/lit/ - Literature

>>19061340
Is this you? An anon posted this a while back, I saved it cause I thought it was great.

>>17546627
Well I'll offer it around a few normie publishers but I don't have high hopes (it's not going to have much popular appeal after all). I'll probably try to self-publish or something, or just stick it on /lit/. Here's the bit where Dante finally sees Beatrice in the Purgatorio (it's Canto 30 when he finally catches up with her although he did see her a bit earlier in the pageant thingy, as you said).

>>16367156
I'm writing in fairly strict iambic pentameter, terza rima. It's a pain, for the reasons I gave. I use half-rhymes sometimes, but try to take as few liberties as possible.

>>16367202
I've read most of the extant translations (Mandelbaum, Sayers, Longfellow, Hollander, etc). One problem is that you see many "scholars" just copying other "scholars", so you might get five people saying something but that doesn't make it any more reliable than just the first person saying it. But when you read enough stuff you usually get an idea of what's going on.

Here's the bit near the end of the Purgatorio where Beatrice finally appears. I think it came out quite nicely, although of course, the more you translate poetry, the more you realize it's impossible.

>>15804248

Translation (especially poetry, extra-especially good poetry) is always going to be a matter of balancing compromises. It's a question of your design criteria. Most translations of Dante go for literal fidelity of meaning, but sacrifice the *sound*. They're much too prosaic. The guidelines I set myself were simply to do it in iambic pentameter, terza rima, as strict as possible, to get the sound right, and then, given that, to get the meaning as literally close as possible, rather than paraphrasing. Most of the translations that are well-thought-of are not rhymed (or at least, not TR), which as far as I'm concerned is missing the whole point.

Hollander is good, but it's blank verse, so it's hard to compare with mine, because we're trying to do different things.

For what it's worth, here's my translation of the passage in Canto 30 of the Purgatorio where Dante finally gets to meet Beatrice. Compare it with Hollander or Mandelbaum or Sayers or James or anyone else and see what you think.

>>15755422

>>15718047

"The ancient flame" is the flame of his old love for Beatrice when she was alive. It's almost exactly the same as when we say these days "oh, she's his old flame".

Here's my translation of that passage. I think it came out very well.

>>15230040

Purgatorio has the advantage that we get to meet Beatrice Of course, the first thing she does is lay into Dante and tell him to sort his life out, but never mind.