Let's Talk About Dante! Inferno Canto 1

[JCamilo]

Dante gives the deffinition of allegory in his Il Convivio (first chapter, I think) when he speaks about the different lawyers of interpretation that a work of ary must have. It is not exactly what we think of allegory today, but somehow more broader, and also simpler, somewhat all the poetic meanings beyond the literal meanings of the text. So, basically, all you guys are doing is "translating" the allegories of Dante.

[Lokasenna]

Dante gives the deffinition of allegory in his Il Convivio (first chapter, I think) when he speaks about the different lawyers of interpretation that a work of ary must have. It is not exactly what we think of allegory today, but somehow more broader, and also simpler, somewhat all the poetic meanings beyond the literal meanings of the text. So, basically, all you guys are doing is "translating" the allegories of Dante.

I know it's a typo, but I just love the idea of the 'lawyers of interpretation' - makes it sound like art has to be discussed in court...

[Petrarch's Love]

It dawned on me that there's a nice little essay on Dante and allegory by Peter Hollander on the Princeton Dante site: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/allegory.html and that this site also contains the text of the Convivio. Book II of Il Conviviocontains the definition of allegory JCamilo refers to and is excerpted here: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/...&REF=II.i.3-41 and also linked in the article.

[JCamilo]

I know it's a typo, but I just love the idea of the 'lawyers of interpretation' - makes it sound like art has to be discussed in court...

It would be certainly more democratic, no?

[Wilde woman]

(As a side question, do any of you learned types know where the "valley" comes from? Was this purely poetic license on the part of the English translator? Or is it in the Hebrew original and left out of the Latin version? It's so much in our heads, that I wonder where it came from?)

I have no idea about the Hebrew, but just a random thought. It might be possible that Dante is in a valley because he later climbs a hill to be able to see the sun. I could imagine a director setting the first canto in a forested valley surrounded by hills....

(yes, I'm finishing up a chapter on Spenser right now, so people are just going to have to tolerate my FQ references)

How ironic. I just bought a copy of the Faerie Queen and am about to start reading it.

I think the strength of Dante's opening lies in his impressive use of ambiguity, polar juxtaposition, and liminality. Not only is he midway through his life, but he is half-way between reality and dream, on the margins of purgatory and hell, where he finds both horror and solace.

And this liminality works in the temporal setting of the poem as well. In one of the interpretations I've read, Dante enters Hell on the evening of Good Friday, when Christ died on the Cross. Later he emerges from Purgatory, ready to ascend into Paradise on the morning of Easter Sunday, thus completing one cycle of his own symbolic death and rebirth on the celebratory dates of Christ's.

And Lok, I really like your readings of the she-wolf and the the corrupt cities. I've personally always read it as a corruption of the she-wolf who raised Remus and Romulus.

Speaking of which, what does everyone think of the mysterious Greyhound that Virgil tells us will come to defeat the she-wolf?

Molti son li animal a cui s’ammoglia
E più saranno ancora, infin che ‘l veltro
Verrà, che la farà morir con doglia.
Questi non ciberà terra né peltro
Ma sapienza, amore e virtute,
E sua nazion sarà tra feltro e feltro.
Di quella umile Italia fia salute
Per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,
Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute.
Questi la caccerà per ogne villa,
Fin che l’avrà rimessa ne lo ‘nferno,
Là onde ‘nvidia prima dipartilla.

She [the she-wolf] mates with many living souls and shall / yet mate with many more, until the Greyhound / arrives, inflicting painful death on her. That Hound will never feed on land or pewter, / but find his fare in wisdom, love, and virtue; / his place of birth shall be between two felts. / He will restore low-lying Italy / for which the maid Camilla died of wounds, / and Nisus, Turnus, and Euryalus. / And he will hunt that beast through every city / until he thrusts her back again to Hell, / from which she was the first sent above by envy. (Mandelbaum's translation)

I can see this Greyhound representing Christ or Henry VII, though I wonder if the form of a hound has any significance (other than as a beast that hunts wolves). Any ideas?

