Images of Dante's Inferno: nella poesia e nell’arte

At a time when European scholars wrote exclusively in Latin, the language of the elite, Dante Alighieri chose to write his Commedia in the language of the people of Italy, which "existed in every city of the peninsula, but was present in none" (Cf. Gensini, 171-2). Although Dante has fallen in and out of literary fashion during the past 700 years, his work has never stopped firing the vision of countless artists from Giotto to Botticelli to Michelangelo to Rodin to Delacroix to William Blake to today's Tom Philipps. Dante enriches every canto of the Commedia with vibrant imagery, colorful detail, and allegorical clouds: he is lost in the dark wood, threatened by a "grim she-wolf whose leanness seemed to compress all the world's cravings" (Pinsky's Inferno, I, 49-50); he witnesses Cerberus's three mouths yawning, "his reptile body aquiver in all its members" (Pinsky's, Inferno, VI, 21-2); and beholds the suffering of the hypocrites in the fifth bolgia where "painted people. . . wear leaden cloaks that are gilded. . . so that the eye was dazzled" (Pinsky's Inferno, XXIII, 54-8). Dante tells the stories of kings, lovers, popes, and the common people, all the while leaving no doubt as to the temporality of earthly pleasures and privileges. Mythological gods share their infernal abode with others whose historicity gives credence to their very real existence. If Dante's terza rima is the literary device that unites the poem and propels its action, then the common suffering and human frailties of those who inhabit the poem are the nectar that attracts and holds the reader's attention. His poetry is not passive enough to remain within the confines of the written word; his stories are too evocative to avoid expression by other artists in other media.

Inferno Canto I, The Dark Wood

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la via diritta era smarrita.

[Midway through our life's journey / I found myself in a dark wood/ for I had lost my way (the correct path).]

Dante looks up from the darkness of the forest; he sees a beautiful mountain and decides to walk toward it. But each attempt is blocked by a beast—first a leopard, then a lion, and finally a wolf. As he is about to be beaten back for the last time, a ghost in human form appears. He is Virgil, who "at first seemed to fade as though from long silence" (Pinsky's Inferno, I, 47-8). He soon regains a healthy verbosity and explains to Dante that he has been sent by three ladies of Heaven to help Dante out of the forest and on to the straight path to salvation, which begins on the other side of Hell. And so begins the decent that has intrigued, confounded, and inspired generations of admirers, imitators, interpreters, artists, donkey drivers, and even women (Cf. Il Convivio, I. Also, Gensini, 170, 175).

Hell for Dante is both real and allegorical. It is situated in the center of the earth directly under Jerusalem and is shaped like a colossal upside-down cone made up of nine circles where the dead have come to wallow in various degrees of eternal misery. Hell is the state of the soul after death, the final judgment. It is not God's judgment, however; it is the souls themselves who choose to enter this chasm. Dante and Virgil arrive in the Vestibule of Hell, or Limbo, which is home to Virgil and ancient figures such as Noah, Aristotle, Plato, Ovid, and others who were born before the coming of Christ. They proceed to the banks of the river Acheron where the demon Charon tirelessly transports eternal boatloads of sinners to Mainland Hell. It is here that we read the famous warning, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

Perhaps the most famous Last Judgment is the fresco by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Like Dante's Inferno, it's rich in misery and grotesqueries. But, according to Nassar, "the Charon-Minos scene is also the only scene in the Last Judgment directly related to Dante's poem" (Nassar, 18). The scene, on the lower right of the fresco, depicts Charon beating an entangled, miserable crowd of sinners as they attempt to disembark from his boat:

Caron dimonio, con occhi di bragia
loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie;
batte col remo qualunque s'adagia.

[There demon/ Charon beckons them, with his eyes of fire; / crowded in a herd, they obey if he should summon, / and he strikes at any laggers with his oar] (Pinsky's Inferno III, 109-11).

One of the doomed grasps his own face, his mouth contorted in anticipation of the horrors awaiting him; another dives head first from the heap of human refuse; two others seem to sprint, air-born, from the boat, while others are crushed under the rush of the damned to begin their eternal damnation. Charon's ears are long and spike up from the sides of his dark and grimacing face. His eyes are great round circles with two black irises that contain not a hint of light. His body, like that of the sinners, is extremely muscular, but, unlike the symmetrical musculature of Michelangelo's David, it is unnaturally contorted and coarse. His right foot, placed on the edge of the boat to give him balance as he swings his oar, is foreshortened to the point that it might well be a hand grasping the boat, for the toes are extremely long, with a wide, prehensile spread. No one looks back. The sinners are spilling out of Charon's boat, not so much to escape his blows, but because they are impatient to enter eternal misery.

'Figliol mio,' disse 'l maestro cortese,
'quelli che muoion ne l'ira di Dio
tutti convegnon qui d'ogne paese;

e pronti sono a trapassar lo rio,
ché la divina giustizia lì sprona,
sì che la tema si volve in disio.

['My son, the gracious master said to me, / 'those who have died beneath the wrath of God, / all these assemble here from every country; / and they are eager for the river crossing / because celestial justice spurs them on, / so that their fear is turned into desire'] (Mandelbaum's Inferno, III, 131-6).

Charon was a well-known character in Greek mythology who was brought to the Inferno from the Virgil's Aeneid:

Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave
un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo,
gridando: 'Guai a voi, anime prave!'

[And here, advancing toward us, in a boat, / an aged man--his hair was white with years-- / was shouting: 'Woe to you, corrupted souls!']

Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote
al nocchier de la livida palude,
che 'ntorno a li occhi avea di fiamme rote.

[Now silence fell upon the woolly cheeks / of Charon, pilot of the livid marsh, / whose eyes were ringed about with wheels of flame](Mandelbaum's Inferno, III, 83-5).

There is an engraving (ca. 1587) by Federico Zuccaro at the Uffizi in Florence in which Charon is shown beating a group of the damned who are trapped on his boat. His body is naked, two horns grow from his forehead, and sparse hairs sprout in all directions from the back of his head. Charon appears to be much more massive and much taller than his fated charges, and the oar with which he beats them is at least three times his own size. The motif is believed to have been copied from Michelangelo (cf Nassar 65). In the foreground, we see Virgil standing over Dante, who has fainted from the horror he has witnessed.

