WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.200 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:05.430 align:middle line:84% I mentioned the literalist translations, and that there 00:00:05.430 --> 00:00:10.320 align:middle line:84% are a lot of scholars who translated all of the Divine 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:15.390 align:middle line:84% Comedy and they have usually a book of the Inferno 00:00:15.390 --> 00:00:20.790 align:middle line:90% and then a book of commentary. 00:00:20.790 --> 00:00:24.630 align:middle line:84% Amazing the historical knowledge and I 00:00:24.630 --> 00:00:28.020 align:middle line:84% should just mention, though they're not out there, 00:00:28.020 --> 00:00:33.630 align:middle line:84% the American John Sinclair and Charles Singleton in the 90s, 00:00:33.630 --> 00:00:37.555 align:middle line:84% from Princeton, who have extensive commentaries. 00:00:37.555 --> 00:00:39.180 align:middle line:84% So if you're reading it, and you wanted 00:00:39.180 --> 00:00:41.730 align:middle line:84% to find out what some of their references are too, 00:00:41.730 --> 00:00:44.250 align:middle line:84% you can use those commentaries, but I probably 00:00:44.250 --> 00:00:48.240 align:middle line:90% wouldn't read their versions. 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:52.110 align:middle line:84% In the 20th century, there are some semi-famous people that 00:00:52.110 --> 00:00:54.270 align:middle line:84% had translated, one of them is Laurence Binyon 00:00:54.270 --> 00:00:59.310 align:middle line:84% who was a keeper of prints at the British Museum, 00:00:59.310 --> 00:01:02.670 align:middle line:84% and later professor of poetry at Harvard. 00:01:02.670 --> 00:01:07.470 align:middle line:84% His mentor in translation was Ezra Pound, 00:01:07.470 --> 00:01:11.190 align:middle line:84% who cautioned him to kick out every sentence that 00:01:11.190 --> 00:01:14.610 align:middle line:84% isn't as Jane Austen would have written in prose, 00:01:14.610 --> 00:01:17.910 align:middle line:84% for when you do get a limpid line in perfectly 00:01:17.910 --> 00:01:22.200 align:middle line:84% straight normal order, isn't it worth any other 10. 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:25.410 align:middle line:84% And he praised Binyon's work which was actually 00:01:25.410 --> 00:01:28.260 align:middle line:84% in terza rima, which is the form that Dante 00:01:28.260 --> 00:01:30.930 align:middle line:90% invented to write it in. 00:01:30.930 --> 00:01:35.730 align:middle line:84% Which is the three couplets with a rhyme a, then b, 00:01:35.730 --> 00:01:39.480 align:middle line:84% then a, then the next one starts with b, and then c, and then b. 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:44.880 align:middle line:84% So it is an interlocking sort of form that when it's done, 00:01:44.880 --> 00:01:47.610 align:middle line:90% it's really an incredible thing. 00:01:47.610 --> 00:01:49.050 align:middle line:90% And he said it-- 00:01:49.050 --> 00:01:51.780 align:middle line:84% Pound said about Binyon's work that it utterly 00:01:51.780 --> 00:01:55.650 align:middle line:84% confounds the apes who told you terza rima wasn't English. 00:01:55.650 --> 00:01:57.660 align:middle line:84% And many of the people who've translated it 00:01:57.660 --> 00:01:59.985 align:middle line:84% have managed to keep it in that form. 00:01:59.985 --> 00:02:04.105 align:middle line:90% 00:02:04.105 --> 00:02:06.480 align:middle line:84% Sort of curiosity though-- actually the parts that I read 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:08.160 align:middle line:90% were pretty good. 00:02:08.160 --> 00:02:10.590 align:middle line:84% The English mystery writer and creator 00:02:10.590 --> 00:02:13.230 align:middle line:84% of Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers, 00:02:13.230 --> 00:02:17.850 align:middle line:84% translated the whole Divine Comedy into English, 00:02:17.850 --> 00:02:20.370 align:middle line:84% it was published in the late 40s. 00:02:20.370 --> 00:02:22.770 align:middle line:84% She is the only woman to translate the whole 00:02:22.770 --> 00:02:25.398 align:middle line:90% all three Cantos. 