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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