NP - Dante's Inferno

[Glenn Scheper]

> What is the best english translation of Dante's Inferno?
> Longfellow or Carey?


http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0303&msg=76626

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0312&msg=87733

> To read DC, choose a free online Longfellow translation,
> for I recognize in Longfellow our fellow, thus he would
> not muffle the tantric iconography of our fellow Dante.
> A translator out of the simulacrum will pick available
> words waveringly, without referents, contributing noise.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0312&msg=87742


        Online Free (Cary/Longfellow/Norton):
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a507


        Cary:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1008


HELL

CANTO I

IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct:  and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
All else will I relate discover'd there.
How first I enter'd it I scarce can say,
Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd
My senses down, when the true path I left,
But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd
The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread,
I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
Already vested with that planet's beam,
Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.


        Longfellow:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1004

Inferno: Canto I


Midway upon the journey of our life
  I found myself within a forest dark,
  For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
  What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
  Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
  But of the good to treat, which there I found,
  Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
  So full was I of slumber at the moment
  In which I had abandoned the true way.

But after I had reached a mountain's foot,
  At that point where the valley terminated,
  Which had with consternation pierced my heart,

Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,
  Vested already with that planet's rays
  Which leadeth others right by every road.


Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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