00:02:25.398 --> 00:02:27.690 align:middle line:84% In fact, I don't think there is another woman that even 00:02:27.690 --> 00:02:30.480 align:middle line:90% translated the three books-- 00:02:30.480 --> 00:02:33.270 align:middle line:90% a whole book, in this book. 00:02:33.270 --> 00:02:36.550 align:middle line:84% Dante's Inferno translation by 20 contemporary poets, 00:02:36.550 --> 00:02:39.720 align:middle line:84% there are about 12 women that translated in this, so I guess 00:02:39.720 --> 00:02:43.590 align:middle line:90% it's a boys book, I don't know. 00:02:43.590 --> 00:02:45.870 align:middle line:84% About her translation Sayers says 00:02:45.870 --> 00:02:48.390 align:middle line:84% this, "I have considered the whole range 00:02:48.390 --> 00:02:50.940 align:middle line:84% of intelligible English speech to be 00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:55.050 align:middle line:84% open to me excluding however, at the one end of the scale words 00:02:55.050 --> 00:02:58.980 align:middle line:84% and forms so archaic as to be incomprehensible. 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:03.390 align:middle line:84% And at the other nonce words and up to the minute slang. 00:03:03.390 --> 00:03:06.090 align:middle line:84% I have tried that is to steer a discreet middle course 00:03:06.090 --> 00:03:08.730 align:middle line:84% between Water Street and Hollywood, 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:14.820 align:middle line:84% and to eschew 'Marry, quotha' without declining upon 'says you.'" 00:03:14.820 --> 00:03:20.550 align:middle line:90% 00:03:20.550 --> 00:03:23.790 align:middle line:84% For Pinsky, the most famous American translation 00:03:23.790 --> 00:03:25.890 align:middle line:84% was by the American poet John Ciardi, 00:03:25.890 --> 00:03:30.060 align:middle line:84% who taught at Rutgers for many years in New Jersey. 00:03:30.060 --> 00:03:32.340 align:middle line:84% And its modified terza rima in which 00:03:32.340 --> 00:03:37.570 align:middle line:90% he doesn't link the tercets. 00:03:37.570 --> 00:03:42.060 align:middle line:84% So it's just a, b, a, c, d, c, like that, 00:03:42.060 --> 00:03:45.100 align:middle line:90% so, it's a little easier. 00:03:45.100 --> 00:03:48.210 align:middle line:84% Here's what he's sad to say about translation, 00:03:48.210 --> 00:03:51.090 align:middle line:84% the notion of word for word equivalence 00:03:51.090 --> 00:03:54.617 align:middle line:84% also strikes me as false to the nature of poetry. 00:03:54.617 --> 00:03:56.700 align:middle line:84% There've been a lot of translations, many of which 00:03:56.700 --> 00:04:00.330 align:middle line:84% are not out there and I won't mention them, 00:04:00.330 --> 00:04:05.370 align:middle line:84% I should of course, Pinsky's is out there 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:08.980 align:middle line:84% and it's received a lot of play around here lately. 00:04:08.980 --> 00:04:12.930 align:middle line:84% There was a great reading, seven hours was it? 00:04:12.930 --> 00:04:13.890 align:middle line:90% 5 hours. 00:04:13.890 --> 00:04:16.950 align:middle line:84% 5 hours of the whole Inferno, which 00:04:16.950 --> 00:04:22.170 align:middle line:84% was really fun, especially the local anchorman, what's 00:04:22.170 --> 00:04:22.740 align:middle line:90% his name? 00:04:22.740 --> 00:04:23.640 align:middle line:90% Andy Garcia. 00:04:23.640 --> 00:04:24.480 align:middle line:90% Andy Garcia. 00:04:24.480 --> 00:04:27.360 align:middle line:90% Actually, he was great. 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:30.120 align:middle line:84% In fact, it was translated by Allen Mandelbaum, who's a poet, 00:04:30.120 --> 00:04:33.125 align:middle line:84% and was published in 1980 in three volumes-- 00:04:33.125 --> 00:04:34.500 align:middle line:84% he translated all three volumes-- 00:04:34.500 --> 00:04:37.500 align:middle line:84% at the University of California Press with illustrations 00:04:37.500 --> 00:04:39.630 align:middle line:90% by Barry Moser. 00:04:39.630 --> 00:04:42.570 align:middle line:84% So it's about the same type of thing 00:04:42.570 --> 00:04:50.790 align:middle line:84% as Pinsky's translation with Michael Mazur's illustrations. 