 137 Dante Alighieri_0045.01 9/14/05 7:09 PM PREFACE INTERPRETATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE INFERNO CANTO I CANTO II CANTO III CANTO IV CANTO V CANTO VI CANTO VII CANTO VIII CANTO IX CANTO X CANTO XI CANTO XII CANTO XIII CANTO XIV CANTO XV CANTO XVI CANTO XVII CANTO XVIII CANTO XIX CANTO XX CANTO XXI CANTO XXII CANTO XXIII CANTO XXIV CANTO XXV CANTO XXVI CANTO XXVII CANTO XXVIII CANTO XXIX CANTO XXX http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/EBook.php?recordID=0045.01 Page 2 of 137 Dante Alighieri_0045.01 9/14/05 7:09 PM CANTO XXXI CANTO XXXII CANTO XXXIII CANTO XXXIV DIVINA COMMEDIA: INFERNO INFERNO I INFERNO II INFERNO III INFERNO IV INFERNO V INFERNO VI INFERNO VII INFERNO VIII INFERNO IX INFERNO X INFERNO XI INFERNO XII INFERNO XIII INFERNO XIV INFERNO XV INFERNO XVI INFERNO XVII INFERNO XVIII INFERNO XIX INFERNO XX INFERNO XXI INFERNO XXII INFERNO XXIII INFERNO XXIV INFERNO XXV INFERNO XXVI INFERNO XXVII http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/EBook.php?recordID=0045.01 Page 3 of 137 Dante Alighieri_0045.01 9/14/05 7:09 PM INFERNO XXVIII INFERNO XXIX INFERNO XXX INFERNO XXXI INFERNO XXXII INFERNO XXXIII INFERNO XXXIV _______________________________________________________ DANTE ALIGHIERI, THE DIVINE COMEDY, VOL. 1 (INFERNO) (1321) AVE DANTE 1321–1921 Above Man’s war-wracked world a veteran throng Of singing spirits gather in the air, Called from the Poets’ Heaven to take their share In Right’s impending victory over Wrong. Far in their van the Eagle Eye of Song Looms o’er Ravenna, where he died, and where He saw God’s Freedom in the dazzling glare Of visions, which to every race belong. Him his redeemed, united Italy — Her Alps new crowned with Monza’s iron band, Her Hadria wedded with her Doge’s ring — http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/EBook.php?recordID=0045.01 Page 4 of 137 Dante Alighieri_0045.01 9/14/05 7:09 PM Hails as the Prophet-Bard of Liberty; And bids the free of every tongue and land Join in her Ave, and their tribute bring. PREFACE EVERY new translation of the Divine Comedy, though in itself a fresh tribute, however humble, to the interlingual, as well as to the international claims of “the loftiest of poets,” calls for a word of justification. That justification involves the expression of some theory as to the translation of Dante’s world-poem, itself implying a criticism, whether expressed or not, of competitors already in the field. The present translation, which is the result of over twenty years’ work with large classes in “Dante in English” at Brown University, was undertaken and continued with the object of meeting a need, which did not seem adequately met by the well known translations of Cary, Longfellow, Norton, or others more recent; it, therefore, frankly aimed at being in every possible way an improvement on its rivals old and new. Since the advent of the feeling that minute loyalty to the actual words and thought of the original is a prerequisite to a translation of any poem of supreme human import, such a pioneer work as that of Cary, which so long held the field, came to be recognized as being, not only no longer abreast of the modern achievements of Dante scholars, but as inadequate in the above all-important respect. Longfellow’s widely diffused version, which is an almost painfully accurate translation of the then accepted Italian text, at once attained great popularity not only in America but abroad, a popularity largely due to the poetical fame of its author, to its literal loyalty to every word of the original, for which it could so easily be made to serve as a ‘pony,’ and to the wealth and excellence of its accompanying notes. Longfellow, however, in his apparent eagerness to be true to every syllable of the Italian, was led to draw too much upon the tempting Latin element, which looks like Italian, and too little upon the stronger, homely Anglo-Saxon element, of his English medium, to bring due conviction to an English ear; he was also betrayed into infelicities of construction and rhythm peculiarly surprising in such a poet as the author of the incomparable Dante Sonnets, a betrayal which has found explanation in the state of his mind and heart during the prosecution of the work. This, consequently, remains as an instance of a great translation which, not intended to be prose, ought not to have been thought of as poetry. After using it for two or three years, I gave it up, in spite of its many happy lines, and valuable notes, because I found that I could not read it aloud with continuous pleasure either to myself or to my hearers. Possibly as a reaction against these obvious defects, Charles Eliot Norton produced his well known and excellent prose version, against which the only thing that can be said is, that it is just what it purports to be, prose, a prose only slightly hampered by extreme verbal loyalty; and that it was composed under the strange conviction, expressed in his preface, that “to preserve in its integrity what” (of the thought and sentiment embodied in the verse) “may thus be transferred, prose is a better medium than verse.” Admitting, however, that for the harmonious blending of meaning and music in the original, a new harmony might, indeed, be substituted, Mr. Norton unfortunately added: “but the difference is fatal,” and in giving up the creation of a new harmony himself, he lent the great authority of his name to the suggestion that any such attempt by others would prove futile. As to such efforts as that of Dean Plumptre and others to translate Dante in English terza rima, it ought to be sufficient to urge, in the first place, that rhymes are practically an insurmountable obstacle for one who, as a translator, is already limited by the demands of loyalty to another’s articulated thought and feeling; and, secondly, that terza rima is not an indigenous, or even a fully acclimated, form of verse in English, and can not be made to sound natural to an English ear, or, at any rate, produce the effect it does in Italian, where it is to the manner born. I, therefore, feel that neither terza rima, nor, indeed, any rhymed translation in metrical forms still more alien in poetical tone to that in which the Divine Comedy was written, can prove to be at best other than unnatural and unsympathetic, though at times brilliant, tours de force. Their readers will too often be met by forced constructions, and forced or weak rhymes, while students familiar with the Italian original will too often be grieved by omissions, weakenings, or additions, to feel that they have been brought into due spiritual, or even intellectual, proximity to it; for even in such interesting translations as those of Parsons and Shadwell, their rhymes and meters would seem to have been indulged in at too great a cost to the poem’s thought, flow and tone. In view, then, of the above and other similar frank criticisms of the work of my predecessors in the fascinating field of Dante translation, I have been guided by the following considerations, which are modestly offered in justification of the aims, if not of the results, of a slowly matured effort, which has enjoyed the rare help of being progressively tested by being read aloud in public during many years. The transference of a poem from one tongue to another is capable of success in direct proportion to the degree in which the human and spiritual element in the original predominates over the artistry, however excellent, of the verse-form in which that element is embodied; the Divine Comedy, for example, differing vitally in this respect from such a poem as Poe’s Raven, which owes relatively too much to the charm of its meter and syllables to lend itself to a successful translation.