Divine Comedy - Literary Influence in The English-speaking World and Beyond

Literary Influence in The English-speaking World and Beyond

The work was not always so well regarded. After being recognized as a masterpiece in the centuries immediately following its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, with some notable exceptions such as Vittorio Alfieri; Antoine de Rivarol, who translated the Inferno into French; and Giambattista Vico, who in the Scienza nuova and in the Giudizio su Dante inaugurated what would later become the romantic reappraisal of Dante, juxtaposing him to Homer. The Comedy was "rediscovered" by William Blake – who illustrated several passages of the epic – and the romantic writers of the 19th century. Later authors such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, C. S. Lewis and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was its first American translator, and modern poets, including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, John Ciardi, W. S. Merwin, and Stanley Lombardo, have also produced translations of all or parts of the book. In Russia, beyond Pushkin's memorable translation of a few tercets, Osip Mandelstam's late poetry has been said to bear the mark of a "tormented meditation" on the Comedy. In 1934 Mandelstam gave a modern reading of the poem in his labyrinthine "Conversation on Dante". Mikhail Lozinsky's translation of the poem, completed in 1945, is considered to be one of the greatest works of Russian poetry in the 20th century and arguably the best translation of any foreign-language poem into Russian ever.

New English translations of the Divine Comedy continue to be published regularly. Notable English translations of the complete poem include the following.

Year Translator Notes
1805–1814 Henry Francis Cary An older translation, widely available online.
1867 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The first U.S. translation, raising American interest in the poem. It is still widely read, including online.
1891–1892 Charles Eliot Norton Translation used by Great Books of the Western World. Available online at Project Gutenberg.
1933–1943 Laurence Binyon An English version rendered in terza rima, with some advisory assistance from Ezra Pound
1949–1962 Dorothy L. Sayers Translated for Penguin Classics, intended for a wider audience, and completed by Barbara Reynolds.
1954–1970 John Ciardi His Inferno was recorded and released by Folkways Records in 1954.
1970–1991 Charles S. Singleton literal prose version with extensive commentary; 6 vols.
1981 C. H. Sisson Available in Oxford World's Classics.
1980–1984 Allen Mandelbaum Available online.
1967–2002 Mark Musa An alternative Penguin Classics version.
2000–2007 Robert and Jean Hollander Online as part of the Princeton Dante Project.
2002–2004 Anthony M. Esolen Modern Library Classics edition.
2006–2007 Robin Kirkpatrick A third Penguin Classics version, replacing Musa's.
2010 Burton Raffel A Northwestern World Classics version.

A number of other translators, such as Robert Pinsky, have translated the Inferno only.

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