00:04:50.790 --> 00:04:54.660 align:middle line:84% And it's sort of quintessentially postmodern, 00:04:54.660 --> 00:04:59.190 align:middle line:84% and it's been described as fully cognizant 00:04:59.190 --> 00:05:01.680 align:middle line:84% of the private political, sociological, historical, 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:04.050 align:middle line:84% and linguistic words of the Commedia. 00:05:04.050 --> 00:05:08.010 align:middle line:84% It privileges the complex play of language, the eccentric, 00:05:08.010 --> 00:05:11.010 align:middle line:84% the digressions, diversions, and asides, 00:05:11.010 --> 00:05:17.250 align:middle line:84% the intense internal structure of Dante's verse 00:05:17.250 --> 00:05:20.280 align:middle line:84% as is evident in Mr. Mandelbaum's introduction, 00:05:20.280 --> 00:05:21.750 align:middle line:84% where he sort of mimics Dante when 00:05:21.750 --> 00:05:26.040 align:middle line:84% he talks about the scholars who worked on The Divine 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:31.860 align:middle line:84% Comedy over the years as "sages, elders, amenders, perpenders, 00:05:31.860 --> 00:05:35.370 align:middle line:84% periphrasts, querists, amphibolists, nebulists, 00:05:35.370 --> 00:05:39.600 align:middle line:84% quandarists, rhetors, wreckers, embalmers, bores, 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:41.467 align:middle line:90% and picadors." 00:05:41.467 --> 00:05:42.300 align:middle line:90% I like the picadors. 00:05:42.300 --> 00:05:47.340 align:middle line:90% 00:05:47.340 --> 00:05:50.850 align:middle line:84% If you think that paying a lot of attention 00:05:50.850 --> 00:05:52.770 align:middle line:84% to the wordplay in the thing is wrong, 00:05:52.770 --> 00:06:00.810 align:middle line:84% here is some of the internal rhyme words for a couple of-- 00:06:00.810 --> 00:06:08.580 align:middle line:84% I think it's four lines in canto '32 which sort of it's 00:06:08.580 --> 00:06:11.250 align:middle line:84% like mimicking the falling apart of language. 00:06:11.250 --> 00:06:15.990 align:middle line:84% Here in Italian the internal rhyme words, 00:06:15.990 --> 00:06:26.865 align:middle line:84% abbo, gabbo, babbo; tebe, zebe, plebe, converebe; osteric, tambernic, cric, which is in English sort of amazing, 00:06:26.865 --> 00:06:29.740 align:middle line:84% and maybe it's not so amazing in Italian. 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:33.210 align:middle line:84% There are a couple of places where Dante also makes up 00:06:33.210 --> 00:06:34.500 align:middle line:90% languages. 00:06:34.500 --> 00:06:39.630 align:middle line:84% And when he has the Giant Nimrod, in canto '33, 00:06:39.630 --> 00:06:44.460 align:middle line:84% speak this incomprehensible sentence and scholars have 00:06:44.460 --> 00:06:46.740 align:middle line:84% spent hundreds of years trying to figure out 00:06:46.740 --> 00:06:49.510 align:middle line:84% what language he was mimicking there, 00:06:49.510 --> 00:06:50.760 align:middle line:90% and they haven't been able to. 00:06:50.760 --> 00:06:57.890 align:middle line:90% 00:06:57.890 --> 00:07:00.680 align:middle line:84% I should put in a word, there's a translation of The Divine 00:07:00.680 --> 00:07:04.310 align:middle line:84% Comedy by English poet C.H. Sisson, which 00:07:04.310 --> 00:07:14.000 align:middle line:84% is very, very eccentric, but elegant and humane in its core 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:19.700 align:middle line:84% and in his own poetry actually resonates similarly to Dante. 00:07:19.700 --> 00:07:23.180 align:middle line:84% Here's a couple of lines from one of his poems. 00:07:23.180 --> 00:07:28.130 align:middle line:84% "Lies on my tongue, get up and bolt the door for him coming, 00:07:28.130 --> 00:07:31.850 align:middle line:84% not to be believed the messenger of anything I say. 00:07:31.850 --> 00:07:35.540 align:middle line:84% So, I am calm to stand in the cold tonight, the servant 00:07:35.540 --> 00:07:39.380 align:middle line:84% in the grain upon my tongue, beware, I am the man 00:07:39.380 --> 00:07:40.550 align:middle line:90% and let me in." 00:07:40.550 --> 00:07:44.360 align:middle line:90% 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:48.260 align:middle line:84% One of the-- maybe this is the only time that somebody has 00:07:48.260 --> 00:07:50.430 align:middle line:84% illustrated it, and translated it -- 00:07:50.430 --> 00:07:55.080 align:middle line:84% It's by Tom Phillips who is a word artist. 