La terra lagrimosa diede vento,
che balenò una luce vermiglia
la qual mi vinse ciascun sentimento;
e caddi come l'uom cui sonno piglia.

[Then, the earth of that grim shore/ began to shake: so violently, I shudder / and sweat recalling it now. A wind burst up / from the tear-soaked ground to erupt red light and batter / my senses—and so I fell, as though seized by sleep.](1)

William Blake's "Vestibule of Hell and the Souls Mustering to Cross the Acheron" is a masterful rendering of Dante's vision. The spirits of the Uncommitted—those who had lived sanza 'infamia and sanza lodo [without infamy or praise]—are assembled in the foreground. Since they had expressed no opinions and fought for nothing during their lifetime, they are not welcome in Heaven and they are rejected even by Hell. Instead, they are doomed to an eternity thrashing about in the winds of Hell's vestibule, enduring the stings of wasps and hornets. A long queue of souls emerging from their earthly tombs begins on the horizon line of the left side of the watercolor; it winds across the sky to the right and down again to the banks of the Acheron. Charon has just deposited a boatload of souls and is sailing back to the Vestibule to pick up another. The print has no relief, no peaceful corner, and no central focus. Sinners are crushed into every corner of the canvas, creating a claustrophobic effect; the sky is blackened and the frieze of hell-bound sinners seems to press down onto the horizon, compressing the atmosphere, and underscoring the aloneness of each doomed character while warning the viewer that there is no possible escape from this Hell. Just as Dante's rhymes and images interlock,(2) so do Blake's images and incidents interlock in the Vestibule of Hell. Among the lost souls are kings and paupers, generals and foot soldiers, men and women from every stratum of society. Freccero observes that the characters in Dante's Inferno are all given equal treatment based, not on their earthly status, but on their most grievous sin.(3)

There is movement in Hell, but here movement is circular. The formation of sinners curving around, over, and below the horizon in Blake's "Vestibule" never changes, never ends. We know that the condemned will enter Charon's boat, and we know that they will be ferried across the river to await Minos's judgment. But they have not embarked on a journey; rather, they remain locked in their individual and collective eternities where there is no real movement, no change, no hope. Blake has recreated this enmity between movement and stagnation, which is not unlike a dream in which one tries to escape some horror only to find oneself paralyzed.

Michelangelo's Minos has the same massive, coarsely defined musculature as that of Charon. The two figures, one in the boat and the other on shore, are the sentries whose presence imprisons the crowd of entangled souls. No one dares defy Charon's authority and no one may pass Minos without obeying his judgment call. Minos occupies an interesting place in Michelangelo's fresco, for if the fresco were to be read as a book, Minos would be the last word. Indeed, Minos is the last word, for once the sinners have reached the shores of Hell, his tail encircles his body as many times equal to the circle in Hell to which each doomed spirit must go. In Michelangelo's fresco, he has just sent a sinner to the second circle of Hell; this is the circle of the incontinent, guarded by Minos himself.

Blake's watercolor of Minos allows him to reign at center stage. His hair cascades down his back and down the steps before his throne of flames. His white beard is forked; his right hand is raised in the same gesture of judgment as that of Michelangelo's Christ in the Last Judgment; in his left hand he grasps a large spear. But his appearance is not quite as daunting as Dante's description of him:

Stavvi Minos orribilmente, e ringhia:
esamina le colpe ne l'intrata;
giudica e manda secondo ch'avvinghia.

[There stands Minos horribly, and grinning: / he examines the guilty who enter; / then judges and dispatches them with his coiling tail.](4)

His mouth is open, but not in a grin; instead, it is full-lipped, softly ugly and pliable. His body, like Michelangelo's Charon, is thick, asymmetrical, and graceless. The figures who surround him in their various states of helplessness function only to attest to his powers. Nevertheless, they effectively represent Dante's oxymoronic stagnant movement. None move of their own volition. Undeniably, the painting's energy is spurred by Minos himself, but even he is bound to his throne; the only movement is the circular motion of his tail as he remands each sinner to the final, eternal state of wretchedness.

Dante understood that all art is the translation of a vision, and he discussed the unavoidable "discrepancy between [the author's] words and his vision."(5) The idea is not restricted to literature, but to all expressions of art. Dante's description of Minos is but a translation of his vision of this demon judge, and he must contain his description of him within the confines of the terza rima. Just as the position of a figure in a painting is vital to its success, so the position of a word is vital to the success of a poem. Look at the placement of orribilmente between the words stavvi and ringhia. Here Dante is using an adverb to define both "to be" and "to grin." Minos is there horribly; and the word's proximity to "grin" implies that he also grins horribly.

Inferno, Canto V: Paolo and Francesca

Canto V recounts the tale of Francesca and Paolo, whose story is so sad that Dante faints after hearing it. Giovanni Malatesta had tricked Francesca into marrying him, even though she was in love with his younger brother Paolo. One day, Giovanni discovered them making love and he promptly murdered them. Their spirits were sent to the Circle of the Incontinent to spend eternity bound together, helplessly tossed about by a whirlwind. According to Nassar, "the Paolo and Francesca episode has been the theme for illustrations, art, and music far more than any other Dantean motif."(6) Blake's engraving depicts numerous pairs of lovers, some asunder and others locked together, as they are blown out of a river up into a large swirl. The Pilgrim Dante has fallen into a faint and Virgil stands over him. Behind Virgil, there is a huge sun in the center of which two lovers sit side by side. But, despite the sun, the sky is black. We are reminded of Francesca's lament, "Nessun maggior dolore / che ricordarsi del tempo felice / ne la miseri." [There is no greater sorrow / than to recall times of happiness / in wretchedness].(7)

When Francesca tells her story, Dante's style shifts to that of medieval love poetry. A number of artists have captured that style in their portrayals of the doomed lovers. Gustave Dore's 1861 engraving depicts Francesca and Paolo surrounded by a myriad of couples blown through the darkness as Dante and Virgil look on. Their embracing bodies are supported by a cloth that non-so-discreetly covers their nakedness, which certainly did not appear in the Inferno. Ary Shaeffer's 1834 oil similarly clothes the lovers. In Dante's Inferno, the doomed spirits are naked, but Francesca's speech—specifically, her diction and her interaction with Dante—allows her to reveal a humanness that nakedness often strips away. She is clothed and protected by her words; thus, her nakedness is not apparent. Schaeffer's and Dore's use of drapery to protect and uplift Francesca and Paolo has the same effect of recalling both their humanness and their vulnerability.

