Virgil speaks to Ulysses, Dante-pilgrim speaks to Guido

Why does Dante-poet construct this sense of decorum and language, translation and comprehension? Why must Virgil play the intermediary, if we look beyond the surface-level reasons Virgil offers to Dante-pilgrim. And why must Dante carry the discussion in the following canto, which, all the obvious differences aside, treats the same sin?

I think Dante (poet) has Virgil talk to Ulysses rather than Dante-pilgrim to highlight the fact that Ulysses and Virgil spoke Greek and that Dante (both pilgrim and poet) is speaking Italian. We’ve learned that this is the first major work of literature written in a “vulgar” language, a people’s language, rather than Latin or Greek. In my translation, Carson says, “and they, being Greek, might not defer to your Italian ego.” I think his choice of words is enlightening. Dante-poet has Dante-pilgrim remain quiet to further stress the fact that he recognizes that the writing of this work in Italian is a departure from the way it has always been. Dante-poet knew Greek, but he writes it so that Dante-pilgrim does not. This represents a refusal of the old ways and a clear delineation of a new direction. The act of writing The Inferno in Italian was revolutionary. As such, I think “Italian ego” is the perfect phrase to refer to the hubris that led Dante to do such a thing.

In the next Canto, Dante-poet (via Virgil) allows Dante-pilgrim to speak to Guido da Montefeltro, because Guido is Italian just as Dante is Italian. They speak the same language. As such, there is no chance for them to misunderstand or offend one another (at least as a result of language).

 In putting these two encounters back-to-back, Dante is illustrating that “regular” people will no longer need an educated intermediary to understand and enjoy literature. The average Italian may not have been able to read The Iliad or The Aeneid, because he/she didn’t speak/read Greek or Latin. However, the average Italian would have been able to read/hear/understand The Inferno.

Translation Project - "Before the Crows"

Before the Crows

                by Fabio Pusteria

Just before the crows,

Into warm yellow, into roads

of ripe wheat, into the last sunlight,

I saw the night coming with owls’ eyes.

Here is the price of heat:

A sky of dark menace, the blue of a nonexistent god,

and inside the blue two vortices,

two blind eagles.

But I accepted it, you know:

nightmares, ears, even the mark of shame,

only to be here, now,

To say I was there.

We definitely struggled with this little 12-line poem. Even the title and the repeated phrase in the first line: “prima dei corvi.” It took us some time to understand that “dei” was a contraction of “of” and “the” (di + i). Then the question was whether we needed either of these, or perhaps only one of them. For the first draft, I had my title as simply “Before Crows.” After more discussion and guidance, however, from both Dr. Davidson and our language partner, “Before the Crows” seemed to be the correct phrase.

“Calore” in line 2 and “caldo” in line 5 also presented a challenge. These mean two different things in Italian, but both translate into “heat” in English. So, how to avoid the repetition of the word “heat” and maintain the subtle differences that these words have in the original language? In the end, I probably would have left “heat” in both lines, but Dr. Davidson’s suggestion of “warm yellow” in line 2 was an acceptable solution to the problem.

“Strade/ di grano mature” (lines 2-3) was the next major sticking point. “Strade” evolved from “straight” into “roads,” and then “rows,” and finally back to “roads.” “Grano” can be translated as “wheat” or “corn” according to the dictionary (though it was tempting at first to simply translate it into “grain,” since that is what it sounds like). In line 10, the poem mentions “ears/orecchie,” so my inclination was to read “grano mature” as “ripe corn,” since we refer to corn as “ears of corn.” Otherwise, “ears” seems completely random and out of place later. The “grano mature” also influenced the translation of “strade” just before it. Because we are talking about fields of something, be it wheat or corn, it didn’t seem to make sense to say “into roads of ripe corn/wheat.” “Rows” seemed much more what was intended. Well…things are not always what they seem. Our Italian partner pointed out that there is an Italian word for “rows,” and if “rows” was what was intended, the poet would have likely used it – “file.” So we changed it back to “into roads of ripe corn.” At this point, it was pointed out to us (by Dr. Davidson) that “ear” and “corn” are probably not related in Italian. We were making a connection from English that doesn’t really exist in the poem. I guess you would call that an Anglicism. We confirmed this with Frederico, our Italian partner, whose look of confusion at the pairing of “ear” and “corn” were all we needed to understand our mistake. Therefore, if there was no wordplay going on between “ear” and “corn,” then “wheat” seemed to be the more correct translation of “grano.” Hence we end up with “into roads of ripe wheat.”