00:07:55.080 --> 00:07:58.640 align:middle line:84% He did this great work called Humument, in which he took 00:07:58.640 --> 00:08:03.560 align:middle line:84% a 19th century Victorian novel, painted all of the pages, 00:08:03.560 --> 00:08:07.160 align:middle line:84% and let certain words stick out if you have never seen it. 00:08:07.160 --> 00:08:11.130 align:middle line:84% I think there's a reprint of it available. 00:08:11.130 --> 00:08:15.200 align:middle line:84% It's an amazing thing, but he did a great translation, 00:08:15.200 --> 00:08:19.010 align:middle line:84% and there are nearly 100 illustrations. 00:08:19.010 --> 00:08:21.710 align:middle line:90% His version of The Giants-- 00:08:21.710 --> 00:08:26.090 align:middle line:84% which is the three Giants that are Nimrod, Ephialtes, 00:08:26.090 --> 00:08:30.440 align:middle line:90% and Antaeus, that are in hell. 00:08:30.440 --> 00:08:34.280 align:middle line:84% He has King Kong as one of them on the Empire State Building, 00:08:34.280 --> 00:08:36.230 align:middle line:90% so, it's very modern. 00:08:36.230 --> 00:08:40.980 align:middle line:90% I mentioned this version-- 00:08:40.980 --> 00:08:43.400 align:middle line:84% which is actually great I have to say, 00:08:43.400 --> 00:08:46.790 align:middle line:84% the women in particular, I think did 00:08:46.790 --> 00:08:48.560 align:middle line:84% a much better job of their translations 00:08:48.560 --> 00:08:49.460 align:middle line:90% in here than the men. 00:08:49.460 --> 00:08:53.120 align:middle line:84% Some of the women: Cynthia MacDonald, Amy Clampitt, 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:59.150 align:middle line:84% Jorie Graham, Susan Mitchell, Carolyn Forché, Deborah Digges, 00:08:59.150 --> 00:09:01.100 align:middle line:90% and Sharon Olds. 00:09:01.100 --> 00:09:04.460 align:middle line:84% If you want one, that's pretty easy to read. 00:09:04.460 --> 00:09:05.990 align:middle line:90% This is really good. 00:09:05.990 --> 00:09:09.140 align:middle line:84% There are a couple of really bad ones I think, 00:09:09.140 --> 00:09:12.320 align:middle line:84% or at least boring translations, and one of them 00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:18.650 align:middle line:84% is by the editor of this book Daniel Halpern unfortunately. 00:09:18.650 --> 00:09:24.380 align:middle line:84% Lastly, of course, Salvador Dali must 00:09:24.380 --> 00:09:26.355 align:middle line:84% have been born to illustrate this, 00:09:26.355 --> 00:09:27.980 align:middle line:84% and there are a couple of illustrations 00:09:27.980 --> 00:09:32.960 align:middle line:84% you can see of his many illustrations of the Inferno. 00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:39.110 align:middle line:84% And he did it actually for some centennial observation, 00:09:39.110 --> 00:09:41.360 align:middle line:84% for the Italian government, and he had it all done 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:43.550 align:middle line:84% and they said, "Oh wait, you're Spanish, 00:09:43.550 --> 00:09:45.260 align:middle line:90% we can't have this published." 00:09:45.260 --> 00:09:47.840 align:middle line:84% But for an Italian poet by Spanish guy 00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:50.690 align:middle line:84% so, years later he had it published by somebody else, 00:09:50.690 --> 00:09:54.860 align:middle line:90% by a French press of course. 00:09:54.860 --> 00:10:02.240 align:middle line:84% And lastly, the most modern version 00:10:02.240 --> 00:10:06.260 align:middle line:84% is by two guys from San Francisco, Sandow Birk 00:10:06.260 --> 00:10:11.120 align:middle line:84% and Marcus Sanders, Chronicle publishing, and it's out there 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:14.870 align:middle line:90% and it's actually pretty great. 00:10:14.870 --> 00:10:21.500 align:middle line:84% Illustrations of Los Angeles as hell, so sort of fits right in. 00:10:21.500 --> 00:10:22.000 align:middle line:90%