Many critics perceive a certain ambiguity in the fact that Francesca and Paolo have been confined to Hell by Dante's pen, and yet the sadness of their plight makes him swoon. Klonsky is not alone in his condemnation of the frequency with which Dante sentences his friends and relatives to eternal doom:

"Cavalcanti . . . . is condemned to be roasted eternally in one of the fiery tombs . . . for having believed, as an Epicurean, that the soul dies with the body. Item, in the seventh circle . . . Dante recognizes his once revered teacher and counselor, the statesman-poet Brunetto Latini, and greets him with: 'Are you here, Ser Brunetto?' . . . surely one of the most profoundly moving and yet disingenuous lines in literature, since, after all, it was Dante himself who put him there.(8)"

Yet, it must be noted that there are two Dantes in the Commedia: Dante the pilgrim, who is descending into the pit of Hell to begin a journey to salvation; and Dante the poet, who explains that Hell's denizens have one thing, and only one thing, in common: their refusal to accept responsibility for their earthly deeds. In the case of Francesca and Paolo, the book made them do it. For this reason, every depiction of them during their lifetime includes the famous story of Lancelot that brought about their downfall. Let Francesca tell it:

Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;
soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.
. . .
Quando leggeremmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,

la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.
Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.

[Once day, to pass the time, we were reading / about Lancelot and how he was overcome by love; / we were alone and suspected nothing. . . . When we had read how the desired smile / was kissed by such a lover, he (Paolo), who will never be separated from me, / trembled as he kissed me on the mouth. . . . That day we read no more.](9)

In Dante Rossetti's watercolor in three panels, Paolo and Francesca are locked in an embrace; the book lies open between them. We are reminded of Francesca's angry words: "Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse" [That book--and its author--was a pander!"].(10) In the second panel, Dante and Virgil walk hand in hand, grim-faced through the darkness of Hell. They are gazing to the left, for in the nether world there is no other direction, except down. The third panel places the couple in Hell, but it fails to convince the viewer of the horror of eternal suffering. Instead, the hailstorm only frames their weightless, fully clothed bodies that float unharmed within an invisible, protective bubble. Paolo, who can only weep in Dante's Inferno, wears a halo that remains untouched by the tempest.

Blake succeeds in portraying the hopelessness that reigns in Hell. The motif of the whirlwind appears in a number of Blake's watercolors and engravings of the Inferno. "The Angel Crossing Styx" recalls Canto IX in which Dante and Virgil are prevented from entering the City of Sorrows, or Dis, where hellish Hell begins. This is one of the rare occasions in Hell where Virgil's powers of reasoning are not enough to ensure the safe passage of the poets, and a divine messenger must rescue them from the demon's clutches.

Come le rane innanzi a la nimica
biscia per l'acqua si deleguan tutte,
fin ch'a la terra ciascuna s'abbica,

vid' io più di mille anime distrutte
fuggir così dinanzi ad un ch'al passo
passava Stige con le piante asciutte.

[As frogs confronted by their enemy, / the snake, will scatter underwater till / each hunches in a heap along the bottom, / so did the thousand ruined souls I saw / take flight before a figure crossing Styx / who walked as if on land and with dry soles.](11)

The whirlwind appears again in Blake's "Jacapo Rusticucci and His Comrades," but this time it encompasses almost the entire engraving and contains only three of the spirits confined to the Circle of the Violent.

Ricominciar, come noi restammo, ei
l'antico verso; e quando a noi fuor giunti,
fenno una rota di sé tutti e trei.

[As soon as we stood still, they started up / their ancient wail again; and when they reached us / they formed a wheel, all three of them together.](13)

Feuerbach painted a portrait of Francesca in profile, gazing at the open book on her lap, her thoughts on the beautiful Paolo sitting next to her. It is a touching portrayal, rich in color, with strong diagonal lines that bring the viewer's eye from the youthful, flawless faces of the young people down to the book and up again to their faces. Paolo's left hand is poised under his chin ready to fall on Francesca's slender hands. There is no hint in this romantic portrayal of the sorrow to come. In Amos Cassioli's richly hued painting of the lovers, the book has just fallen from Francesca's hands and lies upside down, ignored, on the floor. Paolo and Francesca are lost in their physical and emotional oneness.

Inferno, Canto XXXIII, Count Ugolino

Just as Paolo and Francesca are locked together for eternity, so are two other figures in Hell—Count Ugolino and his executioner, the Archbishop Ruggieri. And just as the story of Francesca and Paolo has inspired the production of soft, romantic portraits of love, Ugolino's story has inspired portraits of horror. Robert Cimbalo is said to have fixed "the stamp of witty literalism"(14) in his 1984 mixed media portrayal of Ugolino munching on the back of Ruggieri's neck.

La bocca sollevò dal fiero pasto
quel peccator, forbendola a' capelli
del capo ch'elli avea di retro guasto.
[Pausing in his savage meal, the sinner raised / his mouth and wiped it clean along the hair / left on the head whose back he had laid waste.](15)

Aldo Greco's 1974 sculpture of the Count surrounded by his sons is poised in that nebulous zone between horror and humor. His figures, in various poses of pleading and desperation, look like petrified flesh, or Claymations, frozen in an instant of time. Humor and horror are not unrelated in life and, certainly, have more than a passing relationship in the Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno. We meet Caccianemico (Enemy Hunter) who justifies his pimping activities by observing, "I'm not the only one." There is Alessio Interminei who is submerged up to his head in a lake of excrement because, during his lifetime, his tongue could not stop its flattery. And Dante could not refrain from reminding the reader that even priests are not without sin:

E mentre ch'io là giù con l'occhio cerco,
vidi un col capo sì di merda lordo,
che non parea s'era laico o cherco.

