Literary Poetry Run-Off • January 2014

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

FYI - There is a website associated with this translation, the Princeton Dante Project. There are several lecture texts by Hollander. You can also search his commentaries online.
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/

[paola]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

FYI - There is a website associated with this translation, the Princeton Dante Project. There are several lecture texts by Hollander. You can also search his commentaries online.
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/

great link - and the lecture on allegory is even better than what I wrote, could you believe it

ETA: on links, here are two italian actors reading the first Canto. One is Vittorio Gassman, one of the greatest Italian actors: this is definitely better for an Italian speaker, as the emphasis helps understand the text (for an Italian, Dante's language is quite hard to understand), it is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBGq11ODudA
just skip to minute 4.40.
The other one is by a fellow tuscan, Roberto Benigni, comedian and actor know outside Italy for his movie Life is beautiful/la vita e' bella which won the Palme D'or in Cannes and Oscar as best foreign film, both in 1998 - this is less emphatic, but the rhyme is very clear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igC8UcnAZHE

[Bookpossum]

Thank you both, Bookworm_girl and paola. Even though I know only a few words of Italian, the sound is so beautiful I was quite mesmerised.

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

FYI - There is a website associated with this translation, the Princeton Dante Project. There are several lecture texts by Hollander. You can also search his commentaries online.
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/

I'm going with teh Hollander translation so

Originally Posted by paola

great link - and the lecture on allegory is even better than what I wrote, could you believe it

ETA: on links, here are two italian actors reading the first Canto. One is Vittorio Gassman, one of the greatest Italian actors: this is definitely better for an Italian speaker, as the emphasis helps understand the text (for an Italian, Dante's language is quite hard to understand), it is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBGq11ODudA
just skip to minute 4.40.
The other one is by a fellow tuscan, Roberto Benigni, comedian and actor know outside Italy for his movie Life is beautiful/la vita e' bella which won the Palme D'or in Cannes and Oscar as best foreign film, both in 1998 - this is less emphatic, but the rhyme is very clear:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igC8UcnAZHE

Italian does sound so musical even if I can only understand occasional words from my long fading memories of Spanish classes in high school.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

In the end, I'll stick to the Sayers translation which I love. It also features the illuminating notes from Charles Williams. I'll dip into others to view the Gustave Doré illustrations.

I also enjoyed the William Blake illustrations. You can find them at the Blake Archives.
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/bl...ut812&java=yes

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I also enjoyed the William Blake illustrations. You can find them at the Blake Archives.
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/bl...ut812&java=yes

Excellent!

[paola]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I also enjoyed the William Blake illustrations. You can find them at the Blake Archives.
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/bl...ut812&java=yes

These are fantastic! I never knew they existed - so very different from Dore's.

[Bookpossum]

I particularly love the lion in the first picture - it looks like a large woolly dog.

Blake was a really interesting artist, wasn't he.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

I particularly love the lion in the first picture - it looks like a large woolly dog.
Blake was a really interesting artist, wasn't he.

I thought the representation of the flying monster, Geryon, was interesting.