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Dan Brown again...
Dan Brown's appropriation of Dante is (IMHO) something close to sacrilege, whereas Clive James has just finished a translation (after a lifetime's work). Interview here, but I've pulled out what is for me the money quote:
On working on his translation for 40 years: "In view of the likelihood that Dan Brown's Inferno novel will coin money like the mint and be turned into a huge Hollywood movie (Jeremy Irons as Dante perhaps, opposite the meltingly spiritual Beatrice of Angelina Jolie), it might be asked why I slogged away at a mere translation. The answer is simple: The Divine Comedy is a work of art so incandescently great that if you think you can convey some of its force and colored fire, you should. It was a duty. For 40 years, since my brilliant wife showed me what the lovers sounded like when they spoke Italian to each other in the fifth canto of hell, I knew it was my duty. I just didn't know how to do it. Somewhere in Dan Brown's new book, a professor says that Longfellow's translation does the job. But when I read that translation, and all the other translations, I still thought that nobody yet had quite caught the way that Dante's verse flies along, infinitely varied, infallibly vivid, totally brilliant. So I pushed on, and the effort brought me where I am today, competing head to head with one of the biggest-selling writers of all time. Smart move, eh?"
On working on his translation for 40 years: "In view of the likelihood that Dan Brown's Inferno novel will coin money like the mint and be turned into a huge Hollywood movie (Jeremy Irons as Dante perhaps, opposite the meltingly spiritual Beatrice of Angelina Jolie), it might be asked why I slogged away at a mere translation. The answer is simple: The Divine Comedy is a work of art so incandescently great that if you think you can convey some of its force and colored fire, you should. It was a duty. For 40 years, since my brilliant wife showed me what the lovers sounded like when they spoke Italian to each other in the fifth canto of hell, I knew it was my duty. I just didn't know how to do it. Somewhere in Dan Brown's new book, a professor says that Longfellow's translation does the job. But when I read that translation, and all the other translations, I still thought that nobody yet had quite caught the way that Dante's verse flies along, infinitely varied, infallibly vivid, totally brilliant. So I pushed on, and the effort brought me where I am today, competing head to head with one of the biggest-selling writers of all time. Smart move, eh?"
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I might have to invest in this if it is available over here. I would love to read his take on Dante's work. As for Mr Brown, yeah I'll take the same pass on it I took on all his other works.
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Considering how many popes they encounter in hell... Not entirely ridiculous! ;)
I might have to invest in this if it is available over here. I would love to read his take on Dante's work.
Same here. It really is the sort of work you can immerse yourself in for a lifetime... (And hey - my Moffat icon fits!)