[. . . I saw deep down in the fosse / people immersed in filth that seemed to drain / from human privies. Searching it with my eyes / I saw one there whose head was so befouled / with shit, you couldn't tell which one he was--layman or priest.](16)

In Canto VIX, Dante and Virgil discover Pope Nicholas III "planted like a fence post upside down."(17) Nicholas mistakes Dante for Pope Boniface VIII and is surprised at his early arrival in Hell—"Se' tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?" [Are you here already, Boniface?"]. In Canto XX, the spirits of soothsayers and astrologers walk with their heads on backwards, and are forced to gaze continuously at their kidneys so that their "eyes' tears fell to wet the buttocks of the cleft."

As we descend lower into the Inferno, spirits lose their human qualities, become more and more beastly, and finally assume a demonic semblance. In Canto XXI, we meet demons whose names, loosely translated into English, are Nasty Dog, Bad Tail, Hog Face, and Snarley Head.(18) By Canto XXV, the spirits have indeed lost the essence that made them human and suffer an eternity metamorphosing in and out of monstrous shapes as they are ripped apart by demons or left to flounder in the boiling blood that forms the River Phlegethon. Here, humor loses some of its protective powers, but never is it entirely relinquished in the bowels of Hell.

Ugolino and Ruggieri are traitors confined to the icy bolgia of the Ninth Circle. Some critics believe that because Ugolino cannibalized his children, he is eternally doomed to dine on Ruggieri's skull. But, Dante does not state this. Indeed, it is unlikely since, by Ugolino's own admission, he groped over his children's bodies for two days after they had died, calling to them: "And then hunger had more power than even sorrow had over me."(19) Two-day-old dead flesh exudes a protective stench that is paradise for maggots, but persuasive enough to repel even the starving Count. He simply died.

It has been suggested that Ugolino's sons were images of Dante's own sons whom he was forced to abandon when he was exiled from Florence. "These were the voices that Dante himself heard in the long nights."(20)

Padre mio, ché non m'aiuti?
[My father, why don't you help me?]

Delacroix is one of many artists who capture the tragedy of the children and even make us forget that Ugolino had betrayed not only his party, but his own nephew. In the darkness of the prison cell, a dim light from the tiny barred window falls across the prostrate figures of Ugolino's sons. Two appear to have died, and one stretches out his arm to his father, who sits with his knees tucked up to his chest, his head resting on his arms; he is too weak and too crushed to move. The four figures form a pyramidal bond at the bottom left quarter of the painting. Except for the window at the upper left, the rest of the painting reveals only shadowy tones of gray.

Ugolino and Ruggieri were real people, as were Francesca and Paolo, Pope Boniface and Nicholas, Sordello, Simon Magus, and all Dante's human characters. While Dante delivered them from the obscurity that eventually buries all mortals, other artists have taken them beyond the confines of the written word into a world of tangible color, texture, and three-dimensional stone. Nevertheless, without Dante's poem, which is both modern and ancient, timeless and timely, historical and mythological, literary and visual, it is certain they would not have been reborn by Rodin's chisel, Delacroix's brush, or Blake's burin. All must bow to Dante's inspiration.

The Commedia is an adventure in which readers can see their individual reflections. It is the story of humanity, from its lowest levels of bestiality to its highest intellectual and spiritual realization. But Dante's poem is not just a poem; it is a sculpture that moves; it is a painting whose colors are tinted with all gradations of gray, from the deepest black to the brightest, sun-kissed reds, blues, and yellows. The story continues to be told and retold in translations, paintings, sculpture, music. The Commedia transcends time, defies literary dissection, and enriches itself each time it is brought to life in a new medium. While Dante's great gift to humankind is his Commedia divina, each fresh rendering of the poem is humankind's tribute to the poet.

Work Cited

Alghieri, Dante. Dante's Inferno. ed. Daniel Hall. Hopewell, NY: Ecco Press, 1993.
_______. The Divine Comedy. Trans. James Finn Cotter. New York: Amity House, 1995.
_______. Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.
_______. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994.
Freccero, John. Introduction, The Inferno of Dante. trans. Robert Pinsky (above).
Klonsky, Milton. Blake's Dante. New York: Harmony Books, 1980.
Gensini, Stefano. Elementi di storia linguistica italiana. Milano: Minerva, 1992.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Afterword. Dante's Inferno. ed. Donald Hall. Dante's Inferno. ed. Hopewell, NY: Ecco Press, 1993.
Nassar, Eugene Paul. Illustrations to Dante's Inferno. London: Associated University Press, 1994.
Rizzatti, Maria Luisa. The Life and Times of Dante. London: Drury, 1967.
Notes
1. Inf. Canto III, 98-102 (Pinsky).
2. cf, Mandelbaum's Introduction, xi.
3. cf. Freccero's Introduction to Pinksky's translation, vii.
4. Inf. Canto V, 4-6
5. cf. Mazzota.
6. Nassar, 87
7. Inf. Canto V, 121-2.
8. Klonsky, 8-9
9. Inferno, V, 127-9, 133-5.
10. Inferno V, 137 (Cotter).
11. Inf. Canto IX, 76-80 (Mandelbaum).
12. Inf. Canto IX, 10-12.
13. Inf. Canto XIV, 19-21(Mandelbaum).
14. cf. Rizzatti, 56-7.
15. Inferno, XXXIII, 1-3 (Mandelbaum).
16. Inf. XVII, 115-117 (Pinsky).
17. Pinsky"s trans.
18. cf. Pinsky's notes, 407.
19. Pinsky, 76.
20. Rizzatti, 65.

DANTE'S INFERNO: Whose Inferno Is This Anyway?

