The Best Translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia.

My review copy of W. S. Merwin’s translation of Dante’s Purgatorio[1] arrived some six months before his recent death.  To the end, he had been full of surprises.  The Purgatorio?  What could have possessed him?

That it was the least popular book of Dante’s Commedia was perfectly in character.  That it was high literature — the highest — was not.  Merwin loved the tradition but translated only its popular works: its fables, its songs, its myths its ballads, its folk stories.  I genuinely wondered whether the poet hadn’t gone a bridge too far at last.  

Regardless, I was faced with an enormous challenge.  How does one review the Purgatorio — the Divina Commedia?  As I suspected when I pulled the book — with its beautiful pictorial map of Florence, by Francesco Rosselli — out of its mailing pouch, one doesn’t.  One can’t.  The subject is vastly too big for such treatment.  Vastly too deep.

Happily another beautiful Merwin volume arrived soon after to review.  I put the translation aside to await a better purpose and time.

Fate, however, intervened, and a member of a Readers Facebook Group to which I belong queried the group as to what English translation of the Divina Commedia was “the best”.  I mentioned Laurence Binyon (Ezra Pound’s choice) and Charles Singleton’s classic scholarly prose translation.[2]  I thought to mention John Ciardi’s translation but I really didn’t know it well enough for all I once thought it best.  But mostly I realized that I knew much too little about the topic.

Another member mentioned Mandelbaum who has his definite advantages.  Another mentioned Dorothy Sayers who is always a bridesmaid in these conversations.  Another brought a smile by posting the title page of the decidedly 19^th century translation by the Reverend Cary.  Cary’s resembles the original almost as little as Longfellow’s translation.

Of course, I had not done more than scan a few pages of the Merwin.  I could not mention it.  How good was it?  What other verse translations existed about which I was unaware?  Back out it came.  I had promised myself many years ago — when the time for such studies seemed sure to present itself — to know Dante’s work well.  Surely that qualified as the better purpose.  I would look for English translations of the Commedia to place beside Singleton and Merwin.

For the next month, then, I put aside a few hours each night.  Not only with Singleton and Merwin.  In the glorious Age of the Internet, the first step could only be a search for what books relating to the subject were available on Google Book Search and the Internet Archive.  Soon I had William Warren Vernon’s fabulous Readings On The Purgatorio of Dante… With Text And Literal Translation[3] beside my Singleton for the alternative interpretation.

What a luxury.  I had hours to put toward Dante.  Hours in which to bathe in his times.  Merwin, Singleton, Vernon and I lingered over every interesting passage.  Each translation was bi-lingual.  Most of the outdated Italian usages, in the original, were general enough that I could merely enjoy the “flavor”.  The rest were sure to be debated in the notes of Singleton and Vernon.

It turns out the Merwin had done his homework.  His text held up very well.  One aspect, in particular, of the prosody was superior to many others.  Italian poetry having entirely feminine endings, Merwin used an impressive number of feminine endings in English — a language in which that is  not easy to accomplish.  The decision cost him on the other hand.  The second lines of his tercets (for the Commedia is written in tercets) as often began with a stressed syllable thus breaking the iambic pentameter (with feminine ending) of the original.

 

And Merwin chose to eschew regular rhyme.  Even the better translators tend to.  Rhyme-linked tercets (aba, bcb, cdc,… etc.) and more or less literal translation are all but impossible.  Ciardi rhymes the first and third lines and leaves the second lines unrhymed and still the practice of rhyming at all forces him to pad lines with filler text that is not in the original.

I would have said that “all” of the better translators eschewed rhyme but Vernon also taught me better in that regard.  He introduced me to his favorite translation.  I’d never heard the name Frederick Haselfoot before but when I added his translation[4] to the reading list I was constantly astonished at what he’d managed to accomplish.  It is entirely in precise and literal rhyme-linked tercets.  Until I’d seen it I wouldn’t have believed it possible.

Equally astonishing, Vernon introduced me to another name I’d never heard of.  Ichabod Charles Wright’s translation of the Purgatorio[5] rhymes the first and third lines throughout and the second lines without linking (aba, cbc, ded, fef,… etc.).  It is a very close corollary to Dante’s original rhyme scheme.

What leaves the contest between Haselfoot and Wright for the title of “Best Translator of Dante’s Divina Commedia into English Poetry” unresolved, regardless that Haselfoot’s prosody would seem beyond human capability, is that the tone of Wright’s version is also surprisingly close to the original.  Haselfoot opens the Purgatorio, for example,

And of that second realm my song shall treat,

In which the human spirit purifies,

And for ascent to heaven is rendered meet.

But here may Poesy from death arise,

O holy Muses, since I am your own ;

And here Calliope in loftier wise

Compare it excellences to Wright and the contrast is clear:

For now that second kingdom claims my song,

Wherein is purified the spirit frail,

And fitted to rejoin the heavenly throng.

Wake into life the deaden'd notes again,

O ye most holy Nine! since yours I am;

And let Calliope exalt the strain,

Haselfoot is more modern than Dante.  He has had to sacrifice the luxuriance of the original in order to accomplish his feat.  Wright is less attractive to the modern eye, perhaps.  He has proven able to approximate the voice of the original to a gratifying extent at the price of meeting modern criteria.  He has done this while also closely approximating the original rhyme-scheme.

Merwin’s translation also has its unique qualities and otherwise notable strengths.  He has earned a seat on my voyage through the strange regions of the Purgatorio.  Many more hours of exploration lie ahead.  You will receive my reports.

Also from the Library of Babel:

• A Memoriam for W. S. Merwin.  April 17, 2019.  “It took about three days, as I recall, for me to surrender to the fact that W. S. Merwin was the finest English language poet of his time.  I wished I’d been prepared to read him years ago.”
• Be sure to check out the Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

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[1] Merwin, W. S. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri; a new verse translation by W. S. Merwin.  Copper Canyon Press, 2018.

[2] Singleton, Charles S.  The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri translated, with a commentary, by Charles S. Singleton. This Volume Purgatorio.  Bollingen Series LXXX (1973).

[3] Vernon, William Warren. Readings On The Purgatorio of Dante… With Text And Literal Translation. Two Volumes (1907).  The English translation is in prose.

[4] Haselfoot, Frederick K. H.  The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri Translated Line For Line in the Terza Rima of TheOriginal. Three Volumes (1899).  It must be said that I have not yet read his entire translation closely but have sampled widely.

[5] Wright, Ichabod Charles.  The Purgatorio of Dante, Translated.  Second of three volume series (1836).  The same proviso applies here as for Haselfoot.