WEBVTT

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Hi.

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Thank you all for
being here, and I'll

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try not to go on too long
because I'm certainly not

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the main attraction here.

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But the exhibit outside is
about Dante, the 13th century

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Italian poet, and I hadn't
actually read anything of his

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before the exhibit.

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And I have to say, it
was a great experience,

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I mean, I wondered why
I hadn't read it before.

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It was an amazing trip,
so you should all do it.

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The exhibit is about
translations into English,

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and features some of
the many illustrators.

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The first translations,
which into English

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were not until 1782,
that's like 300 years.

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Dante was not popular until
the Romantics took him up,

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primarily Coleridge and Byron.

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And Byron translated some parts
of Dante but not until 1782,

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was the Inferno as
a whole translated.

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And then the entire
Divine Comedy,

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Inferno, Purgatory,
and Paradise,

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was published by
Henry Boyd in 1802.

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But the most lasting of the
19th century translations

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was that of the Anglican Divine.

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All these people were Anglican
divines which is interesting.

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Henry Francis Cary,
and that translation

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went through over 30
editions in the 19th century.

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Two of them, two copies of one
of the editions are out there

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with illustrations by
Gustavo Doré, French artist,

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and those are the most famous
illustrations if maybe the most

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lugubrious, the
wildest illustrations.

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Here's a little bit from
Mr. Cary's translation

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which people think
of as literalist,

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he doesn't try to
interpret anything,

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tries to stick
with Dante's words.

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"In the midway of
this our mortal life,

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I found me in a
gloomy wood astray,

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gone from the path direct,
and even to tell it

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were no easy task.

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How savage wild that
forest, how robust and rough

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its growth, which to
remember, only my dismay

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renews in bitterness
not far from death.

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Yet to discourse of what their
good befell, all else will

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I relate discovered there."

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That's really bad
English but, he I think

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was trying to replicate
the Italian syntax

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when he was doing that.

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Which is what they
meant by literalists.

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The major American translation
in the 19th century

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was by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow.

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And his very first
collection of poetry

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called Voices In
The Night, 1839,

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had three cantos translated
of Purgatorio in that.

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His version was in tercets,
three lines each, and unrhymed,

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and the whole Divine Comedy
was published in 1867.

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And it's also supposedly among
the most faithfully literal

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of translations.

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Here's what he had
to say about it.

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"The only merit my
book has, is that it

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is exactly what
Dante says and not

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what the translator
imagines, he might have said,

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if he'd been an Englishman."

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That's probably impossible
by the way, but nevertheless,

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it's probably what Longfellow--

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definitely it's what
Longfellow thought Dante said.

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He also had some
of his best poems

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actually, pretty good
forgotten poet Longfellow.

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There's three poems
about translating Dante

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into English, which one of
them is on the exhibit there,

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a version of it.

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He also lectured on
Dante at Harvard,

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and was part of the Dante
Club, where he taught Dante

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at Harvard for 18 years.

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And here's how he describes
the structure of The Inferno.

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It reminds him of
the Roman aqueducts,

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built solidly with those
stanzas like blocks of granite

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piled one upon the other,
and not cemented together

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but held in their places
by their own weight,

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and the clamps of the rhyme.

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Magnificent and
beautiful structure

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as you stand beneath it, you can
hear the living waters of song

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flowing on from
century to century.

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Actually, his translation
is actually readable,

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I didn't read the whole thing,
but I read a couple of cantos.

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At the same time, the first
English illustrators of Dante

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were friends of William Blake,
great British artist and poet.

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And they were Henry Fuseli,
and John Flaxman both,

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there are some examples
of their work out there.

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Both very classical
artists, in fact, Flaxman

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worked for the Wedgwood Studios
where they made Wedgwood china,

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and his illustrations look like
those little blue and white

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china things that Wedgwood put
out, if you ever saw those.

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But they were Blake's
friends and Blake

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called Flaxman a
sublime archangel, so

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that's interesting.

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Blake himself created
102 pencil sketches

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which are amazing works of
art, and a few watercolors.

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And only seven of them were ever
published during his lifetime,

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and they were published
as engravings.

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As opposed to the neoclassical
Flaxman and Fuseli,

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the rebellious romantic
Blake, his illustrations

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were fiery and colorful.

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And he had a lot of
problems with Dante

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because, he was a soft-hearted
individual, didn't

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like all these poor
people getting punished,

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which is what happens to
everyone in the Inferno.

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And one of his pieces out
there is of Paolo and Francesca

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who were lovers, not married
but married to other people,

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and were in hell for lust.

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If you take this test
online, is that up yet?

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Almost all of us end up in
the lustful category, which

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I think is the third
circle for some reason,

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I guess that's modern.

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But anyway, the
thing is he's got--

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it's really incredible.

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There are these
people flowing along,

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in this languorous attitudes,
it looks really great.

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And it has Dante fainted on
the ground, flat out stiff

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as a board because, he thought
Dante was a bit of a prude.

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So that's the way he--

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and in fact, he does faint
twice in the Inferno.

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