First published by The Translation Review

Dante's Commedia has been translated, recast, and transposed into English more often than any other work of poetry, often accompanied by the apologies of the translator. John Ciardi, whose aim was to reproduce the music inherent in the poetry of the Inferno, acknowledged his debt to all previous translators of Dante: "Without their failures I should never have attempted my own" (Ciardi xi). The problems of translating the Commedia are enormous, for it is a complex structure whose style is born anew in almost every canto, whose images are alive with color, clouded with gloom, aflame with passion, or wallowing in human excrement. It is an adventure, a vehicle for pedantry; it is an allegorical and fantastic journey that is also quite real. The poem is recounted in words, which the poet calls "abstract, sadly approximate, dull with use" (Inf. XXXII, 5-6), and so the words are attended by the interplay of images and incidents (Merrill xi) and by the "melody of thought" (Mazzotta 162).

The Commedia's first tercet, perhaps the most recited in western literature, sets the tone for Dante's entire poem. It is an end-stopped tercet with two extremely important rhyme words, vita 'life' and smarrita 'lost', which De Sua calls "opposing semantic spheres."

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la via diritta era smarrita.

[In the middle of our life's walk
I found myself in a dark wood
for the straight road was lost]

Dante uses hendecasyllabic meter based on the magic number three, which represents the Trinity; and multiples of three—in particular, three-squared, which represents Beatrice— and three times ten, the symbol of perfection, or God. There are thirty-three syllables per tercet and three metrical units per line, nine per tercet. The rhyme scheme (ABA BCB CDC, etc.) is Dante's own invention and has the effect of bringing the action of the poem forward like a gently rolling wave folding over into itself, weaving it into a huge, complex net. Altering just one tercet would interrupt the rhythm and unsettle the tercets that follow. Bickersteth is among many who assert, "In no other very long narrative poem in European literature . . . are form and content so closely integrated" (xxviii). He traces the terza rima directly to the sirvantese of the Provençal poets in which two or three mono-rhymed hendecasyllables are followed by a quinario that supplies the rhyme for the next stanza: AAAb, BBBc, CCCd, etc. The implication, of course, is that Dante created terza rima as a tribute to the Provençal poets, without whose contributions his "divine comedy" could not have been created.(1) Given this, it might seem improbable that the translator's first decision is whether to render or not to render the terza rima, which seems indispensable to the structure of the poem. For some translators, however, there is too high a price to be paid in trying to reproduce terza rima in English (Musa viii), a relatively rhyme-poor language in comparison to Italian.(2) Indeed, rhyme can be an absolute dictator in a poem such as the Commedia, which demands the production of as many as 4,500 triple rhymes; and, in fact, Dante's intricate rhyme scheme has been referred to as a "no-trespassing sign, protecting the text" (Merrill x).

Charles Singleton—Montale called him "l'americano che ci spiegò Dante"(Mackey 45)—avoids the use of rhyme altogether and recasts the Commedia in prose:

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

He writes that his prose version "is but one more answer to the perennial question: How do we read this verse, this tercet, this canto?" And he concedes "the painful loss of the poetry of the Comedy that any prose translation inevitably brings about" (372). For this reason, his text appears alongside an edition of the original, not as a substitute for Dante, but as a partial answer for those searching for the real Dante. The consensus among prose translators is that their renderings must remain Dantesque; that is, they must retain the ideas and music of the original. Gilbert observes that the prose translator, unconstrained by rhyme, iambic pentameter, or the tercet, "can be succinct where Dante is succinct, plain where Dante is plain" (x), and is not obliged to elaborate or truncate the original.

Allen Mandelbaum is criticized by Freccero for placing too much emphasis on Dante's individualism,(3) but other critics find his translation a needed addition to the twentieth-century repertory. Tinkler-Villani applauds Mandelbaum's success in producing the same dramatic effects as the original. For example, in the first four tercets of Canto I (Inferno) he recreates the time transitions that underscore the existence of two Dantes: the protagonist, Dante the pilgrim, and the narrator, Dante the poet. The critic acknowledges that no English-language translator can recreate the juxtaposition of era and è in English (Ahi, quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura), which refers back to the previous tercet and connects it to the present tense of the fourth; but Villani insists, "this [effect] is exactly what Mandelbaum is trying to use as a guiding light in his translation" (77).

The savage wood in Mandelbaum's translation is not aspra e forte, but "dense and difficult." Villani defends his verbal digressions with the argument that his work stresses the "craft of the poet [Dante] at work" (77). Compare Mandelbaum's dense and difficult wood with Singleton's in which the poet seems to be searching for an appropriate modifier for that dark wood: "Ah, how hard it is to tell what that wood was, wild, rugged, harsh."

Ciardi's Dante is lost in a "drear and dark wilderness"; Pinsky's pilgrim finds himself in a wood that is "tangled and rough and savage"; Musa's poet tells us that he had wandered into a "wilderness, savage and stubborn, a bitter place!" Clearly, each translator creates a somewhat different image of Dante's "selvaggio, e aspra e forte," but none leaves doubt as to the terrible nature of the place.

Critics, especially those with deconstructionist tendencies, are always eager to pronounce judgment on translators for minute sins of elaboration, truncation, or too literal an interpretation. Consider Ross's warm praise of Mandelbaum for having substituted "an anapest for an iamb" in four lines out of 139 or "about two or three per cent" of the time (Ross 60). Clearly, his concern is for four leaves in a forest of millions, a preoccupation that disregards the translator's task, which is to bring a body of work, as intact as possible, across linguistic and poetic borders. The above-cited translators fulfill this mission precisely because they do not coerce and coax their English into unnatural linguistic registers. Ciardi's analogy is well taken:
When the violin repeats what the piano has just played, it cannot make the same sounds and it can only approximate the same chords. It can, however, make recognizable the same 'music,' the same air. But it can do so only when it is as faithful to the self-logic of the violin as it is to the self-logic of the piano (ix).

It is interesting to see how translators treat the problem of tercets that have the same initial word. Bickersteth insists the translator must never diverge from the original (xi), but sometimes divergence is the only way to remain faithful to the original. Let us consider Francesca's recounting of her ill-fated love affair with Paolo in Canto V (100-8):

Amor, che'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.

Amor, ch'a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.
Amor condusse noi ad una moret.
Caina attende chi a vita ci spense.

Here is Singleton's prose translation:

Love, which is quickly kindled in a gentle heart,
seized this one for the fair form that was taken from me--
and the way of it afflicts me still.
Love, which absolves no loved one from loving,
seized me so strongly with delight in him, that,
as you see, it does not leave me even now.
Love brought us to one death.

