"You wait here while I go look for God / It won't be hard cause I know where He's not"

[larryhammer]

Here's a nifty old book: an 1897 edition of Dante I considered taking to Iceland. It's hardbound in olive stamped with gold ink and gilt-edged on top, cut slightly larger than a US mass-market paperback and a centimeter thick, containing the Rossetti Vita Nova and the 1805 Cary Comedy as revised by the editor, Oscar Kuhns. Even though it's just too large to fit in a pants pocket, darn it, it's nicely portable -- tastily topped with pedantic Victorian glossing.

Unfortunately the translation of The Comedy is very Miltonic, even with Kuhns's edits to tone it down. I find Miltonic pretty much unreadable, even in the hands of a master like Milton -- sub-Miltonic is teh Urfs. As an example, a bit from Canto VIII -- from just after Virgil has told yet another boatman that Dante's not for him:*

                                  As one who hears
Of some great wrong he hath sustained, whereat
Inly he pines: so Phlegyas inly pined
In his fierce ire. My guide, descending, stepped
Into the skiff, and bade me enter next,
Close at his side; nor, till my entrance, seemed
The vessel freighted.

I had to reread that a couple times to figure out what's going on, and for Dante that's Just Plain Bad. It's always struck me, in prior readings, that while you may not understand what Dante is Getting At, you can always follow the action. It doesn't help that the first sentence is a tautology: "he was annoyed like someone who is annoyed." For comparison, here's the same passage in John Ciardi's translation (1954):

Phlegyas, the madman, blew his rage among
  those muddy marshes like a cheat deceived,
  or like a fool at some imagined wrong.

My Guide, whom all the fiend's noise could not nettle,
  boarded the skiff, motioning me to follow:
  and not till I stepped aboard did it seem to settle

into the water.

And Dorothy L. Sayers's (1949):

As one who hears of some outrageous cheat
  Practiced upon him, and fumes and chokes with gall,
  So Phlegyas, thwarted, fumed at his defeat.

So then my guide embarked, and at his call
  I followed him; and not till I was in
  Did the boat seem to bear a load at all.

See? Clean and clear, both of them.

Yet one more example of why I consider Milton a pernicious influence on English literature. Just as well I went with Ovid this summer.

Anyone interested in starting a "100canti100days" community for a canto-a-day group reading?


* Innuendo intended -- this canto has lots of prime material for slashers to work with. Mentioned in case anyone needs to add a medieval fandom to their portfolio.

---L.