Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
A close and reliable translation of Dante’s masterwork including an excellent commentary. Inferno is, of course, where almost all readers start and where many of them indeed stop, which is a pity. It’s largely because of Inferno’s greater accessibility and vividness and indeed the violence. That’s what has always been the attraction.
We start with Dante’s Commedia itself. Why have you chosen Inferno over Purgatorio or Paradiso?
Well, it’s mainly through Inferno that what you might call the ‘shock and awe’ of Dante’s impact is felt. Inferno is, of course, where almost all readers start and where many of them indeed stop, which is a pity because Purgatorio is, in many senses, the ‘of this world’ part of the Commedia. It’s largely because of Inferno’s greater accessibility and vividness and indeed the violence. That’s what has always been the attraction. Plus of course it is the way into the Commedia, you can’t reach the higher places until you’ve travelled the lower regions.
You’ve specifically chosen the Robert Durling and Ronald Martinez translation over others.
The OUP edition is not the most easily accessible, nor the most attractive in style. Indeed Durling acknowledged that the style of translation is ‘literal’ and ‘craggy’. Yet it is a close and reliable translation, it gives you the original text on the facing page and it also has excellent notes. It’s very difficult to decide with the profusion of Dante translations that there are at the moment (including a number of good verse translations) what to recommend.
And this edition is suitable for readers approaching Dante for the first time?
It’s the one that students frequently use before they go on to the Italian editions. The notes are thorough and very accessible. Which edition to recommend for the new reader also raises several other questions about how to render Dante’s verse into English, and how much explanation is needed – both in the translation itself and in the form of commentary.
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Nick Havely is an eminent scholar on Dante, English-Italian literary traditions and late medieval literature. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, and is a widely published author on subjects concerning Dante and medieval writing. He is currently working on a study of Dante in the English-Speaking World from the Fourteenth Century to the Present for which he has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