In Dante's text, love appears as the lead word of the tercet three times in a row. But, Singleton conjoins the three words in one paragraph; a device no less effective in stressing Francesca's insistence that she and Paolo are not to blame, "for none may withstand love's power." Thus, Singleton recreates the music and rhythm of Dante and elucidates the doctrine of courtly love, which places earthly love before the love of God (Singleton 89).

Comparing Singleton's prose text with the poetry of Ellis's Hell, we note that, although Ellis writes in verse, it is Singleton's prose that remains faithful to the rhythmic flow of Dante's poetry. Here is Ellis:

Love, swift in seizing noble hearts,
It took this man with the loveliness
taken from me, and still it hurts.
Love insists the loved loves back,
and pleased me with him so much
that it's still with me, as you see.
Love brought us both to one death:

Ellis argues that since English is not equipped to reproduce the terza rima, some other means must be found to structure the text and give momentum to the poetry. His solution is to reproduce Dante's linguistic "concision and economy" (Ellis xxi) by translating it into free verse tempered and constrained by the octosyllabic trimeter. In this way, Ellis hopes to be faithful to the text without padding it unnecessarily. Ellis maintains the initial word love, but his determination to avoid verbiage oversimplifies Francesca's diction: "And still it hurts. Love insists the loved loves back . . ." does not recall her forceful and rhythmic s'apprendi/m'offende, forte/persona, perdona/m'abbandona with their initial plosives and nasals. Thus, he tells us the story of Dante the pilgrim, but eclipses Dante the poet.

Robert Pinsky relegates the repetition of love to the second line of each tercet:

...
Love, which in gentle hearts is quickly born,
Seized him for my fair body--which, in a fierce

Manner that still torments my soul, was torn
Untimely away from me. Love, which absolves
None who are loved from loving, made my heart burn

With joy so strong that as you see it cleaves
Still to him, here. Love gave us both one death.
....

Here, Francesca's insistence on passing the blame is attenuated by the placement of love on the second line of each tercet. Pinsky, however, is constant to the terza rima, and has developed a poem that is "faithful in spirit" (Pinsky xxi) to Dante's. His definition of rhyme is far less restricting than the traditional definition, which matches vowel sounds in the end words:
[My] translation is based on a fairly systematic rhyming norm that defines rhyme as the same consonant sounds--however much vowels may differ--at the ends of words (xxi).
The system, borrowed from Yeats, is Pinsky's personal preference, which he finds more interesting than the predictable, same-vowel sound on the final or penultimate syllable. In fact, Pinsky suggests, "Perhaps [rhyme] must be made more approximate, in order to avoid the comic feeling of limerick, or of W.S. Gillbert"(xxi).

In order to transpose Dante's verbal economy and precision within the structure of the terza rima, Pinsky employs enjambment much more often than Dante does. This has the effect of speeding the action of the poem to such an extent that Pinsky includes stanza breaks between tercets (xxiv). Thus, the repetition of love, although less visible because of its placement, is energized by the enjambment of the three tercets and by the strong rhyme scheme of the end words: born, torn, burn and fierce, cleaves, lives. The result is a shift in focus from the initial Amor...Amor...Amor, but this is counterbalanced by the Pinskian (or Yeatsian) interlocking rhyme scheme.

Thus, in order to remain faithful to Dante, the translator must sometimes depart from him. To paraphrase Ciardi, the English-language translator must play the instrument of English, not of Italian. Ciardi's answer to the terza rima is a poem of tercets whose rhyme scheme is aba with no linking rhyme. He seeks "to preserve the [Commedia's] gestalt" in a language that approximates Dante's and that is "distinguishable from prose only in that it transcends every known notion of prose"(Ciardi ix). His language is clear and economical, his syntax and rhythm have been hailed as "streamlined"(De Sua 115), and at times he recasts and rearranges Dante's tercets in order to effect a more Dantesque English (or is that an oxymoron?). Examining his translation of Count Ugolino's story in Canto XXXIII, we are swept along by the fast pace of his rhyme and rhythm.

And just as you see me, I saw them fall
one by one on the fifth day and the sixth.
Then, already blind, I began to crawl
from body to body shaking them frantically.
Two days I called their names, and they were dead.
Then fasting overcame my grief and me.

The tercets are linked by enjambment, but Ciardi makes no attempt to reproduce the harsh consonantal alliteration of quivi, come, cascar, and quinto; or the plosive poscia, più, poté. The rhyme scheme is an acknowledgment of Dante's poetic device as well as an admission of the impossibility of reproducing it in English. Let us read Dante:

Quivi morì; e come tu mi vedi,
vid'io cascar lì tre ad uno ad uno
tra'l quinto dì e 'l sesto; ond' io mi diedi,

già cieco, a brancolar sovra ciascuno,
e due dì li chiamai, poi che fur morti.
Poscia, più che'l dolor, poté 'l digiuno.

And now, let us hear this music played by other istruments:

Mandelbaum:

And there he died; and just as you see me,
I saw the other three fall one by one
between the fifth day and the sixth; at which,

now blind, I started groping over each;
and after they were dead, I called them for
two days; then fasting had more force than grief.

Pinsky:

I watched the others fall till all were dead
Between the fifth day and the sixth. And I,
Already going blind, groped over my brood--

Calling to them, though I had watched them die,
For two long days. And then hunger had more
Power than even sorrow had over me.

Singleton:

There he died; and even as you see me,
I saw the three fall, one by one,
between the fifth day and the sixth;

whence I betook me, already blind,
to groping over each, and for two days,
I called them after they were dead.
Then fasting did more than grief had done.

Musa:

There he died. Just as you see me here,
I saw the other three fall one by one,
as the fifth day and the sixth day passed. And I,

by then gone blind, groped over their dead bodies.
Though they were dead, two days I called their names.
Then hunger proved more powerful than grief.

