![]() The Irish poet Ciaran Carson chose the personal, rendering this as ‘Halfway through the story of my life’. But does the translator stress the personal aspect of this, or the universal? It is hard to do both. He has lost his way, as many of us do in the middle, and is about to go through hell. ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita’ – ‘In the middle of the journey of our lives.’ The time setting is 1300, eight years before the poem was begun, and Dante is 35, a political exile at the midpoint of life’s biblical span of threescore years and ten. Even just the opening line demands that the translator make certain choices which reveal the approach being taken. ![]() Fortunately, it’s easy to gauge the temperature of any new translation of the Divine Comedy. A review can steer a reader towards or away from the work but can’t hope to contain such multitudes. But, as words go, Gray’s will certainly do.ĭante’s words need time to settle in the mind – to become, in TS Eliot’s expression, part of the furniture of the mind. But three book covers and a handful of illustrations in Hell aside, we have to make do with Gray’s words only. Alasdair Gray, a Scottish writer and artist of genius, seemed to be going a step further, both illustrating and translating this medieval masterpiece. ![]() William Blake, an English writer and artist of genius, illustrated Dante’s Divine Comedy but didn’t translate it. ![]()
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