Essay on my reading of Dante's Inferno.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
It is something I had been putting off for many years. Indeed, Dante Alighieri's epic poem, La Divina Commedia is a work that had existed furtively on my list of books-to-read but it had heretofore never made it to the top. It was only after reading Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, a novel centered around Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation (the first English translation by an American) of La Divina Commedia that I girded my loins and decided to take on the beast. It was something long overdue and deep down, I regretted not having read Dante while my father was still alive (more on this later).
First, let me tell you that although my conversational Italian is weak it does nevertheless hold a tiny fire that is easily kindled by a glass or two of wine. My literary Italian, however, cannot be resuscitated even by copious amounts of the finest Brunello. I will not disagree with you, therefore, if you conclude that my intention to read Dante in its original Italian was naïve at best.
Do you know how many editions of La Divina Commedia are in print? I can’t give you an exact figure but I will tell you that if you search for “The Divine Comedy” in the book section of Amazon, you get 7,697 hits and those are presumably only the titles in English. I had a lot to choose from. Furthermore, while visiting my mother in Montreal one day, it occurred to me that I should have quick look through my dad’s library for anything by Dante. My dad, after all, had been a voracious reader and I was sure that, educated in the classical tradition as he was, he would have read Dante at some point in his 69 years. I hadn’t gone through his library in many years and I was struck at the richness of his collection. Many of the literary classics were there, some in old leather bound editions. And, to my astonishment, I found not one but six editions of Dante! I was dumbstruck. Where had I been not to have know of the existence of these volumes. I guess that as a young man, I’d had no interest in such lofty tomes. But more importantly, I felt a pang of sorrow realizing that I would never be able to share my newfound interest in Dante with my dad. What an opportunity I had missed. I was touched when my mother said, “Take them, they’re yours.”
The volumes I found in my dad’s library were the following:
• The Divine Comedy. The Carlyle-Wicksteed Translation (1932) Pasted on the inside front cover was the following – Loyola College, Commencement 1947. Prize for Spanish awarded to Michael Froncioni
• Oeuvres Completes de Dante. Traduction et Commentaires par André Pezard. Biblioteque de la Pléade (1968)
• The Divine Comedy – PURGATORIO. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867)
• Dante Alighieri – THE DIVINE COMEDY. Translated by Lawrence Grant White (1948)
• La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri – Vol. I: INFERNO. Con il commento di Tommaso Casini (1920) On the inside front cover, I found the following inscription: A mio carissimo Michele Froncioni. Michele Tortolani (I recognized this name to be that of the loved and esteemed Professore Tortolani, a personage that I remembered was dear to my grandparents.) Another inscription just below the first read: La Data? Quando Cristina era a Atina sposata in luna di miele (The date? When Cristina (my dad’s sister) was in Atina (The Froncioni ancestral town.) on her honeymoon. This was probably in the early ‘50s.
• La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri – Vol.II: PURGATORIO. Con il commento di Tommaso Casini (1920) Concealed in this volume, I found a letter from Professore Tortolani addressed to my dad and dated September 9 1952. The letter in written in a hand that is rarely seen today, calligraphy from an era of letter writing that has long since been replaced by the keyboard.
Happy as I was with my discovery in dad’s library, my search for an appropriate edition continued. I was looking for one that had the original Italian on one page and the English translation on the facing page. Oh yes…of course…I still intended to read Dante in the original Italian but I conceded that I would need to make frequent (read constant) reference to the English translation. Furthermore, I took the decision, like many readers before me, to only read (for now) Inferno, the first and by far most popular on the three canticas that make up the poem.
After a lengthy search, I settled on a very recent edition: Dante: Inferno. A Translation by Anthony Esolen (2003). It had good reviews and I liked the cover jacket (see my previous post “Form and Function”). Furthermore, I had leafed through dozens of translations and decided that I would make my choice based on the English translation of the first verse in Canto 1, probably the most oft quoted of all the verses. The original Italian is found at the start of this post. Esolen’s translation is as follows:
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wilderness,
For I had wondered from the straight and true.
