Hi.
Thank you all for being here, and I'll
try not to go on too long because I'm certainly not
the main attraction here.
But the exhibit outside is about Dante, the 13th century
Italian poet, and I hadn't actually read anything of his
before the exhibit.
And I have to say, it was a great experience,
I mean, I wondered why I hadn't read it before.
It was an amazing trip, so you should all do it.
The exhibit is about translations into English,
and features some of the many illustrators.
The first translations, which into English
were not until 1782, that's like 300 years.
Dante was not popular until the Romantics took him up,
primarily Coleridge and Byron.
And Byron translated some parts of Dante but not until 1782,
was the Inferno as a whole translated.
And then the entire Divine Comedy,
Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise,
was published by Henry Boyd in 1802.
But the most lasting of the 19th century translations
was that of the Anglican Divine.
All these people were Anglican divines which is interesting.
Henry Francis Cary, and that translation
went through over 30 editions in the 19th century.
Two of them, two copies of one of the editions are out there
with illustrations by Gustavo Doré, French artist,
and those are the most famous illustrations if maybe the most
lugubrious, the wildest illustrations.
Here's a little bit from Mr. Cary's translation
which people think of as literalist,
he doesn't try to interpret anything,
tries to stick with Dante's words.
"In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood astray,
gone from the path direct, and even to tell it
were no easy task.
How savage wild that forest, how robust and rough
its growth, which to remember, only my dismay
renews in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what their good befell, all else will
I relate discovered there."
That's really bad English but, he I think
was trying to replicate the Italian syntax
when he was doing that.
Which is what they meant by literalists.
The major American translation in the 19th century
was by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
And his very first collection of poetry
called Voices In The Night, 1839,
had three cantos translated of Purgatorio in that.
His version was in tercets, three lines each, and unrhymed,
and the whole Divine Comedy was published in 1867.
And it's also supposedly among the most faithfully literal
of translations.
Here's what he had to say about it.
"The only merit my book has, is that it
is exactly what Dante says and not
what the translator imagines, he might have said,
if he'd been an Englishman."
That's probably impossible by the way, but nevertheless,
it's probably what Longfellow--
definitely it's what Longfellow thought Dante said.
He also had some of his best poems
actually, pretty good forgotten poet Longfellow.
There's three poems about translating Dante
into English, which one of them is on the exhibit there,
a version of it.
He also lectured on Dante at Harvard,
and was part of the Dante Club, where he taught Dante
at Harvard for 18 years.
And here's how he describes the structure of The Inferno.
It reminds him of the Roman aqueducts,
built solidly with those stanzas like blocks of granite
piled one upon the other, and not cemented together
but held in their places by their own weight,
and the clamps of the rhyme.
Magnificent and beautiful structure
as you stand beneath it, you can hear the living waters of song
flowing on from century to century.
Actually, his translation is actually readable,
I didn't read the whole thing, but I read a couple of cantos.
At the same time, the first English illustrators of Dante
were friends of William Blake, great British artist and poet.
And they were Henry Fuseli, and John Flaxman both,
there are some examples of their work out there.
Both very classical artists, in fact, Flaxman
worked for the Wedgwood Studios where they made Wedgwood china,
and his illustrations look like those little blue and white
china things that Wedgwood put out, if you ever saw those.
But they were Blake's friends and Blake
called Flaxman a sublime archangel, so
that's interesting.
Blake himself created 102 pencil sketches
which are amazing works of art, and a few watercolors.
And only seven of them were ever published during his lifetime,
and they were published as engravings.
As opposed to the neoclassical Flaxman and Fuseli,
the rebellious romantic Blake, his illustrations
were fiery and colorful.
And he had a lot of problems with Dante
because, he was a soft-hearted individual, didn't
like all these poor people getting punished,
which is what happens to everyone in the Inferno.
And one of his pieces out there is of Paolo and Francesca
who were lovers, not married but married to other people,
and were in hell for lust.
If you take this test online, is that up yet?
Almost all of us end up in the lustful category, which
I think is the third circle for some reason,
I guess that's modern.
But anyway, the thing is he's got--
it's really incredible.
There are these people flowing along,
in this languorous attitudes, it looks really great.
And it has Dante fainted on the ground, flat out stiff
as a board because, he thought Dante was a bit of a prude.
So that's the way he--
and in fact, he does faint twice in the Inferno.