Opinions on older translations of The Divine Comedy?

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Opinions on older translations of The Divine Comedy?

1VoicelessTorment
Modifié : Avr 1, 2022, 11:11 pm

I'm kind of in analysis paralysis. For what it's worth, I'm mainly interested in older (say anywhere between 1782-1960) translations - and anything with a rich vocabulary (I love words) and poetic flavour, even if it's very free-form.

When directly comparing Paradiso Canto translations from Sydney Fowler Wright, Henry Francis Cary, Ichabod Charles Wright, Henry Boyd, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I'm strongly divided - and I know there are plenty more. Any recommendations or opinions on these?

I find some of Longfellow's passages very noble and powerful, but his line-for-line translation can become quite arduous and confusing for me after a while.

I know Henry Boyd's translation is highly inaccurate and more of a curiosity, but I'm still attracted to his poetic interpretation (if nothing else) of the journey and occasionally beautiful passages.

I find Fowler Wright's Paradiso 'descriptive' and 'colourful' - but I read a comment from someone who hated it, so I am curious to see what the community thinks.

I like the elegant vocabulary of Charles Wright's Paradiso, but I know (like some of the older translations) it takes liberties with the source material.

I've given links to the different translations, even though I know many more exist:

Longfellow's Paradiso: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1003/1003-h/1003-h.htm

Cary's Paradiso: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1007/pg1007.html

Charles Wright's Paradiso: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101067195873&view=1up&seq=2...

Fowler Wright's Paradiso: http://www.sfw.org.uk/paradiso.shtml

Henry Boyd's Paradiso: https://archive.org/details/divinacommediaof03dantuoft/page/186

I've been struggling to find an old translation I like for weeks - I even browsed through Cunningham's critical bibliography of Dante translations:

https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/27849/CunninghamGF_1954_v3redux.pdf?s...

I'd appreciate any recommendations or opinions on the translations I've already listed.

Thanks.

2susanbooks
Avr 1, 2022, 4:17 pm

I know you're looking for older translations, but John Ciardi's 20th-century translation is excellent & widely available in cheap copies.

3lilithcat
Avr 1, 2022, 4:28 pm

How do you define "older"?

4VoicelessTorment
Avr 1, 2022, 4:56 pm

>3 lilithcat: Sorry, I suppose I should have been more specific. I'd say any English translations between 1782-1960. I'll edit my post.

5lilithcat
Avr 1, 2022, 5:00 pm

>4 VoicelessTorment:

Right at the end of that period is the Dorothy L. Sayers translation. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for it because it's the one I read in my high school English class and was my introduction to Dante.

6VoicelessTorment
Modifié : Avr 1, 2022, 7:42 pm

Thanks. I'll take a look.

7susanbooks
Avr 1, 2022, 6:29 pm

I'm pretty sure Ciardi's translation is from the 1950s.