What is the best version of The Divine Comedy?

Durling, the Hollanders, Binyon, Bickersteth, or Singleton.

Why do you faggots never qualify your question when you ask this.

There is no 'best' translation until you specifically say what you want in a translation. Do you want it to read well in the translated language, do you want it to be faithful without minding it being clunky ect

I never read an english version. The Longfellow one seems a good translation in terms of content and it's easy to understand but mostly remove the poetry in Dante's text (although there is pretty much nothing to do about that).

I'm working on an English verse translation of the whole Divine Comedy in iambic pentameter, terza rima.

Of course a lot is lost, since every line has to be triple-rhymed and English is nowhere near as rhyme-rich as Italian.

That said, most of the attempts so far are so unspeakably awful it's hard to believe they can't be improved on.

I'm about half-way through the whole thing (I'm expecting a year or so to finish it.)

If anyone's seriously interested I can post some extracts.

Post extracts. Beginning of introductory Canto, Gates of Hell, and any punishment/circle of your choice please. Have you finished Inferno and started on Purgatio yet?

show me purg XX, 1 - 9 faggot

Inferno is complete (but subject to re-reading and revisions); Purgatorio is about half-done.

Here's the opening of Inferno, Canto I
Midway along this road of life we tread
I found myself inside a gloomy wood,
Because I'd lost the proper path ahead.

Ah! how can I describe it as I should,
That savage forest, harsh and wild and raw? -
The memory alone quite chills the blood!

So bitter is it, death were scarcely more:
But since I found great treasures whilst astray
I will recount the other things I saw.

What route I took, I cannot truly say,
Having been walking half-asleep, with eyes
Unwatchful, when I left the clearest way.

Yet finally I saw a mountain rise
To mark the valley's end that had oppressed
My heart the previous night with fearful sighs;

And looking up, I saw its shoulders dressed
Already in that happy planet's light
Which shows all travellers what direction's best.

This helped a little to assuage the fright
That rippled across my heart's lake, still so sore
From all the pitiful hours I'd spent that night.

And just as he who slumps upon the shore,
Panting, and having only just survived,
Will turn to see the perilous waves once more,

My mind, still fleeing, nonetheless contrived
To gaze back once across that vale profound,
Which no-one yet has ever left alive.

Then up with rested body from the ground,
I started onward, making certain that
The planted foot remained the lower down.

If you must read it translated, most Dante scholars recommend the Princeton Dante Project version. Still better to read it in Italian though. It's like reading Shakespeare in Spanish.

Purgatorio is only half-done, and that doesn't mean Cantos 1-17; I'm working on all Cantos at once so it's just scattered sections/phrases/line-endings; no single canto is complete.

OP, get mandelbaum for an accurate, readable version or ciardi for a less accurate but more poetic version. first time i read it was mandelbaum, and it was great to have that basic understanding as i read ciardi's, but i think i'd have still enjoyed ciardi's without having read mandelbaum first. the divine comedy is one of the only texts that i kept two translations of; they both have value.

this will be the hollander translation referenced here:just as the flowchart says, i don't recommend it unless you're a serious scholar.

Here's the Gates Of Hell
CANTO III
----------------

THROUGH ME IS FOUND THE CITY OF DESPAIR:
THROUGH ME TO PAIN WHICH CANNOT BE REMOVED:
THROUGH ME TO SOULS BEYOND THE REACH OF PRAYER.

JUSTICE IMPELLED MY MAKER HIGH ABOVE:
BY GOD'S DIVINE STRENGTH WAS I ENGINEERED,
WISDOM SUPREME, AND FUNDAMENTAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME THINGS THAT MOCK THE PASSING YEAR
ALONE WERE MADE, AND THUS DO I ENDURE:
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE THAT ENTER HERE.

These words, inscribed in colours most obscure,
I saw above a gate. "Master", I said,
"What is their meaning? I cannot be sure."

And he replied, that had the wiser head:
"From this point you must leave distrust behind;
All cowardice within you must be dead.

This is the region in whose depths we'll find
(As I described) those wretched souls distressed,
Who've lost the guiding light of heart and mind."

He took my hand, and with his cheer impressed
Me so, my spirits soon began to rise.
Towards these hidden things we now progressed.

Here's Ulysses' account of his final voyage and death, which ends the 26th Canto.

The greater horn atop the ancient flame
Began to shudder, as a candle will
That struggles with the wind. A murmuring came,

And, like a tongue that speaks, the pointed quill
First agitated, questing to and fro,
And then threw forth these accents, quivering still:

"When ultimately Circe let me go
From Gaeta, having kept me there a year
Before Aeneas ever named it so,

Not fondness for my son, nor yet sincere
Regard toward my father; nor again
The love by which Penelope was cheered,

Could quell in me the unrelenting yen
To gain experience of the world, and be
Acquainted with the vice and worth of men:

I ventured out across the open sea,
With just a single ship, and crew compiled
Of men who'd never yet deserted me.

I watched the coastlines pass for many miles;
Saw Spain; Morocco; saw the currents flow
Around Sardinia and the neighbouring isles.

My company and I were old and slow
When coming to the straits, at which the might
Of Hercules had planted marks to show

The furthest men should venture. On the right
Seville passed by; and on the left, Ceuta
Had disappeared already from our sight.

"My brothers!" I exclaimed, "Who've travelled through
A hundred thousand trials to reach the West:
Do not, while this brief chance remains to you,

Deprive your hungry senses of their best
Experiences: do not meanly spurn
The world behind the Sun, still unpossessed.

Consider whence ye came: ye should not yearn
For simple brutish life, obscure and slack;
But strive to follow virtue, and to learn."

I brought my fellows' ardour to attack
The voyage, with these words, to such a height
That scarcely could I then have held them back.

We turned our bows towards the morning light,
And, always gaining on the left, transformed
Our oars to wings, to speed our heedless flight.

The other pole, now, night already saw,
With all its stars: and ours so low displayed,
It never lifted from the ocean floor.

Five times beneath the Moon the lucent rays
Had been rekindled and as often quelled,
Since we had entered on the arduous way,

When, dim with distance, far ahead there swelled
A mountain, which appeared, to my belief,
The greatest I had ever yet beheld.

We joyed, but soon our joy was turned to grief,
Because a tempest rose from near that hill
And struck our bows. Three times without relief

It whirled us round with all the waves, until
The fourth gyration lifted high the poop
And plunged the prow, as pleased Another's will;

And over us the hollow seas closed up."