Is the Divine Comedy still worth reading in English translation? If yes, what is the best english translation?

Lol, do you think the person you're talking to has even read it in the original language in order to have an informed opinion?

...

>what is the best english translation?
That one

im surprised no one posted this yet. im finishing the mandelbaum translation and it's not bad. the notes are very useful.

Read Longfellow and be happy your language has more untranslatable masterpieces than any other. The original is like Chaucer by the way it's old as fuck

Is this the right way to read this?

Illiad
Odyssey
Aeneid
Bible
Paradise Lost
Divine Comedy
Faust

Seems to me like the right order. I wouldn't read the bible from cover to cover though, there is a lot of useless/ mindnumbing stuff in there. Reading (or listening to) a thorough summary of all the books and then reading the books that are actually pleasurable to rad, such as Isaiah, Job, Eccesiastes, Song of Songs, and some others that have piqued your interest through studying (for me personally, Jonah is a favourite).

>oh no I can't handle genealogies or descriptions of temple hardware

You'll never make it.

I think I am a Christian, I'm not sure yet, so I kind of want to read the whole thing. It's pretty damn dry at bits though.

>(for me personally, Jonah is a favourite).
>Complains about Bible
>Favorite book is the easiest
Not suprised

It's not about 'handling it.' There is nothing to be learned from reading genealogies.

A favourite. Not the favourite. If I was worried about my e-penis I would have said Judges, which is also great fun.

>reading paradise lost before divine comedy
>Faust randomly there even though it's not part of the same tradition
>omitting spenser and ariosto and etc. etc.

literally what are you doing

>If I was worried about my e-penis I would have said Judges,
Still a shitty pick desu

Read Inferno in translation (Mark Musa) and loved it. I only got 2 posts into this thread before my autism kicked in so I don't know if this has been said already but DC was written in an old dialect that is different in many ways even from modern Italian. Give it a go, if you don't like it you don't like it.

What? I read an annotated version without any prior knowledge and had no problems. All these people saying DONT READ DANTE TRANSLATED are beginning to sound like they're worried OP is going to fuck their mother.

Spenser who? These are just the books I own.

Only people I've ever spoken to that have expressed any enthusiasm on the divine comedy have been religious in my experience. When pressed they can never form a coherent reason as to why they liked it.

Take that however you'd like.

Prose aside as far as the content is concerned it's almost shocking how non creative and anticlimactic it is. In my humble and admittedly biased opinion it's by far the most overrated book of all time.

you need to go back

True answer: since people dislike poetry translations, read prose translations, for Homer, read Butler, for Dante, read Singleton, 8c, 8c.

Yes. "Best" depends on what you're looking for. For verse, Mandelbaum, Binyon and Bickersteth are excellent. Singleton, the Hollanders, and Durling produced superb prose versions.

trust me you do

>prose
Um

In that case, why the hell would you want an internet stranger to make your decisions for you?

>I won't say my opinion but it is authoritive and yours is trash but I won't explain why

I second the Hollanders’ translation. The notes are extremely extensive, almost too much for a non-specialist audience.

I would also suggest the Longfellow translation. It is beautiful, though the syntax tends to get a bit convoluted. It’s worth it to read a more straightforward translation like the Hollanders’ translation alongside Longfellow’s.

Well, if you don't know Italian, it is. I mean, it isn't as good, but still better than not reading at all....

this. retards are fucking thick
>not worth in english
wtf

>Is the Divine Comedy still worth reading in English translation? If yes, what is the best english translation?

Yes yes yes, as Molly Bloom would say.

Because it's not *just* the language, it's the structure of the narrative and the ideas that inform it.

There are a handful of artists with a truly profound understanding of human life. Dante is one of these.

The Mandelbaum translation is **excellent**

I have been reading Mandelbaum and have really enjoyed it.

This unironically triggered me. Well done.

100% agree. The stylistic elements are lost in translation, but that's not what makes great poetry great.

Mandelbaum is a solid choice, as is his Ovid.

>but that's not what makes great poetry great

I mean, not all of it, but plenty of great poetry is great because of its style

It seems other anons are getting attacked for saying this, but I will repeat it, because it is the truth:
Poetry in translation is simply nowhere near as good as the original. When a poet makes poetry, he selects his words very carefully, and there may be other considerations such as meter or rhyming.

Now, this does not mean it is not worth reading. People read the Iliad and the Odyssey all the time in English, even though it is stripped of all of its poetic glory in English. These epic poems were written in something called dactylic hexameter, which has to do with vowel length and other things which obviously do not translate into English.

To give you an exaggerated, extreme example of what I mean, imagine reading Dr. Seuss in Japanese. All of his rhyming and word play would be lost, and if any does remain, it wouldn't be Dr. Seuss's work, but the work of whoever translated it into Japanese.

So to answer your question, if reading the Divine Comedy is very important to you, sure, it is worth reading, just know that it is not going to be as good as the original.

>Dante is one of these
Damn, guess I'm a pleb for not getting it then. The 'fanfiction' memes ring pretty true for me tbphwy

I have seen some people around my school reading a really nice looking edition of Dante's Inferno, but I don't know what it is. It's got a contemporaary graphic-design look, a classical painting in black and white and text in Orange(maybe white?) that says Dante's Inferno on it in hip typography. Any idea?

omg I just found it, and it's the Galaxy Books PROSE version... I am in a University in an English program, what the hell! These kids should be able to read a damn Epic.

why do you type like that?

>So to answer your question, if reading the Divine Comedy is very important to you, sure, it is worth reading, just know that it is not going to be as good as the original.
Truly insightful comments here

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