We grappled with plenty of other words and phrases, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll mention just one other: “il marchio d’infamia.” Frederico translated “marchio” initially as “brand” or “label.” Then he also indicated that it could be like a tattoo – a mark or a sign. The literal translation was “brand of infamous.” This is obviously not something we would ever say in English, but our understanding of the poem was not clear enough to flesh out exactly what it might be trying to say. We tossed around “infamous brand,” “infamous mark,” “mark of infamy.” My sense of it was that the speaker is saying he was a marked man after this experience, but the text doesn’t support saying “marked man.” In the end, I settled on “the mark of infamy.” Dr. Davidson’s translation was “the mark of shame,” and I liked that, so I kept it.

Even once the translation was finished, we had difficulty interpreting the meaning until Dr. Davidson gave us the hint: “Vincent Van Gogh.” Suddenly it became clear – the painting with the wheat and the crows. This is an ekphrastic poem based on Van Gogh’s “Wheat Field with Crows.” And what’s the first thing you think of when you think Van Gogh? Ears! That’s where the “ears” come in.

Discussion of Carson's Preface to His Translation of Dante

The introduction to Ciaran Carson’s translation of The Inferno of Dante Alighieri makes several things clear right away. #1- It’s obvious that he doesn’t believe in long, complicated introductions. The “Introduction,” including the “Acknowledgments,” is only twelve pages long. Of these twelve pages, only three are actually devoted to his theories of translation. The majority of the “Introduction” is devoted to Dante’s history and the history of the manuscript of The Inferno. 

#2 – Carson doesn’t believe that an exhaustive knowledge of the source language is necessary to be a good translator. In fact, he states “I was almost completely unfamiliar with the Italian language, let alone Dante’s Italian, when I began reading the Inferno. My primary source was the Temple Classics parallel text…and my translation owes much to it. Some phrases and rhymes have been adapted, adopted or stolen from other translations, including those of Dorothy L. Sayers, Tom Phillips, Mark Musa…I trust these will be seen not as mere plagiarisms, but as homages” (ix-x). In other words, it sounds to me like he didn’t actually translate Dante from Italian, but from other English versions. I can’t help but think that this would make Nabokov crazy, since Nabokov believes that a would-be translator should have extensive knowledge of the source language. On page 120 of “Problems of Translation: Onegin in English,” he states that “one of the main troubles with would-be translators is their ignorance. Anyone who wishes to attempt translation…should acquire exact information in regard to a number of relevant subjects” (120). He is speaking specifically of translating Onegin, but I would venture to guess that this attitude extends to all translation.

#3 – Carson also differs from Nabokov in his opinion of footnotes. Carson does not articulate a specific theory regarding footnotes, but he has chosen to include very few notes in the book, which in-of-itself speaks volumes. I’m sure that we can all recall that Nabokov’s theory of translation calls for “copious footnotes, footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that page so as to leave only the gleam of one textual line between commentary and eternity” (125).

#4 – The last and perhaps most troubling thing that Carson reveals in the “Introduction” about his theory of translation is with regard to sounding like a translation. If Eco believes that “the worse sin of translation is sounding like translation,” then Carson is an unrepentant sinner. In defending his decision to maintain the terza rima of the original, Carson acknowledges those critics who say “too often…the necessity to rhyme will result in lines that sound like a translation” (xix). He does not attempt to dispute this, but rather states “but then some of us expect translations to sound like translations, and to produce an English which is sometimes strangely interesting. He then offers an excuse  for what he already knows is going to be an awkward and strange translation: “In any case, In understand that Dante’s Italian is difficult and strange to many Italians,” completing ignoring the fact that Dante’s Italian was not strange to Italians in Dante’s time.

In the end, it is this decision to maintain the rhyme that puts Carson most at odds with the other theories of translation that we have read. Nabokov states that “’Rhyme’ rhymes with ‘crime’” most of the time when it comes to translating poetry, especially long poems. He believes that the translator should “reproduce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text…The original text will not be able to soar and sing; but it can be very nicely dissected and mounted” (119). Carson is more interested in hearing the text “soar and sing,” and I can’t blame him for wanting it to. However, Musa has said it best in his preface when he states “but my main reason for avoiding rhyme has been the results achieved by all those who have used rhyme in translating The Divine Comedy: they have shown that the price paid was disastrously high…First of all it is apparently impossible always to find perfect rhymes in English for a long stretch of lines – and if a good rhyme gives a musical effect, bad rhyme is cacophonous…A second disadvantage…because of the difficulty imposed by the continuous mechanical necessity of finding rhyme, good or bad, the translator is often forced to use a diction that is aesthetically unacceptable, or even contrary to the spirit of the language” (61-2). I believe that both of these problems (bad rhyme and inconsistent diction) are on display in Carson’s translation. His choice to use “the measures and assonances of the Hiberno-English ballad” that “would allow for sometimes extravagant alliteration, for periphrasis and inversion to accommodate the rhyme, and for occasional assonance instead of rhyme” (xxi) too often brings something to the text that was never there and then obscures much of what should be there.