The commonality in all of these translations is Dante's diction. Pinsky and Ciardi are the most liberal in rearranging Dante's tercets. Indeed, both are poets in their own right and for this reason are perhaps better equipped to translate poetry (with no apologies to theorists) while remaining true to English. Singleton's "whence I betook me" recalls early English-language translators of Dante who insisted on polishing his "crude and improper diction"(4) and making him sound as though he were a very "up-to-date" Victorian indeed.(5) Mandelbaum does not make it clear that he was groping over dead bodies; instead, he "started groping over each; and after they were dead, I called them for two days." Musa's straight-forward, "And I, by then gone blind, groped over their dead bodies" is perhaps even more vivid and gruesome than the picture drawn by Dante.

Finally, let us look at Ulysses' much discussed speech in Canto XXVI. It is here that Dante's style conforms to that of the epic, and it is here that the reader notes Ulysses' egocentricity, his repetition of io and single mention of noi, and his oration delivered as though he were standing before an audience of thousands. He tells Virgil and Dante that he convinced his followers to pass the Pillars of Hercules with these three tercets:

'O frati,' dissi, 'che percento milia
perigli siete giunti a l'occidente,
a questa tanto picciola vigilia

d'i nostri sensi ch'è del rimanente
non voliate negar l'esperïenze,
di retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente.

Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.' (112-120)

Ciardi caused an academic stir with his translation, which eliminated three lines, including considerate la vostra semanza:

'Shipmates,' I said, 'who through a hundred thousand
perils have reached the West, do not deny
to the brief remaining watch our senses stand

experience of the world beyond the sun.
Greeks! You were not born to live like brutes,
but to press on toward manhood and recognition!'

Ciardi's departures from Dante's text are both Dantean and Ciardian in their effect. For example frati is translated as shipmates, a word that creates, one might argue, an even stronger image of the bond among Ulysses' men and recalls their journey by sea, their confinement and vulnerability; hence, their common bond or brotherhood. His translation of virtute as manhood instead of valor or virtue has raised objections for semantic reasons. Yet, Ulysses is challenging his men to go where no one has gone, to do what no one has done, and to do it during their declining years when youth and manhood are slipping away. Like the good politician that he is, he promises them that they will regain their youth if only they "press on toward [their] manhood."(6) Instead of considerate la vostra semanza, Ciardi's Ulysses simply exclaims, "Greeks!" Yet, this message is not unlike Dante's; it is an exhortation that they honor the valor and nobility of their blood. Finally, Ciardi departs from the original by translating canoscenza as recognition; his reason might well be as pedestrian as the fact that the end syllable rhymes with sun.

Cunningham is particularly strong in his indictment of Ciardi for having taken "extreme license" in what to him looks and sound like blank verse. Even more emphatic is Cunningham's objection to Ciardi's "liberal" definition of rhyme, specifically, his mixing of near rhyme with exact thyme. The effect, says Cunningham, has just the opposite effect of the terza rima; it slows rather than accelerates the pace of the poem. Worse, he believes it to be jarring to the ear and distracting for the reader. In other words, Cunningham suggests that the translator use either near rhyme or exact thyme, not both.

Pinsky, as we mentioned, uses near rhyme based on same-sound consonants. He, too, rearranges some of the tercets in Canto XXXIII. Here is Ulysses' speech to his men:

'O, brothers who have reached the West,' I began
'Through a hundred thousand perils, surviving all:
So little is the vigil we see remain

Still for our senses, that you should not choose
To deny it the experience--behind the sun
Leading us onward--of the world which has

No people in it. Consider well your seed:
You were not born to live as a mere beast does,
But for the pursuit of knowledge and the good.'

"The movement of Dante's terza rima," writes Pinsky, "is the great challenge for anyone who tries to render Dante's epic in English" (36). Ulysses' voice, translated into Pinskian poetry within the structure of the terza rima, is retained, and Pinsky succeeds in making the Inferno sound like a poem written in English, not a translation (Schemo C19). Some critics prefer Mandelbaum's translation because they claim it "corresponds line for line to verses as Dante wrote them, making it easier for students to grasp the relation between the Italian and English" (Schemo C19). But poetry cannot be lifted line by line from one language to the next and remain intact as a poetic or linguistic unit, for poetry is not a collection of words, but an alpha and omega of images, thoughts, rhythms, and music within the words, the text, and even, as Montale would say, in the white spaces in and around the text. Merrill argues that Mandelbaum makes only "a courteous gesture" to Dante's poetic form, yet "[his] unrhymed verse allows him a priceless fidelity to Dante's word order and emphasis"(xii).

Let's read Mandelbaum's Ulysses:

'Brothers,' I said, 'o you, who having crossed
a hundred thousand dangers, reach the west,
to this brief waking-time that still is left

unto your senses, you must not deny
experience of that which lies beyond
the sun, and of the world that is unpeopled.

Consider well the seed that gave you birth:
you were not made to live your lives as brutes,
but to be followers of worth and knowledge.'

This is not precisely a line-for-line rendering as Merrill claims; for if it were, it would not be poetry. It is, nevertheless, a tercet-by-tercet rendering. Ross notes that "Mandelbaum does not work on a high wire, facing danger and taking obvious risks . . . and, as such, [he] must eschew the constrictions of triple rhyme"(Ross 63).

Dante himself wrote about the difficulties of translating across linguistic borders, and Musa questions, "should it be the poet's voice that is heard, or the voice of the one who is making the poet accessible in another language?"(Musa ix). An obvious first response is that it is of course the poet's voice that must emerge in any translation. Here, the questions arise: who interprets the poet's voice? Is there a "correct" interpretation, or one interpretation that is more correct than another? Is it possible to carry meter across linguistic lines without diminishing or exaggerating rhyme? Is it possible to reproduce rhyme without sacrificing meaning? Is it possible to transport meaning without dispensing with rhyme and meter? Is there a definitive answer to any of these questions?

Longfellow writes that it is "the business of the translator to report what the author says, not to explain what he means."(7) All art, original or translated, is interpretation and explanation. The painter's vision is interpreted by color and form, the choreographers's fantasy is expressed by the movement of the dancer's body; the images born in the poet's mind are translated into words on a page. Dante writes that translation is "the very metaphor of poetry at the moment in which [the poet] perceives as unavoidable the discrepancy between his words and his vision."(8)
The translator, then, is critic, commentator, interpreter, and in the case of poetry, musician. Some of the following English-language translations of the first tercet of Canto I may be more pleasing than others, some seem to express Dante's meaning with greater clarity, and some seem to have abandoned his poetry altogether.