Compare this to Longfellow’s 19th century translation:
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
…or this tedious version by A.Mandelbaum (1980):
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.
Look, I wasn’t doing a Ph.D. on the work so don’t be too hard on my criteria for choosing one edition over the others. Esolen seemed quite readable so I settled for it.
La Divina Commedia was an enormous undertaking for Dante. Born in Florence in 1265, it took Dante 13 years to write his poem (1308 – 1321). He died in Ravenna in 1321. The allegory he has left us takes us on an imaginary three-day journey during which Dante the Pilgrim is lead, firstly by VIRGIL through Hell and Purgatory and finally by BEATRICE, the woman he secretly loved and admired most, through to Heaven. On his journey, Dante meets many historical figures and observes the just deserts they have earned. It is in Inferno that Dante treats us to his most graphic descriptions hell’s torments as VIRGIL takes him down though the nine circles of hell.
I think a simple overview of the structure of the poem is called for at this point just to give you an idea of its complexity. In point form:
• La Divina Commedia is composed of three canticas, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.
• Each cantica is composed of 33 canti except for Inferno which has 34, the first one serving as an introduction to the whole work.
• Each canto is composed of verses in the terza rima form first used by Dante and illustrated by the following pattern of tercets: a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c,…
• Each line of each tercet is in hendecasyllable verse.
• The last word in each of the three canticas is “stelle” (stars).
• The entire poem is comprised of over 14,000 lines
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate’.
(Abandon all hope you who enter here.)
Inscription on Gates of Hell, Inferno, Canto3 line 9
And so, I started on Dante’s Inferno. I was excited to be reading a work that was written seven centuries ago. The going was rough at first but as I got used to Dante’s style, I began to appreciate the brilliance of this work still considered one of the greatest epic poems ever written. The English translation was essential, however, and I’m certain I could not have completed the read without it. The Italian of Dante is no longer in use and the poetic license he uses to keep his verses in terza rima make for even more difficult reading.
Half way through, I was overwhelmed by emotion. It occurred to me that had my dad still been alive, I would surely have proposed to him that he read Inferno to me in Italian. And he would have done it and with love. My father was the kind of man who would have prepared before every reading. He would have brushed up on the various characters and been ready to answer my every question. As I continued reading, I could not shake the heavy cloak of sadness that had descended on me, a cloak soaked in regret for missed opportunities. You may have read one of my previous posts on this blog entitled “100 Things About Myself” where I state “I have very few significant regrets in my life.” Well, this is one…and a very big one. In a sense, I missed the boat with my dad. I never fully sounded the depths of his intellect especially in the latter part of his life when he had much more free time for his intellectual pursuits. Some of the distance between us was geographical. Josée and I moved to Australia, then Bermuda, and never lived in Canada again except for very short periods. It was also a period when I was starting my career and my family and I had very little time for intellectual indulgences outside work. Be that as it may, a sense of melancholy remained with me for the rest of the poem. Never since my father’s death had I thought of him so much, never had I missed him so.
Looking back, taking on Dante’s Inferno was a trying but worthwhile experience for me. I am now satisfied that I understand why Dante is held in such high esteem in the world of literature. Take heed though: this is not light reading. For all but the literature scholars among us, this is hard work indeed. A little voice is telling that I should read the remaining two canticas, Purgatorio and Paradiso. We’ll see.
More important to me than getting to know Dante was getting to know my father better. Reacquainting myself with his library and discovering his treasure-trove of Dante ignited powerful feelings of admiration and fondness. And sadness. And regret. I also realize that in many ways, I’m very much like my dad both in genes and in memes.
Joseph Froncioni
Carlos,
Casini's exact comment is as follows: [9 aprile, circa le sei antimeridiane] So, April 9th around six AM.
I'm curious as to why you wanted to know this.
Hope this helps.
Posted by: Joseph Froncioni | October 29, 2007 at 07:42 AM
Hi, sorry my english isnt good. I have a question, can you say me, in The Divine Comedy of Tomasso Casini edition, what time Dante enter inferno XX?
Thank you
Posted by: Carlos Gómez | October 28, 2007 at 09:29 PM