You look at one way of opening a poem and then you do a retake to explore what the juxtaposition of the two reveals. This is central to the way Medieval/Early Modern allegory was meant to function. It was a means of reading meant to encourage revisiting, which was in turn intended to prompt an engagement with the text that would prompt learning.

I'm not at all familiar with this concept. Could you explain a bit more and give some examples in medieval poetry?

And since we're sharing websites, I've always thought this one was a pretty nifty one. It has illustrations for each level of hell and brief notes. Made by UT Austin:

http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/

[Jozanny]

Not paying any attention to the thread's progress, I like Mandelbaum's frame of reference, that we are closer to Dante's work than his age was to Virgil's, because I tend to see works themselves as living and vibrant entities despite scholarly dependence on textuality. And this is an important point for me: Dante's work is alive and beating in my bloodstream, and I cannot even say that for some modern poets, like Plath, though her work cannot sustain comparison. Plath is a trope already stale, even in some of her stronger efforts that call on my empathy.

Dante will never fall for me into the mere veneer of literary conceit, despite how many of those he had up his sleeve in the act of composition. Hopefully I will have some down time in the next 48 hours to add any additional thoughts on the animal archetypes and their 50 million footnotes.

[Virgil]

Being away I cannot really join in the conversation, but I echo Jozy's point: Dante refuses to grow stale. It is probably the most rich work in all of literature.

[stlukesguild]

I must jump into this discussion tomorrow. I've started reading the Pinsky translation of The Inferno and the introductory essay has some intriguing points that I'll try to throw out here. I'm still waiting on my Hollander translation... but I can consult my Ciardi, Mandelbaum, and Longfellow. It would probably be easier to just learn Italian...

[Nick Capozzoli]

Originally Posted by Dante
I spent in such distress, was calmed.

And as one who, with laboring breath,
has escaped from the deep to the shore
turns and looks back at the perilous waters,

so my mind

This is clearly a Homeric epic simile...
"As one who...etc...."

Volumes could be written on trovai vs. ritrovai.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Molti son li animal a cui s’ammoglia....

Anyone have a take on this language? I speak modern Italian and can read through the Commedia...but I don't get everything...at least I feel as if I'm looking at the text through gauze or some sort of filter...like a modern English speaker reading Chaucer. I know that Dante spoke Tuscan, which is one of the Italian dialects. I speak and can read modern Italian, and I also understand one of the Italian dialects (Emiliano). In modern Italian this phrase would be "Motii sono gli animali a cui..." "li animal" is close to the Emiliano "al nimel" which means not only animals, but specifically refers to pigs in the Emiliano dialect. The Tuscans were not far from us in the Po Valley.

[stlukesguild]

Hurrah! My Hollander translations of The Inferno and Purgatorio have arrived. I'll be tearing into the notes and essays on these ASAP... although I'm planning to continue reading the Pinsky Inferno which I'm quite enjoying. Perhaps I jump between the two.

What has struck me about the Inferno is how easy it actually is to read. Admittedly this is my fourth of 5th time through and I do have enough Renaissance and Medieval history under my belt so as to no slow me down... but still... for all the complexity of symbolism and allegory... Dante is first and foremost a brilliant story-teller. The narrative flows rapidly and he is quite adept at sensual/sensory descriptiveness... especially the visual. This mastery of narrative is something he shares with Firdowsi (the Shahnameh) or Cervantes... and something other writers lack while they hone in on the allegorical complexity.

The Pinsky Inferno begins with an introductory essay by the Dante professor, John Freccero (NYU). We were discussing the impact of Homer and Greek literature in general on Dante in another thread, and lo, this essay picks up on the centrality of Ulysses (Odysseus) to the Comedia. Ulysses has a major dramatic episode related within the Inferno... but unlike any other character he meets in Hell, Ulysses shows up again in Purgatorio and Paradisio. Freccero points out that Dante and Ulysses share the same goal in the Inferno: the Mountain of Purgatory. Ulysses makes his great speech in defense of the rationale of man... but makes no mention of spirituality... faith... humility... and thus he fails in his quest where Dante will succeed. Dante's own initial failure to scale the mountain reinforces this point.