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in some dark woods,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
(Mark Musa)

In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself astray in a dark wood
where the straight road had been lost sight of.
(Seamus Heaney)

At midpoint of the journey of our life
I woke to find me astray in a dark wood,
perplexed by paths with the straight way at strife.
(Geoffrey L. Bickersteth)

Midway in the course of our life
I found myself within a dark wood,
where the right way was lost.
(Rev. H.F. Tozer)

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost.
(Robert Pinsky)

Halfway through our trek in life
I found myself in this dark wood,
miles away from the right road.
(Steve Ellis)

Halfway through the journey we are living
I found myself deep in a darkened forest,
For I had lost all trace of the straight path.
(James Finn Cotter)

When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.
(Allen Mandelbaum)

Half-way upon the journey of our life
I roused to find myself within a forest
In darkness, for the straight way had been lost.
(Henry Johnson)

Halfway along the path of this existence
I found that I was in a gloomy wood,
My right way being blotted by the distance.
(Louis How)

Upon the journey of our life midway
I came unto myself in a dark wood,
For the straight path I had gone astray.
(Jefferson B. Fletcher)

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood astray
Gone from the path direct.
(Henry F. Cary)

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood,
where the right way was lost.
(Charles Eliot Norton)

In the midst of my journey through this life of ours,
I was in a dark forest,
because I had lost the right road.
(Allan Gilbert)

Halfway upon the road of our life,
I came to myself amid a dark wood
where the straight path was confused.
(Arthur J. Butler)

Midway life's journey I was made aware
That I had strayed into a dark forest,
And the right path appeared not anywhere.
(Laurence Binyon)

Halfway along the road we have to go
I found myself obscured in a great forest,
Bewildered, and I knew I had lost the way.
(Sisson)

Just halfway through this journey of our life
I reawoke to find myself inside
a dark wood, way off course, the right road lost.
(Tom Phillips)

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.
(Joan Ciardi)

In the middle of the journey of our life
I came to myself within a dark wood
where the straight way was lost.
(John D. Sinclair)

Midway in human life's allotted span,
I found myself in a dark wood,
where the straight path I sought in vain.
(Ronald Bottrall)

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight forward pathway had been lost.
(Henry W. Longfellow)

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in gloomy wood, astray,
Gone from the path direct . . .
(Mario Praz)

De Sua is correct in his observation that "it is the nature of a translation to fade more quickly than its original, just as it is the nature of a classic to be interpreted anew by each age"(De Sua 25). In fact, the variety of these translations is a tribute to the richness and profundity of Dante's original and underscores the fact that there will never be a definitive translation of the Commedia in any language. The best any translator will ever do will be to play Dante's poetic score. The instruments will not be Dante's instruments; the musicians will not be Dante; yet the real fourteenth-century Dante will be carried into the modern era and into all the modern eras to come in as many poetic and prosaic forms as there are translators. Each new translation of the Commedia enriches our knowledge of Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim; each new translation casts a new light on Francesca, Ulysses, and Ugolino, on all the comedic and tragic souls confined to the dark side of Acheronte, on the hopeful penitents in Purgatorio, and on the cleansed and blessed souls who bask in God's light in Paradiso.


WORKS CITED

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Geoffrey L. Bickersteth. New York: Basil Blackwell, Inc. 1986.
_______. The Inferno. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1982.
_______. Hell. Trans. Steve Ellis. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994.
_______. Dante's Inferno. Trans. Allan Gilbert. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1969.
_______. Dante's Inferno. ed. Daniel Hall. Hopewell, NY: Ecco Press, 1993.
_______. Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.
_______. Dante's Inferno. Trans. Mark Musa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press., 1971.
_______. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994.
_______. The Divine Comedy Inferno 1: Text and Translation. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Cunningham, Gilbert. F. The Divine Comedy in English 1901-1966. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967, 2 vols.
De Sua, William J. Dante into English. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964.
Freccero, John. The Poetics of Conversion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
_______. Foreword. The Inferno of Dante. Trans. Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1994.
Mackey, Richard. "In altri cerchi ancora: Charles Singleton and the Hopkins Years." Dante Studies, CIV (1986): 45-58.
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Afterword. Dante's Inferno. ed. Donald Hall. Hopewell, NY: Ecco Press, 1993
Merrill, James. Preface. Dante's Inferno. ed. Donald Hall. Hopewell, NY: Ecco Press, 1993
Pinsky, Robert. "Preface to a Canto." Salmagundi Spring/Summer (1994): 35-40
Ross, Charles S. "Mandelbaum's Dante: Contemporary Prosody." Italian Quarterly (1986): 27:103-106.
Singleton, Charles. The Divine Comedy Inferno 2: Commentary. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970.
Schemo, Diana Jean. "Bringing Dante into the Realm of Contemporary English." The New York Times, 31 January 1995, C13.
Tinkler-Villani, Valeria. "The Poetry of Hell and the Poetry of Paradise." Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 76: 1, Spring (1994): 75-92.
Notes
1. Cf. University of Utah on the web: "La terzina si emancipa dal sirvantese."
2. Although some dispute this assertion; English, for example has more vowel sounds than Italian; see Bickersteth's Preface.
3. cf. Tinkler-Villani, pp. 76-77.
4. cf. De Sua's quote from Dr. Johnson.
5. For example, here is Bickersteth's translation of one tercet: "And there he died; then, as thou seest me, did I / between the fifth and sixth day even so / see the three, one by one, fall and die." Note that Longfellow had some influence here; here is his translation: "And there he died; and, as thou seest me, / I saw the three fall one by one, between / the fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me, / Already blind, to groping over them . . . ."
6. Cf. Freccero. "In [Ulysses'] speech to his men, the comfort he offers them is their own manhood and stature." p. 144.
7. cf. De Sua, p. 65.
8. cf. Mazzotta, 164.

Published in TRANSLATION REVIEW, SPRING 1998