Dante Refreshed. - Review - book review

Jeffrey Hart

The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander (Doubleday, 614 pp., $35)

When two lesser angels fail to recognize Milton's Satan, he replies scornfully, "Not to know me argues yourselves unknown." Culturally, Dante could say the same thing.

There is a kind of succession among the major translations of Dante. John D. Sinclair's prose version of The Divine Comedy (1939-1948) has been the one most in general use. It is perfectly serviceable, but a bit musty with Victorianisms such as "thee" and "thou," and Sinclair's explanatory notes lack the detail you need once you become serious about the poem. Charles Singleton's translation (1970), also in prose, built on and improved upon Sinclair's in some details. He also contributed a prodigious quantity of notes, many useful but some bordering on the fanciful. The Singleton notes are so extensive that each book of the Comedy requires a second bulky volume to accommodate them.

Now Robert Hollander, an immensely popular professor at Princeton who is perhaps our preeminent Dante scholar, and Jean Hollander, a poet and Robert's wife, have given us what will undoubtedly be the translation used for the foreseeable future. We now have their Inferno. The Purgatorio and Paradiso are due in 2002. The notes following each canto, besides being up-to-date in scholarly terms, and full of the insight produced by decades of teaching, reflection, and scholarship, are of genuinely useful length and pertinence. The decisions they made about translation seem to me completely successful.

The Hollanders chose verse rather than prose, using three-line stanzas that resemble the Italian verse on the left-hand page. But they wisely did not try to write terza rima in English, a language that has too few rhymes for that complicated and replicating rhyme scheme. Dante used it to impart a strong forward pull to his verse, and perhaps to suggest a comprehensive if intricate divine order. But the narrative itself has plenty of forward momentum, and the Hollanders have produced a beautifully lucid stanza, highly readable, in which the lines are nudged into poetry by economy of phrasing and a latent iambic rhythm.

To illustrate, let us compare two versions of the famous passage in which Francesca da Rimini describes for the pilgrim Dante and his guide Virgil the circumstance in which she and her lover Paolo committed adultery (Canto V). First the Sinclair prose translation:

And she answered me: "There is no greater pain than to recall the happy time in misery, and this thy teacher knows; but if thou hast so great desire to know our love's first root, I shall tell as one may that weeps in telling. We read one day for pastime of Lancelot, how love constrained him. We were alone and had no misgiving. Many times that reading drew our eyes together and changed the colour in our faces, but one point alone it was that mastered us; when we read that the longed- for smile was kissed by so great a lover, he who never shall be parted from me, all trembling, kissed my mouth. A Galeotto [pander] was the book and he that wrote it; that day we read in it no farther."

Now the Hollanders' verse translation:

And she to me: "There is no greater

sorrow

than to recall our time of joy

in wretchedness-and this your teacher

knows.

"But if you feel such longing

to know the first root of our love,

I shall tell as one who weeps in telling.

"One day, to pass the time in pleasure,

we read of Lancelot, how love en-

thralled him.

We were alone, without the least mis-

giving.

"More than once that reading made

our eyes meet

And drained the color from our faces.

Still, it was a single instant overcame

us:

"When we read how the longed-for

smile

was kissed by so renowned a lover, this

man,

who never shall be parted from me,

"all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.

A Galeotto was the book and he that

wrote it.

That day we read in it no further."

The Hollanders' diction is cleaner and their verse more rapid than Sinclair's prose. Their "sorrow" is more specific than Sinclair's "pain." "Time of joy" is preferable to "happy time." "One day to pass the time" is more natural than "one day for pastime." "How love enthralled him" is colloquial and natural, but "how love constrained him" is neither. "Drained the color" is more precise and dramatic than "changed the colour." "Overcame us" is preferable to "mastered us." "So renowned a lover" recalls for us that he is in a book, while "so great a lover" is banal. "This man" is more dramatic than the weak pronoun "he."

Whether in Italian or English, Dante's diction is startlingly clear, hard-edged, concrete. His imagined world is emphatically there, and his hold on it never loosens. This language can concentrate Dante's images to the point where they become charged with significances that go far beyond that recognizable Dantean world.

Let us take his opening stanza in the Hollander translation.

Midway in the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

for the straight way was lost.

The Hollander translation differs from Sinclair's in saying "Midway" instead of "In the middle of," a gain in rapidity as the epic plunges in medias res. Both translators say "I came to myself" instead of the more literal "I found myself." As Hollander explains: "mi ritrovai (I came to myself) has the sense of a sudden shocked discovery. 'It is the pained amazement of one who has only now, for the first time, become aware that he is in peril' (Padoan, comm. to Inf. I.2)." Hollander goes on to discuss other nuances and parallels, his treatment fuller than Sinclair's.

