Essential Divine Comedy translations

[@danortiz2123]

your video was very informative and was a big help, thank you

[@protabs]

Thanks so much for pointing me to the Princeton website. I was on the lookout for the Hollander translation, and I want a hard copy all the more!

[@tomaria100]

Excellent! Thank you, Ursula - it's very informative. You've interested me in other translations than I have (Sayers and Ciardi), for example, Longfellow's. Thank you for wishing us a Buon Natale !

[@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods]

Someday I hope to have an entire bookshelf full of different translations. If I acquire enough, they might even fill two shelves.

[@tomaria100]

@@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods A worthwhile goal!

[@martinhawrylkiewicz2025]

Mark Musa is the translation I am currently reading....its pretty good!

[@tomlabooks3263]

Great video. I would have loved to be a student in one of Hollander’s classes. I like his hair-splitting approach, even if he’s not always right.

[@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods]

He sounds like he was a wonderful professor. I'm planning on buying the Hollanders' translations in the new year. I've read some of their work on the Princeton Dante Project, but there's no comparison to a physical book.

[@tomlabooks3263]

@@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods I bought his $19 Paradiso, very happy I did.

[@philtheo]

Another translation that's worth considering is J.G. Nichols's translation with Alma Books. I'm surprised it wasn't widely reviewed when it was published, though there were a few literary critics who had positive words about it (e.g. A.N. Wilson, Ian Thomson). Nevertheless Nichols is quite a good translation to my ears. Alma Books offers previews on their website, I believe, and it's quite inexpensive to purchase too. Anyway, worth taking a look at the very least. 😊

[@Okgreat-p5z]

Your awesome!!!

[@KennethSharp-gt2pi]

It’s a tall task, but once you have read your way through most of these translations it’d be great for you to revisit the topic.

[@outofoblivionproductions4015]

I've only read Dorothy L. Sayers and the study notes are great. I don't agree that they are outdated now. Dante placed Mahammed in Hell with the Schismatics. Mahammed is probably the biggest Schismatic in history.

[@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods]

The Medievals falsely believed Prophet Mohammad was originally a Nestorian Christian and thus a schismatic, but since he was never any kind of Christian to begin with, it was impossible for him to be a schismatic. The standards of another religion don't apply to people of other faiths!

[@bobjenkins3rd]

From a Christian perspective, Muhammad would obviously be a heretic writing openly against Christian dogmas with only a surface level understanding. Saint John of Damascus claimed he received some ideas from an Arian monk. He wasn’t ever a practicing Christian belonging to a church to my knowledge so he couldn’t be a schismatic. The standards of other religions must apply to people of other faiths if said religion claims objective truth. If we choose to take a bird’s-eye view as the correct view, it falsifies all of them according to their own doctrines.

[@JohnNobody_]

Please check Joe Carlson translation

[@bihan1429]

Excuse me for being a complete novice, but can someone explain to me how each book can be huge yet I've seen all three collected into one book which isn't nearly as big as the first Inferno book she showed alone?

[@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods]

The extra length comes from notes, commentaries, and essays. Sometimes it also comes from the Italian being printed on facing pages.

[@bihan1429]

@@Ursulas_Odds_and_Sods ah okay, thanks for the clarification

[@brendantannam499]

It's always great to listen to another Dante enthusiast! For a new, and very different perspective on the poem, I recommend Maria Soresina's Libertà Va Cercando. It's in Italian but I'm doing an English translation that is work in progress and almost complete, and can be found here: studio.kzbin.info1cgoPapr0I4/edit