I don't know what translations others are reading (and obviously Petrarch has the best of all worlds, reading the poem in the original) but I'll make a few notes about Pinsky's translation. Pinsky argues that Dante's terza rima is an essential element to his poem... but one not easily achieved in English as a result of the lack of rhyme. He notes that some translators choose to maintain the rhyme by forcing by putting the language and syntax through tortured contortions. The other alternative, is to ignore the rhyme altogether freeing up the need to hunt for the best possible rhyme that maintains some semblance of the original meaning. Pinsky argues that maintaining some semblance of the rhyme structure essentially forces him as poet/translator to give greater thought to word choices and lends a greater rigor. What he employs, however, is a sort of half rhyme... favored by Yeats and used in Pinsky's own poetic efforts. Thus the poet employs end words such as "sleep/stop/up".

Pinsky begins the poem:


Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard- so tangled and rough

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring; death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well

I'll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter
I cannot say, being so full of sleep
Whatever moment it was I began to blunder

Off the true path...


The Hollander translation begins:


Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost

Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense, and harsh-
the very thought of it renews my fear!

It is so bitter death is hardly more so.
But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw

How I came there I cannot really tell,
I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way...

[Virgil]

I read the Pinksy translation a few years ago and I thought he was brilliant with the half rhyme scheme.

[stlukesguild]

I went back and read through the Hollander translation of Canto I including the rich collection of notes. One of the most well-known symbols... the three beasts Dante confronts on the hill in the dark wood (the leopard, lion, and she-wolf) are also the most disputed as to meaning. These beasts echo the three which will assail the Israelites in Jeremiah 5:6. The original medieval/Renaissance commentators seem to have been unanimous in their interpretation of these beasts as representing the sins of lust, pride, and avarice. This interpretation fell out of favor for years and interpretations included the leopard as Dante's Florentine enemies, the lion as the French (who Dante despised for their meddling in Italian politics), and the she-wolf as the Papal powers. The leopard with her "gaudy" coat has always been an attractive symbol for lust to me... although I have usually imagined it as representative of the whole of the carnal sins of bodily excess including gluttony and avarice or greed. The lion I have taken as more representative of the sins of pride and violence, while the she-wolf represents those crimes against reason. I take this interpretation considering Dante's own structure of hell in which sins against reason are afforded far worse punishment than mere violent crimes of passion... even murder.

I'd be interested in other interpretations... especially those of Petrarch'sLove.

[Virgil]

St Lukes, I would not be surprised if Dante intended multi faceted readings. His allegory is usually not a one to one coresspondence but of one to three or four. He could have intended all of those readings for the three beasts and perhaps more.

[Wilde woman]

I'll make a few notes about Pinsky's translation. Pinsky argues that Dante's terza rima is an essential element to his poem... but one not easily achieved in English as a result of the lack of rhyme. He notes that some translators choose to maintain the rhyme by forcing by putting the language and syntax through tortured contortions. The other alternative, is to ignore the rhyme altogether freeing up the need to hunt for the best possible rhyme that maintains some semblance of the original meaning. Pinsky argues that maintaining some semblance of the rhyme structure essentially forces him as poet/translator to give greater thought to word choices and lends a greater rigor. What he employs, however, is a sort of half rhyme...

I know we're not really evaluating translations here, but I think it's the right choice for English translators not to attempt to capture the terza rima because it's practically impossible in English. However, I'm interested in this idea of half-rhyme. Is it at all related to slant rhyme?

The original medieval/Renaissance commentators seem to have been unanimous in their interpretation of these beasts as representing the sins of lust, pride, and avarice.

Though I accept that this is the standard interpretation for the three beasts, I always wondered why (if we accept this interpretation) Dante chose these three particular sins. True, they are three of the seven deadly sins (described in Purgatorio), but wouldn't it make more sense if they corresponded with the three overarching types of sin Dante describes in Hell (incontinence in circles 1-5, violence in circle 7, and fraud in circles 8-9)? Dante especially surrounds the incontinent sinners with animal imagery. Thoughts?