In teaching Dante to college students, I have found Dante's Hell to be something of an obstacle, until they understand it. Except for the pre- Christian great writers and thinkers in Canto IV, who are repeatedly called "honorable"-Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan-and dwell in a pleasant meadow, their looks neither sad nor joyful, all the characters in Hell actually have chosen to be there. That is, in life, they directed their souls toward it; they could have changed their spiritual direction through repentance, but did not. That is why their souls are eager to take up their positions in Hell.

Let us return briefly to Francesca da Rimini, one of the most famous and appealing figures in the Comedy. She exists in a very different psychological world from the great classical authors in Canto IV. She has turned away definitively from the highest good and remains defiant even in Hell.

Francesca and Paolo succumbed to carnal passion and committed adultery. Their case was a cause celebre when Dante wrote his poem. Both were married and had children, and were murdered by Francesca's outraged husband. We notice how gently Dante deals with carnal sinners; they come right after the virtuous pagans in Limbo, and the atmosphere here has a kind of charm. Francesca's situation reflects the choice she made. She and Paolo are blown about and buffeted by winds, "borne on," "driven." Before the winds of passion, the lovers are almost helpless, as they were when alive.

Dante develops a beautiful simile involving birds to represent this spiritual abandonment. We first see a cloud of lovers from a distance:

As, in cold weather, the wings of star-

lings

bear them up in wide, dense flocks,

so does that blast propel the wicked

spirits.

Here and there, down and up, it drives

them.

Never are they comforted by hope

of rest or even lesser punishment.

Compare the Sinclair version:

As in the cold season their wings bear the starlings along in a broad, dense flock, so does that blast the wicked spirits. Hither, thither, downward, upward, it drives them; no hope ever comforts them, not to say of rest, but of less pain.

One immediately appreciates the Hollanders' efforts: "the wings of starlings bear them up" improves upon "their wings bear the starlings." "Wide" seems more air-borne than "broad." And "that blast propel" is better than the more violent "so does that blast." "Here and there, down and up" is more Dantean than "Hither, thither, downward, upward." The last two lines of the Hollander version are immeasurably superior to the contortions of Sinclair's.

The lines introducing Paolo and Francesca are poignant, elegiac. The pilgrim Dante addresses his guide Virgil:

I began, "Poet, gladly would I speak

with these two that move together

and seem to be so light upon the wind."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As doves, summoned by desire, their

wings

outstretched and motionless, move on

the air,

borne by their will to the sweet nest,

so did these leave the troop where

Dido is,

coming to us through the malignant air,

such force had my affectionate call.

The phrase "malignant air" reminds us, amid this sweetness, that we are in Hell.

When Francesca finally speaks, Dante provides her with poetry of a special tenderness. "On that shore where the river Po / with all its tributaries slows / to peaceful flow, there I was born." Francesca, clearly, longs for "peaceful flow." The rhyming Po-slows-flow vowels in the Hollander translation are a dividend that does not appear in the original. Francesca imagines peace, desires it, but cannot have it, because her soul never changed its bearing. She herself knows this. "Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving, / seized me so strongly with his charm that, / as you see, it has not left me yet." Since she never repents, she will always be where she is. Dante the pilgrim faints with sympathy for Francesca. But Dante the author places her precisely where she belongs.

In the Purgatorio we meet another adulteress, La Pia, who, we infer, was murdered by her husband but repented before she died. Unlike Francesca, who remained in confusion, La Pia redirected her soul and is in Purgatory, though low on the mountain. She will see the astonishing vision of God Dante manages in Canto XXXIII of the Paradiso. I quote from the Sinclair translation all that the Comedy tells us about La Pia. The passage is haunting and poignant:

"Pray, when thou hast returned to the world and art rested from the long way," the third spirit followed on the second, "do thou remember me who am La Pia. Siena gave me birth, Maremma death, He knows of it who, first plighting troth, wedded me with his gem."

That is good, though replete with the Victorian diction the Hollanders purge throughout the Comedy. Here is their version in their forthcoming Purgatorio:

"Pray, once you have gone back into

the world,

and there are rested from the long road,"

the third spirit followed on the second,

"Please remember me, who am La Pia.

Siena made me, in Maremma I was un-

done.

He knows how, the one who, to marry

me,

Gave me the ring that held his stone."

Quod erat demonstrandum. This is the translation for our time and probably beyond. Judging by their Inferno, the Hollanders' translation of the complete Comedy will be a magnificent achievement.

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