Don Quixote

[cfalbert]

I considered Pinsky, but settled on Durling/Martinez, likely as a 
consequence of what appeared to be a heftier set of notes.........It too 
has the italian on facing pages....

But for a group read I think I'd look in a different direction...........I 
don't believe that Don Q will fare any better........the biggest problem 
with WARLOCK is likely to be availability....

And Ghetta - I'd prize that Frodeaux copy....I still miss the man.......

love,
cfa


At 03:27 PM 12/20/03, you wrote:
>At 08:41 PM 12/19/03 +0000, you [Ghetta Life] wrote:
>
>>I'd go for either - because I've read neither.  Is there a particular 
>>translation deemed best for the Divine Comedy?  It seems best if we were 
>>using the sane one.
>
>
>I quote from The Well-educated Mind / Susan Wise Bauer, p. 362. I've had 
>to ignore the italicizing.
>
>"Recommended edition: The Inferno of Dante, translated by Robert Pinsky 
>(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994); ISBN 0-374-52452-1; $9.00. 
>This idiomatic, energetic translation by an American poet has the Italian 
>on facing pages. You can also read the Allen Mandelbaum translation, The 
>Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, which has been a standard for 
>years; it is less idiomatic, more formal (New York: Bantam Books, 1980; 
>ISBN 0-553-21339-3; $6.50). Compare the two translations in this excerpt 
>from Canto III, in which Dante approaches the gates of hell:"
>
>Then Bauer quotes:
>
>
>...Pinsky...
>
>ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE.
>
>These words I saw inscribed in some dark color / Over a portal..../ The 
>sighs, groans, and laments at first were so loud, / Resounding through the 
>starless air, I began to weep; / Strange languages, horrible screams, 
>words imbued / With rage or despair, cries as of troubled sleep / Or of a 
>tortured shrillness --they rose in a coil / Of tumult, along with noises 
>like the slap / Of beating hands, all fused in a ceaseless flail / That 
>churns and frenzies that dark and timeless air / Like sand in whirlwind. . . .
>
>
>...Mandelbaum...
>
>ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.
>
>These words--their aspect was obscure--I read / inscribed above a 
>gateway.... / Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries / were echoing 
>across the starless air / so that, as soon as I set out, I wept./ Strange 
>utterances, horrible pronouncements, / accents of anger, words of 
>suffering, / and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands-- / all went 
>to make a tumult that will whirl/forever through that turbid, timeless 
>air, / like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls....