The weird thing about these book reviews is that I usually always know what I want to say. And what I generally think about this or that thing. But with Dante it was an oops, because my two levels of impressions very sharply do not converge and contradict each other. And if we take translation into account, then even three.
On the one hand, “The Divine Comedy” very clearly reflects, firstly, the ideas of the end of the Middle Ages about the structure of this world, theological concepts, ideas about good and evil, etc. In some places, especially considering the comments, it's quite funny. However, in a number of areas, in some aspects of theology in particular, humanity does not seem to have advanced much since then (for example, the ranks of angels). And in some, like astronomy and geography, on the contrary, it has advanced so much that Dante’s references can already be perceived solely as a metaphor. And in general, over the time since 1300, our world has changed so much and all the accents, values, etc. have shifted so much that The Divine Comedy is no longer perceived as something... realistic, or something. No, I do not claim that in those days everyone was a complete and sincere believer - according to the realities described by Dante, they were also their realities, kings, famous Florentine families, Guelphs and Gibbelins.
It’s funny, by the way, to observe how the text of the Comedy, in all three parts, combines the gods and heroes of antiquity and Dante’s contemporaries, almost from the next street. What did he actually do? - mentioned in “Comedy” those who were part of his contemporary culture in the broadest sense of this concept. And if everything is clear with contemporaries, then with the gods and heroes of antiquity it turns out funnier. U modern man there seems to be a clear boundary between pagan antiquity and Christian Europe of the late Middle Ages. And it wouldn’t even occur to you to mix them. And Dante has the Old Testament prophets, the heroes of the Greek epic, and more or less modern Christian saints - all in one go. I got the impression that for Dante in particular and medieval man In general, the birth of Christ was not such a global divide between two cultures and two worlds - ancient pagan and Christian. Pagan ancient world is naturally included “in the scope” of Christianity, simply because there is no feeling that Christianity might once not have existed or that it might have been a religion of a small people completely different from the modern version. Hence the natural desire to evaluate everything from the point of view of Christianity, including what came before it. Hence Limbo. And from here “again a new tribe is sent from the high heavens” - attempts to find Christianity where it could not be. Virgil must be having fun. Truly, it is not possible for us to predict how our word will respond.
At the same time, “Comedy” amazes with its greatness. Really amazing, I'm not kidding, at least that's my impression. In terms of the effect produced, “Comedy” is quite comparable to the Bible. And here and there there are completely everyday details of some people who were not very significant even in those days, logical and factual oddities, a little inappropriate pathos. And despite this, “Comedy” makes a global impression, it is comprehensive in the truest sense of the word, everything can be included in the “world” of “Comedy” in one way or another. I think it's an amazing transition and an amazing effect. And in general, if we talk about the purely literary merits of the “Comedy” - even omitting the divine theme - few authors succeed in this. Be able to write a lot of private things, details of the biography of individual sinners and righteous people, the structure of hellish circles and heavenly planets - so that in the end the reader sees a single picture without flaw. A picture from which you can safely remove all the characters who played it, and there will still be some sense of awareness of the author's intention. Perhaps Dante described only the entire set of theological ideas about hell, heaven and purgatory of his time - this does not negate what he simultaneously created the whole world in his poem. This is a moment from the realm of purely subjective sensations, which I cannot clearly formulate - a feeling of greatness, completeness. Having nothing to do with religiosity as such, I am generally a non-believer, but The Divine Comedy is too majestic in itself not to awaken some awe.
As for the translation, it just so happens that I read not Lozinsky, but Minaev’s prehistoric translation in the modern poetic edition of I. Evsa. The only plus of this translation, perhaps, is that it is very smooth and simple. Reads without the slightest tension. Cons - firstly, it cannot be called beautiful and cannot be called strong. If “I’m taking you to outcast villages” sends shivers down your spine, then with Minaev everything is boring, less figurative, more banal. There is not a single place that I would want to quote later. Modern editing also delivers: I reliably remember that in one place the translator calls the quarrel of demons in hell a “showdown” (the boys clearly understood the concepts), in another Dante is constantly “tugging” at Virgil, and he, poor thing, does not understand why this is great the Italian poet expresses himself in colloquial Russian. There is also a monstrous place where the particle “b” rhymes with itself three times in a row (Paradise, canto 16, line 77ff).
In general, for my lame taste, this translation is not of scientific or literary interest. But, scoundrels, they are re-publishing it, because Minaev’s copyright expired under Tsar Gorokh, and Lozinsky’s heirs must be paid. Pichal-pichal((
Rating: 10
In fact, it is very difficult to fully comprehend and appreciate the monumental work of Dante Alighieri. Undoubtedly, The Divine Comedy is one of the most significant works that were once written in the centuries-old history of Western civilization.
No matter how much I would like to comprehend all the beauty of this work, unfortunately, I admitted to myself that this is impossible. I can imagine the admiration that reigned in the minds of the readers of the Comedy in the 14th century, who stood on the threshold of a new time that gave a rapid impetus to the modern development of civilization. When, despite all the efforts of the scholastic school, people did not forget ancient Italy, which had died down over the centuries, the flourishing Ancient Rome, tales of glorious ancestors. Thanks to the law of accelerating progress, new thousands and thousands of images eclipsed for modern society those whom Dante describes so thoroughly and masterfully. This is sad, but it couldn’t be otherwise. From a positive point of view, the work helps a modern person to turn to the world of deep antiquity and try to feel what many past generations felt.
The poem amazes with its amazing symmetry. Without going into details, we can say that Dante is a skilled virtuoso not only of words, but also of mathematical thought. He transferred all the extreme ideas about the medieval symbolism of Christian numbers into his work. Perhaps someday I will learn Italian and enjoy Dante's terzinas in the original, but for now I had to be content with the translation, one cannot help but note its magnificence. I don’t know if anyone will agree with me, but as I read, I constantly had the feeling that translating something like this was no easier than writing it; Perhaps this is too strong a word, but without talent this is definitely impossible.
"The Divine Comedy" is beautiful, light, but at the same time complex work, which touches the consciousness so deeply that it is hardly ever possible to forget it!
Rating: 10
This epoch-making work is truly a miraculous monument to itself: weaving together Christian and ancient Greek mythology, through his fantastic journey, Dante tells the story of his life, expresses his worldview and his ideals, his desire to see his native Italy united under the rule of a just Sovereign, and the Church returning to the spiritual enlightenment of the flock, instead of filling the purse. As part of this, showing the then idea of the structure of the world, mythology, and an overview of the political situation in the country.
There is even some downside to such epicness - everything is so filled with church-Christian symbolism, allegories and allusions to Dante’s contemporary realities that I spent probably no less time reading the comments, without which half the charm of the book is missed, than on the poem itself. :)
If we consider the cantics separately, then I liked “Hell” most of all - in “Purgatory” and especially “Paradise” there is too much scholasticism and church astrology, which was not very interesting to me, a non-religious person. Of course, this is useful as an example of the way of thinking of a person in the Middle Ages, but in such quantities it becomes tiring.
Rating: 9
I read the Divine Comedy in 2 translations. And I will say this, Mikhail Lozinsky’s translation is the best. Only in his performance can one enjoy this work. Yes, the Comedy is full of incomprehensible expressions and names, and to understand this text you need to read Ovid - Metamorphoses, Giovanni Boccaccio - Decameron, and naturally Homer's Iliad, as well as all the notes that come after the text. Without this, you will simply read beautiful lines without meaning. Spare no time and effort...
Rating: 10
The work is quite heavy and is recommended for reading, oddly enough, by teenagers. At least, that part of her that is capable of reading more than syllables. The poem is imbued with a lot of references and mentions of Virgil, which puts additional weight on the reader's mind. However, if after ten pages the reader has not given up this work- he will not stop reading it to the end, and sometimes, to be honest, he will begin to re-read it.
Who among us does not remember the imperishable “...abandon hope, everyone who enters here”? These lines are exactly from here. So. The hero of the poem begins his strange journey to hell in company with the shadow of that same Virgil. Hell consists of several circles, which are inhabited by sinners, sorted according to the severity of the crime. Adultery, theft, lying, murder, etc. The horror of hell is strongly mixed with a social component and a veiled political component.
Only for lovers of the beautiful, philosophically minded population who have previously read Faust.
Rating: 10
The Divine Comedy (La Commedia, later La Divina Commedia), a poem written by Dante between 1307 and 1321 and first published in 1555, provides the broadest synthesis of medieval culture and an anthology of the world. A real Medieval encyclopedia of scientific, political, philosophical, moral, theological knowledge. The greatest monument not only Italian but also world literature!
Calling his poem a “comedy,” Dante uses Medieval terminology: a comedy, as the author himself explains, is any poetic work of the middle style with a terrifying beginning and a happy ending, written in in native language; tragedy is any poetic work of high style with an admiring and calm beginning and a terrible end. The word “divine” does not belong to Dante; this is how Boccaccio christened the poem. “The Divine Comedy” is the fruit of the second half of Dante’s life and work. This work most fully reflected the poet’s worldview. Dante appears here as the last great poet of the Middle Ages, a poet who continues the line of development of feudal literature.
The Divine Comedy is constructed extremely symmetrically. It is divided into three parts: the first part “Hell” consists of 34 songs, the second “Purgatory” and the third “Paradise” - 33 songs each. The first part consists of two introductory songs and 32 describing hell, since there can be no harmony in it. The poem is written in terzas - stanzas consisting of three lines. This penchant for numbers is explained by the fact that Dante gave them a mystical interpretation - so the number 3 is associated with the Christian idea of the Trinity, the number 33 should recall the years of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, etc. In total, there are 100 songs in the Divine Comedy (the number 100 is symbol of perfection).
According to Catholic tradition, the afterlife consists of hell, where eternally condemned sinners go, purgatory, the abode of sinners who atone for their sins, and heaven, the abode of the blessed. Dante details this idea and describes the structure of the underworld with graphic certainty, recording all the details of its architectonics. In the opening song, Dante tells how, having reached the middle life path, once got lost in a dense forest and, like the poet Virgil, having saved him from three wild animals that blocked his path, he invited Dante to travel through the afterlife. Having learned that Virgil was sent to Beatrice, Dante’s deceased beloved, he surrenders without trepidation to the poet’s leadership...
A titanic work that may be difficult for modern readers to comprehend due to information overload. To enjoy not only Dante’s flight of thought and imagination, but also the content of one hundred songs, you need to read 200 pages of explanations (in an impeccable translation by Lozinsky) and the poem is worth it. While reading, I heard the author’s voice and intonation, and also, despite the fact that we're talking about about the afterlife, I felt like I was in a world museum Medieval culture, and throughout the 400 pages of the poem I examined the incredible space and personalities that filled it, created from scraps of reality...
Rating: 10
Dante's design is impressive. BUT. A very complex piece. I would like to answer with the words of Gogol “...a rare bird will fly to the middle...” to the middle of the Divine Comedy.
And I must honestly admit, this is so) Perhaps these are just translation difficulties, perhaps the Divine Comedy is for a prepared reader, and the reader must “mature”. In addition, there is one more nuance, the poem is written in terzas, and here it is important to learn the scheme, the connection of terzas with the help of rhymes, in order to learn how to read them correctly.
It’s difficult for me to evaluate the work; I only had enough patience to reach Paradise.
In the Divine Comedy, it is interesting to mark the verses you like, and over time, opening the book on a random page, re-read them... Sometimes, what is written can be given a different meaning, this is how you pose a question. For example, look at HELL, canto two, verse 40 “And the thought that deceived me at first, I, having reflected, destroyed in me...”
Usually, you return to works of such complexity, but after a while, and love for them does not come immediately, after the second or third attempt... Maybe “The Divine Comedy” is one of those.
Rating: no
This book is one of the pillars of the entire world culture, that says it all. It is more than a masterpiece, it is an encyclopedia of most of the Middle Ages, especially the Dark Ages, which left almost no written monuments. In it, the statements of science and philosophy (taking into account the fact that then science and philosophy were one whole), although they are at the level of their time, are completely holistic and consistent. But the Comedy, of course, became famous not for this, but for the beauty of the verse and poetic pictures of the equally creepy, disgusting and magnificent. Even the content of it fully reflects the names of the afterlife: as you ascend from Hell to Paradise, the text becomes less and less life-dramatic and more and more philosophical. Paradise is generally completely abstract: in it Dante communicates with the souls of the righteous - the lights, so the separation between the sinful flesh, in which he is still dressed, and pure spirits is emphasized. But Hell paints pictures of life's dramas: funny and vile and deeply tragic - there really is no place for light, even in the memories of the sinners themselves, two stories are imprinted on me and both are from the eighth circle - deceivers, to which it seems Dante paid at least as much attention , as much as the rest of Hell.
Spoiler (plot reveal) (click on it to see)
This is the story of Griffolino, Dante's former schoolmate, who cheated money out of the wicked and stupid illegitimate son of the Bishop of Siena and who was not so stupid, for he complained to his father - as a result of which Griffolino was accused of heresy and burned alive. And the second - more famous, is the story of Count Guido da Montefeltro - a crafty adviser who confirms the need for personal repentance, without relying on knitters and loosers...
In a word, this is a picture of the ocean of human life - like a small dirty speck on the ocean of Being. Everything outside this speck is the work of God and is described only by philosophical allegories. Perhaps this view of reality is as broad as was allowed in the European Middle Ages by both religion and the level of knowledge, especially considering that at that time the production of knowledge was the sole property of almost exclusively church leaders.
Rating: 10
I just finished reading “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri. In principle, I liked it, but I can say one thing, it’s clearly not for me. Even despite the living language, very vivid and beautiful descriptions, to me, as a person far from poetry and high style, a lot of things remained unclear in the poem. But on the whole I liked the book, although much is unclear... After the poem there are still 200-300 pages of comments and historical information, to be honest, I didn’t waste time reading them, because... it’s long and tedious, but I just wanted to read the classics and immerse myself in the atmosphere of beauty. Actually, Dante and his high style helped me complete this task one hundred percent.
Rating: 9
"The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri is definitely a grandiose work, containing the polyphonic howl of the thousand-fold cultural history of Europe up to the 14th century AD. This is such a deep work that it seems to me personally impossible to comprehend it, or whatever, just understand it at least partially after the first reading. However, at the same time, this work interacts with theological knowledge in countless details, which is why today it forms an ambiguous assessment in terms of final emotions and perceived ideas. This, of course, was said purely on the basis of the subjective perception of this creation, however, nevertheless, it is so, again on the layer of personal assessment - only on it and nothing more.
I would like to build the entire review on this same layer. And this is not only because you want to be able to hide behind, if anything, such a concept as “IMHO”. In the case, for example, if the reader of the review finds errors in terms of understanding the text and its assessment, if there are inaccuracies in rare statements regarding Alighieri’s work. But also from the fact that Dante’s work itself is based purely on his philosophy, on his knowledge of the surrounding reality and his analytical conclusions about the essence of those known natural laws that were discovered at that time. Here it should be clarified that “The Divine Comedy” is a creation written by an extremely intelligent and erudite resident of Europe at the beginning of the 14th century, who, for obvious reasons of the time period of the history of the continent, did not use such methods of scientific inquiry as banal critical thinking, although it had already and had some weight. Here the matter is connected with faith, the Christian faith, which Dante adhered to and on the basis of legends from which, that is, on the basis of the Bible, many of the plots of the Comedy were written. The “Comedy” itself almost completely adheres to the specifics of natural philosophy in terms of providing this or that information about the unknown to the reader: through the prism of theological knowledge, which is completely unacceptable for today’s realities, the reader is presented with fabrications about the cosmos and the nature of things there, which is nothing but a grotesque perception of reality I don’t want to admit it at this moment. And, personally, it seems to me that this work should be understood from this angle today.
Just as the Bible is now an epoch-making collection of epic myths and legends, so this work is a grotesque reproduction of the specifics of human behavior within the framework of certain scenarios of its existence. It is very exciting: to analyze the pictures of nature drawn by the crazy, or brilliant, mind of Dante. This is very informative: to identify political motives and features, again political, of the writer’s views in the faces that were shown in Hell, Purgatory or Heaven. It is very surprising to try to perceive the entire countless layer of knowledge, to review the work done by the author on the source material. And even more, it is extremely fascinating to isolate from the text myriads of mini-plots, small stories both that actually happened in the timeline of the development of human civilization, and those invented by the author. The tragedy of people, no, no, but in some places you can simply take it and develop it into full-fledged works of art, trying to analyze even more deeply the situation into which, by the will of Dante’s mind, the hero he described finds himself.
As a result: “The Divine Comedy” is a huge source of historical knowledge with breakthrough scientific activity and non-trivial justifications unusual for the time period, which today look rather dull and rude, at the same time without relegating creation to the cause of stupidity. On the contrary - raising the entire tolmut above many, many other creations, revealing it as a full-fledged portrait of a historical era, definitely necessary for reading, because history is just a mirror showing the past and facilitating comparison with the present. The scope of imagination is amazing, and the language and style, competently reproduced by Minaev more than a century ago, only increase the effect of reading, which in order to fully evaluate the work will obviously have to be repeated, although this is quite difficult for a person like me, namely, who adheres to science-centric views.
Rating: no
This book is the best example of the setting in which it is easiest and simplest to create science fiction. No, I’m not kidding, I really want to talk now about a book that was written seven centuries ago. Judge for yourself:
1.Hell A place where it's bad. Very bad. The nastier the better (for the author). Rivers of blood and sewage, nightmarish conditions, a lot of recognizable characters and allusions. Lots of locations - from a hellish city to an icy lake. This place can be populated by any monsters, scoundrels of all stripes, the most unimaginable torment can be inflicted on its inhabitants (and you can add to the ranks of these same inhabitants those who you personally do not like). The scope for imagination is inexhaustible, you can add a variety of details to this place, lovingly describe it so that you can draw maps, put the most nightmarish evil in it, and the reader can different ways shock and shock for a very long time. It’s much easier to create something memorable here than in the next two cases.
2. Purgatory. A place where it doesn’t seem good, but it’s not so bad anymore. Here everything is more complicated, much more complicated. And the personalities should be ambiguous, and with the scenery you need to restrain your imagination. Most authors in this case simply cut out their surroundings and add some fantastic details to the Germans.
3.Paradise. A place where everything is very good and, for a science fiction writer, usually very bad. In an ideal place, it is extremely difficult to build a chain of “contrast-conflict-drama” and create even an interesting narrative. The reader is usually left only with the contemplation of sleek scenery and the sublime mental torment of the characters.
Actually, about the “Comedy” itself, I can say that my perception of this work is arch-standard and fits entirely into the above scheme. About hell, I remember in great detail where everything is, and who sits where. Even most of the comments to him have remained in my memory. I will reproduce Purgatory vaguely and in places. Paradise invariably disappears from my mind even after re-reading it.
I read this work while still a middle school student, and I want to note that it fundamentally influenced my character, and indeed my personality as a whole. Of course, “The Divine Comedy” is not a work for everyone, but everyone should “taste it,” at least to the “tip of the tongue.” I won’t dare to write about everything beautiful, and I’ll refuse criticism out of fear, but a huge number moral problems rises in this work, so many vital themes are touched upon that while reading you get a piece of experience from each person whom Dante mentions in his work. And how can one not love these blissful moments after reading any poetry, when the ability to speak in rhyme for some time appears! I recommend! Tamara Vnuchkova, April 6, 2017
Amazing book. The more often you read, the more you discover new things for yourself. In your early youth you get carried away by the description of Hell and do not perceive Heaven, but as you re-read it with age, you begin to understand Heaven. And of course, Lozinsky’s translation is wonderful. In general, this is a reference book that you won’t get tired of.
Rating: 10
Book 1: T. 1. “Hell” - 32.5x26.5 cm, 257 p. Book 2: Vol. 2, 3 “Purgatory” and “Paradise” - 32.5x26.5 cm, 320 p. + 305 s. A copy in the publisher's full leather (shagreen) binding with gold embossing on the spine and on the covers, triple gold edge, in good condition. On the front cover there is blind and gold embossing: the name of the author, the title of the book, the names of the translator and illustrator, and an ornamented frame. On the spine there is gold embossing: author, title, ornamented frames. Composite endpapers made of paper imitating moiré. There was an option for publishing bindings in 3 books. Separately, “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”. The publisher sold The Divine Comedy very expensively: 2 books for 60 rubles, and 3 books for 70 rubles. Wolf sold the volumes separately for 20 rubles. Most of the edition was published in cheaper red calico bindings. IN unbreakable connection With poetic text“The Divine Comedy” also contains beautiful illustrations by the world famous artist Gustav Doré, complementing and explaining various episodes of the great Italian’s journey to the afterlife. One of the most luxurious gift editions mid-19th V. with illustrations by Gustav Dore. The publication is of historical and cultural value as a monument of book and bookbinding art.
In 1839, the first border of Dante's poem came off the press of the Moscow University printing house. Italian. The honor of the only Russian edition of "Inferno" and its notes belonged to the university lecturer Giuseppe Rubini. He came to the northern country at the invitation of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Admiral A.S. Shishkov, and for forty years he enthusiastically studied the unique culture that had revealed itself to him. The university volume of “Hell” was intended for students and was prepared very carefully: the text was reprinted from the Padua edition of “The Comedy” of 1726-1727, the biography was borrowed from the honored historian of Italian literature Girolamo Tiraboski, and the description of the three sides of the beyond world was made by the editor himself. At St. Petersburg University, immigrant, improvisational poet, and linguist I. A. Giustiniani enthusiastically popularized Dante’s poem. Capital owners bookstores They assured that thanks to his efforts, The Divine Comedy sold much better in the forties than before. At this time, unexpected literary news was the adaptation of “Hell” by E. V. Kologrivova. Many critics, taking into account the importance of the first experience, reacted sympathetically or, at least, condescendingly to the initiative of an ordinary writer. Isolated harsh sentences were drowned out by approving responses. The second translation of “Hell” appeared on the pages of “Moskvityanin” for 1853.
Its author turned out to be a doctor by training D.E. Min. He occupied the department of forensic medicine at Moscow University and never dreamed of the laurels of a professional writer. However, in other countries among Dante’s translators there were different people: poets and pedantic professors, kings and privy councilors. . . Following Hell, Ming published Purgatory (1874) and finally Heaven (1879). The translator perceived his many years of ascetic work as the fulfillment of an artistic and civic duty. In the preface to the first part of the poem, he wrote: “I am not afraid of the strict verdict of learned criticism, consoling myself with the thought that I was the first to decide to translate part of the Divine Comedy into the Russian language, which is so capable of reproducing everything great.” By all accounts, Ming managed to make the best pre-revolutionary translation of the poem, but it is far from perfect. The author was able to convey “only part of the images and expressions of the original,” wrote V. Ya. Bryusov. “True, the most important things were preserved, but the shades of thought, all the complexity of speech and a long series of individual images disappeared. Interest in Dante increased noticeably after the 600th anniversary of the poet in 1865. The Russian public was informed about the festivities in Italy by two prominent scientists - Alexander Nikolaevich Veselovsky (1838-1906) and Fyodor Ivanovich Buslaev (1818-1897).
In Dante studies, Veselovsky continued and enriched the ideas of his teacher, the gifted professor at Moscow University P. N. Kudryavtsev, the author of an extensive work on Dante and his time. In the fifties, it was published in Otechestvennye zapiski. Buslaev's passion for the "Divine Comedy" had a longer history. As a freshman, he became familiar with Shevyrev’s dissertation “Dante and His Age,” and since then the medieval poem became his favorite reading and the subject of painstaking study. In Buslaev’s office there was kept a five-volume edition of The Divine Comedy, known as “Minerva” and rich in extensive excerpts from various commentaries on the poem, from the earliest to the latest, dating back to the twenties of the 19th century. "Minerva" was published in 1822 in Padua and was then reprinted several times. In messages from Italy, Buslaev spoke about the amazing love of Italians for their poet. He wrote that during the time of Austrian rule, Dante's compatriots, violating the strictest prohibitions, organized secret meetings to study the poem. These interpreters of the “patriotic bible of the Italian people,” the correspondent reported, instilled in young Italy the most noble feelings: national pride and love of history, art, and native language.
Soon after the anniversary celebrations, the St. Petersburg publisher M. O. Wolf announced a subscription to The Divine Comedy with illustrations by Gustave Doré, which shortly before the anniversary adorned one of the Paris editions of the poem. They amazed connoisseurs with their magnificence and quality and brought great success to the artist. Wolf quit business relationship with his impresario Monsieur Mam, bought the right to publish Dore’s drawings and ordered a translation of “Comedy” to the popular poet D. D. Minaev in the sixties. Minaev translated Dante word for word. At first he took on urgent work with great enthusiasm, but then unforeseen and long intermissions began to appear in his studies more and more often. It happened that the excited publisher sent people to search for the translator, they searched throughout the capital and, finally, again returned the rogue poet to the manuscript. In order not to be distracted from his obligations, the conscientious Minaev asked his friends to subject him to “solitary confinement.” In 1874, he completed "Hell", but due to the "heretical" paintings in this part of the poem, complications arose with censorship permission for its publication.
After numerous requests from the publishers, Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod D. A. Tolstoy instructed them to submit a note stating that Dante reproduced medieval legends in his work. The note was drawn up, the promised permission followed, but with the condition that the book would be quite expensive and would be inaccessible to the general reader. And yet, despite the high price, there were many subscribers. The capital's intellectuals and provincial merchants, public libraries, some remote monastery and even the "Peasant Society of the Village of Sukha" signed up. Wolf's edition of "Comedy", completed in 1879, sold quite widely, but Minaev's translation could satisfy only the most undemanding readers. Bryusov, knowledgeable critics and authoritative dentists shared a similar opinion. The translator’s verse is heavy, and the culture is very limited, wrote, for example, I. N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, at the beginning of Minaev’s translation, the terzas still somehow, lamely, follow each other, but the further, the translation becomes more disorderly and worse.
When thinking about Pushkin and Dante, one involuntarily recalls the following poems:
They beat Zorya. . . from my hands
Old Dante falls out,
A verse begun on the lips
The unread one fell silent -
The spirit flies far away.
The poems were composed during the poet’s stay in the army of Field Marshal I.F. Paskevich, commander of the Separate Caucasian Corps. It is difficult to say which volume of The Divine Comedy Pushkin took with him in 1829, going to the Caucasus, but he could certainly call the ancient and famous edition of the poem translated by the Frenchman Balthazar Grangier, who was proud of being the first provided his compatriots with a happy opportunity to read the entire “Comedy” in their native language. This translation of Alexandrian verses, published in 1596-1597, was the fourth attempt to introduce Dante into the world of French culture. The previous transcriptions remained in the lists. Abbot Grangier did not have enough mastery of the poetic craft and left some expressions that he could not cope with in the original language, and yet his text in three separate volumes was of great value. Only two volumes of this antique edition have survived in Pushkin’s collection. Both are in good condition, beautifully embossed in gold marocaine with gold edges, engraved titles and a portrait of Dante. The binding is clearly of late origin, and the superex libris is from the library of the House of Bourbon. Another Parisian edition of the poem, which was the property of Pushkin, is the second volume from the collected works of Dantin in Italian (Purgatorio, 1823) with comments by Antonio Buttura. In addition to this book ("Purgatory"), in which only the initial twenty-three pages were cut, the poet had at his disposal the aforementioned translations of Artaud and Deschamps. Did Pushkin read the "Comedy" in the original? Among his acquaintances, I. A. Krylov and A. A. Shakhovskoy, A. S. Norov and N. I. Bakhtin, S. E. Raich and F. N. Glinka, A. S. Griboyedov and D. V. spoke Italian. . Dashkov... Gogol considered Italian his second native language, and I. I. Kozlov loved to recite the main passages from the Divine Comedy. Pushkin himself “touched,” as T. G. Tsyavlovskaya wrote, sixteen languages: Old French, French, Latin, Spanish, German, Italian, Serbian, English, Turkish, Arabic, Polish, Church Slavonic, Old Russian, Ancient Greek, Ukrainian and Hebrew. In terms of the poet's mastery of living European languages, Italian undoubtedly followed French. It is not for nothing that Pushkin’s library contains up to thirty Italian books. True, there are three times as many English ones, but it is known that Pushkin did not speak English.
The fruit of the entire life of “Severe Dante” (as Pushkin called the brilliant Italian), a creation that in the Middle Ages became a harbinger of the Renaissance, a work that ranks among the greatest achievements of human thought - this is what they said, they say and will talk about the work that Dante Alighieri himself simply called it “Comedy”, and its descendants called it “Divine”. Calling his poem a “comedy,” Dante uses medieval terminology: a comedy, as he explains in a letter to Cangrande, is any poetic work of the middle style with a terrifying beginning and a happy ending, written in the popular language; tragedy is any poetic work of high style with an admiring and calm beginning and a terrible end. The word “divine” does not belong to Dante, as Giovanni Boccaccio later called the poem. He could not call his work a tragedy only because they, like all genres of “high literature,” were written in Latin. Dante wrote it in his native Italian. “The Divine Comedy” is the fruit of the entire second half of Dante’s life and work. This work most fully reflected the poet’s worldview. Dante appears here as the last great poet of the Middle Ages, a poet who continues the line of development of feudal literature. According to the Catholic tradition, the afterlife consists of hell, where eternally condemned sinners go, purgatory - the abode of sinners who atone for their sins - and heaven - the abode of the blessed. Dante details this idea and describes the structure of the underworld, recording with graphic certainty all the details of its architectonics. In the introductory song, Dante tells how, having reached the middle of his life, he once got lost in a dense forest and how the poet Virgil, having delivered him from three wild animals that blocked his path, invited Dante to travel through the afterlife. Having learned that Virgil was sent to Beatrice, Dante’s deceased beloved, he surrenders without trepidation to the poet’s leadership. More than seven centuries have passed since the appearance of the “Divine Comedy”, and historians and critics still do not stop arguing about what it is: a “guide” to the afterlife (in the minds of an ordinary earthly person) or something more, an attempt by human genius to cognize the unknowable, to find the rational in the irrational, to show people the path from darkness and sorrow to light and joy. Either way, The Divine Comedy is a classic that will live forever. The overall artistic style of the book is romanticism, primarily because the author of the illustrations is Gustave Doré, who is considered one of the last artists of French romanticism. The binding of the book is decorated with elements of the Empire style, but still, in general, romanticism prevails. When Dante's Divine Comedy with magnificent illustrations by Doré was published in Paris at the end of the 60s, M.O. Wolf had the idea to release it Russian edition with the same illustrations. The enormous success that befell the illustrated French edition, the great demand for this edition - in Russia - was to some extent a guarantee that the Russian edition would also meet with sympathy," - this is how the chapter "The Divine Comedy" in Russia begins" from the book by S.F. Librovich "At the book post". The publication of The Divine Comedy, undertaken by Wolf in 1874-79 and published in three luxuriously designed large-format volumes, was unique in its own way. The fact is that before the appearance of Wolf’s illustrated edition, there had not yet been a single complete Russian translation of Dante’s famous work: there were translations of individual songs made by Norov, there were translations of “Hell” - Fan-Dim, Min and Petrov - but completely all three parts " There was no Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. At the request of M.O. Wolf's translation was undertaken by D.D. Minaev; and although he did not know a single word of Italian (and not a single word at all) foreign language), nevertheless coped with this task quite well, ordering translations in prose, and then translating the prose into poetry. Despite the difficulties that the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy was associated with, this book took pride of place among the best gift editions of that time. Referring to S.F. Librovich, “in terms of elegance, clear work, paper, drawings, typographic decorations, binding, the Russian binding of Dante can easily compete with luxurious foreign publications of this kind.” The format of Dante's Divine Comedy is sheet (in folio), or 4°.
An abundance of gold embossing on the binding, an ornate design style, colored calico with a clear texture imitating animal skin - all these are characteristic features of Wolf binding. For "The Divine Comedy" by Dante M.O. Wolf chose a stylish light beige ivory paper that was thick and smooth. It is used for both main text and illustrations. In the first volume of the owner's binding with elements of the publisher's binding, a sheet of rice paper is used between the endpaper engraving and the title page. The main font of The Divine Comedy is Elsevier. Developed on Wolf's personal initiative, Russian Elsevier deserves special attention. The new typeface, developed by Wolf's publishing house in 1874, was called Elsevier. It was cut in sizes from noparelle to large point in roman and italic styles. The basis for the construction of this font was taken from Dutch Elsevier samples of the 17th century, and new punches were cut for specific Russian letters, taking into account the graphic features of Russian fonts of the 18th century. In the drawing of the new Elsevier font from Wolf's foundry we find the following new elements for Russian fonts: The lowercase letters “g”, “k” and the “zh” derived from “k”, as well as “i”, “p” are built on the basis of Latin small letters . Uppercase serifs in lowercase letters are built only on the left side. The designs of the lowercase letters “ъ”, “ы”, “yat” were also changed. 3. In addition, some changes (new elements) were made to the Elsevier font: the designs of the lowercase letters “b”, “c”, “m”, “d” and the capital “d” were brought closer to the cursive patterns of the late 17th – early 18th centuries. The character of the cursive “tail” of the capital letter “d” is repeated in the letters “ts” and “shch”. The capital letter “ch” is similar to the examples of the Slavic semi-ustav. The verticals in the letters “ts”, “sh” and “shch” are constructed similarly to the lowercase Latin letter "u". Due to the fact that the new font was sharply different in design from the previously used sample, individual letters were cut in several versions (old and new styles). New drawing The font is used only in Wolf's editions. Since the late eighties, a font of a different design, the so-called book Elsevier, has become widespread in books. Wolf's Elsevier was not intended for periodicals. It was mainly used for typing fiction. Both “The Divine Comedy” and the collection of poems “Native Echoes” published by Wolf, which we will look at below, and “Faust” were typed in Elsevier font. Elsevier main text – small size, black font color.
Decorative fonts specially designed for this book were used to decorate the binding and title page of the book (we will talk about them in the “Decorative Elements” section). The decorative elements of the design of The Divine Comedy include, first of all, the design of the binding. We looked at three different proprietary bindings. It should be noted that in any of them there is colorful embossing - mainly flat, gold or black. On the three-volume book in the owner's binding, what attracts attention are the engraved letters of Dante's name, located in a semicircle on the front cover of the binding. The title page is black and white, with tonal transitions, made using lithography technique and reproduced by flat printing. The name of the artist who painted the title page is not indicated in the book. In addition to all the listed decorative design elements, the book contains endings. These are narrow, horizontally elongated openwork vignettes, the same height as the lowercase letters in the text. On each page of The Divine Comedy (except for the title page and sheets with Doré's engravings) there is a double rectangular frame, thin, linear, without any decoration, black. At the beginning of each song there is an initial (letter letter) - engraved, very finely made, elongated vertically (3x6 cm). The initials of the "Divine Comedy" are so patterned that it is unclear what kind of letter is hidden in the thin floral ornament . It is very possible that the initials were made using the technique of end-cut woodcuts and reproduced in letterpress printing in the book. There is no filigree in the book. “Doré’s illustrations for the great Italian trilogy were printed in the Russian edition from original French engravings. The right to reproduce these illustrations for Russia was acquired by the Russian publisher M.O. Wolf under a notarial agreement with their French owner Mam. Critics reacted to the publication generally sympathetically, in features to Doré’s magnificent illustrations. “With his artistic flair and deep study of Dante’s great work,” wrote one of the critics, “the French artist rose to the beauty of the poem itself, capturing all the shades of poetic thought and the completely “Dantean” flavor of the “Comedy.” G. Doré, who had long ago gained great fame throughout Europe, not only embellished and explained, but also reproduced in a different form the great Italian trilogy, and depicted it in pictures with the same poetic beauty with which Dante created it in his mighty verses." “, - wrote another critic.” These are the enthusiastic responses about the illustrations of “The Divine Comedy” that we can glean from the book of memoirs of Wolf’s collaborator S.F. Librovich. In fact, G. Doré’s paintings for the “Divine Comedy” are stunning, shocking with the power of their depiction of hell and heaven. The impact of these illustrations on the viewer is achieved thanks to Dora's inherent gift for composition and spectacular lighting. It seems that the master himself is shocked by Dante’s visions and is in a hurry to translate them into images surrounding him. Engravings depicting paintings of “Hell” are characterized by a closed horizon, dark tonality of the engravings, cramped, compressed space filled with countless crowds of sinners. But the frightening abysses of hell are left behind, and the paintings convey the landscapes of purgatory. The tonality of the doré sheets changes. Everything is brightening. A wide, joyful landscape opens before the reader: lush spreading trees, spring, blooming nature, a clear evening sky, sparkling stars, a joyful, inviting distance. And finally, the sheets of “Paradise”, full of dazzling brilliance, crown this grandiose creation by Doré. There are a total of 87 engravings by Doré in the edition, all of them were made using the technique of end-to-end woodcut (they were engraved by A. Pannemaker), in which the French artist worked, and are reproduced in the book with letterpress printing on separate sheets. The general color of the engravings is grey, although sometimes the images are very contrasting. The illustrations are artistic and imaginative, in stripes (there are no side-page illustrations in the book, unlike Perrault's Fairy Tales). To the left of the title page in each volume of The Divine Comedy there is a frontispiece engraving by Doré: a portrait of Dante in profile on a black background - in the first volume; Dante and Virgil contemplating the nature of the night - in the second volume; the army of angels and Beatrice and Dante standing in front of them on the clouds - in the third volume. The frontispiece, like the rest of the engravings in the book, is located on a separate sheet, blank on the other side. There is practically no reference apparatus in the book. There is no table of contents, indexes, footers, or annotations (elements of reference and auxiliary apparatus) in the book. From the scientific reference apparatus there are only page-by-page footnotes and explanations from the translator (they occur frequently, on almost every page). In the text, the footnote is indicated by an Arabic numeral with a parenthesis. At the bottom of the page, below the text below the line, footnotes are located according to the numbering in the text. Information about the title and author can be found on the publisher's binding, on the first title page, and on the title page. Information about the publisher and translator can be found on the title page of the book and on the front cover of the publisher's binding, information about the artist can be found on the bindings of the publisher's and owner's three-volume editions, and on the title page. Information about the printing house in which the book was printed is on the back of the title page. You can find out which part of the book is in front of you by looking at the text titles. There is no information about binding, price, or circulation in the publication. Page numbering is per page, except for sheets with engravings, located under the text in the center of the pages, Arabic numbers. Beginning with “Song One” there are column numbers: each tercet is numbered in an arithmetic progression (1, 3, 6, and so on). The headers and footers are located on the right edge of the double page frame, opposite the corresponding tercets. The title elements of The Divine Comedy include the binding, which contains information about the book. Next in order comes the first title (on it is the title of the book, the author, the name of the part of the book) - although it stands before the title page, it is not a foretitle, since there is no countertitle. Such titles up to the title page are a common phenomenon for Wolff’s editions; apparently, this is due to the fact that the book could be purchased without binding. Then, on the left side of the frontispiece, as expected, there is a richly ornamented title page. It is possible that if a book was bought without a binding, it served as a lithographed publishing cover (then the first title served to protect it from contamination) - and the book could be bound at will. Following the title page there is a second title page, on which, from the information, there is only the name of the part of the book in a double linear frame (the title page, like the first one, with reverse side clean; they are also decorated in the same style). Accordingly, there are three title pages in the three volumes of the publication, six title pages (three introductory ones, before the title page, and three preceding different parts of the book: “Hell”, “Purgatory” and “Paradise”). The general style of the publication can be defined as romanticism. This is primarily facilitated by the paintings of Gustave Doré, one of the last French artists who worked in this style. For visual arts Romanticism is characterized by lyricism, heroic elation, and the desire for climactic, dramatic moments. Romantic artists depicted people in moments of tension in their spiritual and physical strength when they confronted natural and social elements. We can observe all this in Dore. Thus, the sinners in Dore’s paintings – powerful, muscular, full of wild energy – amaze with their tense and expressive poses. In the landscape of romanticism, the main thing was admiration for the power of nature and its spiritualization. These features were also reflected in the work of Gustave Doré. How in " Fairy tales"Perro, and in Dante's "Divine Comedy" we see luxurious dark forests, secluded mountain valleys, multifaceted, perspective landscapes stretching into the sky. All these are signs of romanticism, and since the two "pillars" of the design of the "Divine Comedy" are engravings Dore and the elegant Elsevier font chosen by Wolf for it, I think the overall artistic style of the book fits the definition of “romanticism.”
"Paradise" begins with a long dedication, not included here, to Can Grande, Duke of Verona.
Even in the note to the 31st song of Purgatory, the further course of the poem to the end is indicated. The upcoming heavenly paradise is nothing more than the development of what was already there, in the embryo of the unity of man with God. This development here reaches its highest goal, that is, unconditional, heavenly bliss is achieved through increasing knowledge of the Divine until complete immersion in Him and unity with Him, the highest ideal of deified humanity. Such an ascent is based on the internal development taking place in the poet through two different poetic techniques: 1) the poet visits the nine spheres of heaven step by step, gradually becoming familiar with the bliss of their inhabitants, sharing it and growing up to it; 2) on the way, he perceives about them the corresponding teachings about the essence of the Christian faith. The first serves as the epic twist of the poem, although not very animated; the second gives the poem a predominant didactic character.
Communication along the way with blessed spirits while gradually passing through various spheres little by little prepares the poet for the contemplation of the Divine, and the teachings of Beatrice, expanding his horizons, prepare him for the knowledge of God. The first gives the poet's imagination room to create artistic images; the latter are confined within a strictly scholastic framework. The following order is observed in Beatrice's teachings: she speaks: a) about the structure of the universe, b) about the free will of man, c) about the Fall and redemption, d) about gracious predestination; e) about the three virtues of faith, hope, love, and finally f) about the nature of angels. The nine spheres of bliss are creations of the poet's own imagination, as is also the location of paradise on the planets which, according to the Ptolemaic system, revolve at greater and greater distances around the earth, closed by the sky of the Fixed Stars and the crystalline sky of the First Movement; although Dante distributed the blessed spirits among these seven planets and two heavens according to the principle of increasingly higher and more perfect bliss, nevertheless, he wants to show by this only the varying degrees of their perfection, without at the same time denying the equal and complete happiness of all of them. Above all these nine circles is the fiery sky or Empyrean, the abode of God himself, moving everything, but most motionless, within which all the other heavens move in a passionate, constant desire to touch it: from here Dante sees all the saints gathered in the form of a rose. In this and the one heaven, all the souls of the blessed are distributed gradually, but they are all blessed with one bliss; such is the overall majestic picture of Dante’s “Paradise.” With the childishly naive or crudely sensual poetic depictions of the afterlife in the Middle Ages, Dante's poem has nothing in common except the plot. If there is little movement and action in Paradise, then, by the very essence of the subject, only quiet, gradual, internal development without crises and upheavals is possible there. Beatrice is the central figure of the poem both as Dante's lover and as the personification of divine grace; her beauty becomes more and more enlightened as she ascends from star to star. As for the personal and modern historical side of the poem, Dante is here a prophet, constantly castigating his time with accusatory tirades, and in symbols and allegories setting forth the most enlightened political and moral systems of all known to the Middle Ages.
God, in whom is the origin of all movements, lives in the highest heaven of the Empyrean, from where his light pours out throughout the world to the extent that any object is capable of receiving it. According to Aristotle and the scholastics.
Now the muses alone are not enough for the poet, he also needs Apollo himself; and since, according to the ancient explanation of Probus to the Virgilian Dahlias, one of the peaks of Parnassus serves as the abode of the Muses, and the other of Apollo, the poet now needs both.
Even the song of heaven does not neglect the Peneus leaves” (an allusion to the nymph Daphne, the daughter of the river god of the Peneus river, whom Apollo turned into a laurel), especially since these sheets are now so rarely required both in the fallen art of poetry and in the fallen political importance of the emperor . But the task of poetry is to “ignite a great flame with a spark,” passing on a great idea to posterity and encouraging the latter to put it into practice.
In mid-March, at the “Books of Russia” fair, the annual prize, or rather anti-prize “Paragraph”, was awarded for publications that do not meet the requirements of modern book publishing in terms of translation, editing and proofreading. The expert council that determines the “laureates” is based on reader opinions sent to the editorial office of the Knizhnoe Obozrenie newspaper. So, who has angered the Russian reader today?
“Paragraph” is awarded in four main categories: “Worst Proofreading”, “Worst Translation”, “Worst Editing” and “Full Paragraph” (for complete violation of all book publishing standards) and one additional one: for “particularly cynical crimes against Russian literature”. This year, a bronze structure in the form of a double-broken pen (the letter “Z” is a paragraph mark in the edit) on a crumpled paper sheet was awarded to:
"Full Paragraph"- book "Led Zeppelin. Illustrated biography" Thomas Gareth (2012, "Astrel") and "Elvis." Illustrated biography" Mary Clayton (2012, Astrel publishing house, translator Tatyana Sibileva).
"Worst translation" — "The Divine Comedy", "Faust" and other works classical literature translated by Irina Evsa.
"Worst Editing" — "Winter's Bone" Daniel Woodrell (2012, “ABC”; translator Maxim Nemtsov).
"Honorable Illiteracy" — "Illustrated Constitution of Russia" by Natalia Khudyakova and Maxim Gorelov.
Problems with translation are the most common “topic” in modern book publishing. And “Worst Translation” is generally the prize’s favorite category; as in previous years, it remains the most popular.
The editions of “Led Zeppelin” by Thomas Gareth and “Elvis” by Mary Clayton were punished for the same offenses - negligence in translation and editing: repetitions and omissions of words, inconsistency of cases of nouns and tenses of verbs. “Having become close to singer Terry Reed, Page was pointed in the direction of Robert Plant,” a quote from a book about Led Zeppelin. Or: “Graceland became a haven for a constant influx of onlookers” - from the biography of Elvis Presley. A lazy student receives approximately the same “masterpieces” of translation every day by typing text from a textbook into an online translator.
“The worst translator” Irina Evsa is a poet and translator from Kharkov. Since the mid-2000s, she has translated all of Omar Khayyam's rubaiyat, Dante's The Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost and Regained, Goethe's Faust, and all of Shakespeare's major works. This exceptional performance is based on routine editing of classic translations whose copyright has expired. When releasing her own translations, Irina Evsa took as a basis precisely those texts for the use of which she would not face penalties.
Brisk translations, brisk trade...
For example, “The Divine Comedy” turns out, even without close viewing, to be simply a distorted translation by D. D. Minaev (1835-1889). It must be said that Minaev’s translation, performed by the poet from 1874 to 1879, was repeatedly criticized already in the 19th century. The heaviness and disorder of the poetic style was noted, for example, by the famous Russian poet V. Ya. Bryusov and the less famous writer I. N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov. The latter wrote about the quality of Minaev’s translation: “The translator’s verse is heavy, and the culture is very limited<…>at the beginning of Minaev’s translation, the terzas still somehow, limpingly, follow each other, but the further it goes, the more disorderly and worse the translation becomes.”
By the way, the translation method that Minaev used can hardly be called acceptable: the translator himself did not know a single word in Italian (and indeed not a single foreign language). To translate the language of the Italian poem into Russian poetry, he ordered translations in prose, and then he himself did a poetic translation. Despite all the shortcomings of the translation, Minaev’s merit is certainly the acquaintance of the Russian reading public with works of European literature.
Or let’s turn to “Our William Shakespeare.” The famous translation of Hamlet, carried out by Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (1858-1915), did not escape the sad fate of falling into the hands of a lover of translating foreign literature. The prince worked on the translation from 1889 to 1898; the translation with extensive commentary in 3 volumes was published in 1899. The translation has been republished several times (for example, in 2010), so Evsa’s “Hamlet” cannot be called anything other than a bad reissue.
Find 10 differences:
Translation by K.R.
The slings and arrows of cruel fate or,
Fight to end them? Die, sleep -
No more; and know that this dream will end
With heartache and a thousand torments,
To which the flesh is doomed - oh, this is the outcome
Much desired!
Translation by Irina Evsa:
To be or not to be? That is the question. What's above:
To endure blows in the soul with patience
The slings and arrows of cruel fate,
Armed against a sea of disasters,
Start a battle. Die. Fall asleep.
And know for sure that you will end this dream
With heartache, with a thousand torments,
Inherent in our flesh. Here's the outcome
Desired.
Of course, copyright law in Russia has always been bad, but the translator still did not dare to attempt to translate, for example, the famous M. L. Lozinsky (1886-1955). How did the outstanding Russian translator translate the texts? Shakespeare - line by line, conveying all the intonation moves, achieving a seemingly impossible closeness to the original - after all English words shorter than Russians, but you can’t stretch out a poetic line. Akhmatova called Lozinsky “an incomparable poet-translator”; Blok responded enthusiastically: “blocks of poetry of the highest standard. Gumilyov considers him a higher translator than Zhukovsky.”
Lozinsky told what to read literary works translations were not accepted in their house. We read everything in the original; if we didn’t know the language, we learned the language and then read it. “I must admit, I read very little of other people’s translations,” he wrote. — Somehow I always wanted to read it in the original. That’s why I encounter very important gaps in my knowledge of world literature: sometimes I didn’t have time to read it, sometimes I only had a translation at hand.” Now compare the size of the disaster: “rewritten” translations of modern authors and filigree work with Lozinsky’s originals.
In “The History of One Translation of the Divine Comedy,” Lozinsky wrote about preparations for Dante’s adaptation: he studied the poet and his era; in the libraries of Leningrad and Moscow I read dozens of serious works about Dante; in his personal library he kept many annotated editions of the Divine Comedy, from Landino (1481) to Casini-Barbi (1944) and Scartazzini-Vandelli (1946). The unclear parts of the poem were the subject of dispute among commentators from all over the world - Lozinsky had to make a choice between interpretations; in cases where different understandings were allowed, it was necessary to make sure that the Russian text could be understood in two or three ways.
“During these seven years I worked on other things. In fact, I spent 576 working days on the translation of Dante, and it happened that in a whole day I would master only 6 verses, but it also happened that I would translate 69, on average - about 24 verses a day... The deeper I delved into “The Divine comedy,” the more I admired its greatness. In world literature it rises like a mountain range, unobstructed by anything.” In 1946, Lozinsky became the first translator who was awarded the State (Stalin) Prize, 1st degree, “for an exemplary translation in verse of Dante’s The Divine Comedy.”
And the translator of “Faust” N. A. Kholodkovsky (1858-1921)? Painstaking, huge work on the translation over the course of more than forty years! For this translation in 1917, the Academy of Sciences awarded him the Prize. A. S. Pushkin. Of course, it hardly took the winner of the “Worst Translation” award to “correct” this text even a year of work. At the same time, in 2009, two “Fausts” were released, on one, having found a translator, we read: N. Kholodkovsky, I. Evsa. On the other - it’s already simpler: I. Evsa. And really, what is there...
“Unfortunately, there are very few good translators in general now,” comments the chairman of the Paragraph jury, general director and editor-in-chief of the Book Review, A. M. Nabokov. — This problem is largely due to the fact that translators have low fees. This is why the quality suffers greatly.”
Of course, for a “retelling close to the text,” or rather to the previous translation, others would be embarrassed to take money. But what is surprising is the regularity with which publishing houses like EKSMO re-publish such mediocre translations. And, apparently, they even order them. Probably, if you try, you can find something good in what is happening: on Ozone there are a huge number of books of world classics in poor translation - beautiful, well-illustrated publications. Perhaps, after the publication of “Paragraph” 2013, someone will remember the need to look not only at the title of the book and the beautiful cover. After all, today there are few people who read in the original language.
Current page: 1 (book has 9 pages in total)
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy
Hell
Translated from the Italian size of the original
Dmitry Min.
Preface
More than ten years have passed since I first decided to try my hand at translation. Divina Commedia Danta Alighieri. At first I had no intention of translating it completely; but only in the form of experience did he translate into Russian those passages that, when reading the immortal poem, most struck me with their greatness. Little by little, however, as you study Divina Commedia, and feeling that I was able to overcome, at least in part, one of the most important obstacles in a difficult task - the size of the original, within two years I managed to complete the translation of the first part of Dante's Poem - Inferno. More than anyone aware of the weakness of my work, I hid it under a bushel for a long time, until finally the encouraging judgments of my friends, to whom I read excerpts from my translation, and the even more unusually flattering review of Mr. Professor S.P. Shevyrev forced me in 1841, for the first time, presented to the public with the V song of Hell, published in the same year in Moskvityanin. After that, I published another excerpt in Sovremennik, published by Mr. Pletnev, and finally, in 1849, songs XXI and XXII in Moskvityanin.
Having made sure that my work is not completely insignificant and if it does not have any special merits, then at least it is quite close to the original, I now decide to fully present it to the judgment of lovers and connoisseurs of such a colossal creation as Divna Socialtia Danta Alighieri.
I consider it necessary to say a few words about the publication of my translation itself.
A poet like Dante, who reflected in his creation, as in a mirror, all the ideas and beliefs of his time, filled with so many relationships to all branches of the then knowledge, cannot be understood without explaining the many hints found in his poem: historical, theological, philosophical, astronomical, etc. Therefore, all the best editions of Dante's Poem, even in Italy, and especially in Germany, where the study of Dante has become almost universal, are always accompanied by a more or less multifaceted commentary. But compiling a commentary is an extremely difficult task: in addition to a deep study of the poet himself, his language, his views on the world and humanity, it requires a thorough knowledge of the history of the century, this extremely remarkable time, when a terrible struggle of ideas arose, the struggle between spiritual and secular power. Moreover, Dante is a mystical poet; The main idea of his poem is understood and explained differently by different commentators and translators.
Not having so much extensive information, having not studied the poet to such depth, I in no way take upon myself the responsibility, passing on a weak copy from the immortal original, to be at the same time his interpreter. I will limit myself to adding only those explanations without which the non-connoisseur reader is unable to comprehend a highly original creation, and, consequently, is unable to enjoy its beauties. These explanations will consist mostly of historical, geographical and some other indications related to the science of that time, especially astronomy, physics and natural history. My main leaders in this matter will be German translators and interpreters: Karl Witte, Wagner, Kannegiesser and especially Kopish and Philalethes (Prince John of Saxony). Where necessary, I will quote from the Bible, comparing them with the Vulgate - the source from which Dante drew so abundantly. As for the mysticism of Dante's Poem, I will give, as briefly as possible, only those explanations that are most accepted, without going into any of my own assumptions.
Finally, most of the publications and translations of Dante are usually preceded by the life of the poet and the history of his time. No matter how important these aids are for a clear understanding of the wonderfully mysterious creation, I cannot currently add them to the publication of my translation; however, I would not refuse this work if the interest aroused by my translation required it from me.
I consider myself quite happy if my translation, no matter how colorless it is in front of the unattainable beauties of the original, will retain so much of its greatness that in the reader who did not enjoy the beauties Divina Commedia in the original, will arouse the desire to study it in the original. Studying Dante for people who love and comprehend the graceful and great gives the same pleasure as reading other poets of genius: Homer, Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Goethe.
I leave it to people who are more knowledgeable than me to judge whether I was able to retain in my translation even a faint spark of that divine fire with which the gigantic building is illuminated - that poem that Philalethes so successfully compared with a Gothic cathedral, fantastically bizarre in detail, marvelously beautiful, majestic and solemn overall. I am not afraid of the strict verdict of learned criticism, who amused myself with the thought that I was the first to decide to translate a part of the immortal creation into the Russian language, so capable of reproducing everything great. But horrified by the thought that with a daring feat I offended the poet’s shadow, I address her in his own words:
Vagliami "l lungo studio e "l grande amore,
Che m"han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
Inf. Cant I, 83–84.
Canto I
Content. Having turned away from the straight road in deep sleep, Dante awakens in a dark forest, with the faint flickering of the moon he goes further and, before the day dawn, reaches the base of a hill, the top of which is illuminated rising sun. Having rested from fatigue, the poet ascends the hill; but three monsters - a Leopard with a motley skin, a hungry Lion and a skinny Wolf - block his way. The latter frightens Dante so much that he is ready to return to the forest, when Virgil’s shadow suddenly appears. Dante begs her for help. Virgil, to console him, predicts that the She-Wolf, who frightened him there, will soon die from the Dog, and, to lead him out of the dark forest, offers herself to him as a guide on his journey through Hell and Purgatory, adding that if he wishes to ascend later to Heaven, he will find a counselor who is a hundred times more worthy of him. Dante accepts his offer and follows him.
1. In the middle of our life's path, 1
According to the monk Gilarius, Dante began to write his poem in Latin. The first three verses were:
Ultima regna canam, fluido contermina mundo, Spiritibus quae lata patent, quae praemia solvuut Pro meritis cuicunque suis (data lege tonantis). - “In dimidio dierum meorum vadam adportas infori.” Vulgat. Biblia.
In the middle of the and. roads, i.e., at the 35th year of life, - the age that Dante in his Convito calls the pinnacle of human life. By all accounts, Dante was born in 1265: therefore, he was 35 years old in 1300; but, moreover, from the XXI canto of Hell it is clear that Dante assumes the beginning of his pilgrimage in 1300, during the jubilee declared by Pope Boniface VIII, on Holy Week on Good Friday - the year in which he was 35 years old, although his poem was written much later; therefore, all incidents that happened later than this year are given as predictions.
Overwhelmed by sleep, I entered the dark forest, 2
Dark forest, according to the usual interpretation of almost all commentators, means human life in general, and in relation to the poet - his own life in particular, that is, a life full of delusions, overwhelmed by passions. Others, by the name of forest, mean the political state of Florence at that time (which Dante calls trista selva, Clean XIV, 64), and, combining all the symbols of this mystical song into one, give it political meaning. For example: as Count Perticari (Apolog. di Dante. Vol. II, p. 2: fec. 38: 386 della Proposta) explains this song: in 1300, in the 35th year of his life, Dante, elected prior of Florence, was soon convinced of the troubles , intrigues and frenzies of parties, that the true path to the public good is lost, and that he himself is in dark forest disasters and exiles. When he tried to climb hills, the pinnacle of state happiness, he was presented with insurmountable obstacles from his native city (Leopard with a motley skin), pride and ambition of the French king Philip the Fair and his brother Charles of Valois (Leo) and the self-interest and ambitious plans of Pope Boniface VIII (She-wolf). Then, indulging in his poetic passion and placing all his hope in the military talents of Charlemagne, Lord of Verona ( Dog), he wrote his poem, where, with the assistance of spiritual contemplation (donna gentile) heavenly enlightenment (Luchia) and theology ( Beatrice), guided by reason, human wisdom, personified in poetry (Virgil), he goes through places of punishment, purification and reward, thus punishing vices, consoling and correcting weaknesses and rewarding virtue by immersion in the contemplation of the highest good. From this it is clear that the ultimate goal of the poem is to call a vicious nation, torn apart by strife, to political, moral and religious unity.
The true path is lost in the hour of alarm.4. Ah! it's hard to say how scary it was
This forest, so wild, so dense and fierce, 3
Fierce – an epithet not peculiar to the forest; but just as the forest has a mystical meaning here and means, according to some, human life, and according to others, Florence, agitated by the discord of parties, then this expression, I think, will not seem entirely inappropriate.
That in his thoughts he renewed my fear. 4
Dante escaped this life, full of passions and delusions, especially the discord of the party, into which he had to plunge as the ruler of Florence; but this life was so terrible that the memory of it again gives birth to horror in him.7. And death is only a little more bitter than this turmoil! 5
In the original: “It (the forest) is so bitter that death is a little more painful.” – The eternally bitter world (Io mondo senia fine amaro) is hell (Paradise XVII. 112). “Just as material death destroys our earthly existence, so moral death deprives us of clear consciousness, the free manifestation of our will, and therefore moral death is slightly better than material death itself.” Streckfuss.
But to talk about the goodness of heaven,
I’ll tell you everything I saw in those minutes. 6
About those visions that the poet talks about from verses 31–64.10. And I myself don’t know how I entered the forest:
I fell into such a deep sleep 7
Dream means, on the one hand, human weakness, darkening of the inner light, lack of self-knowledge, in a word - sleep of the spirit; on the other hand, sleep is a transition to the spiritual world (See Ada III, 136).
At that moment when the true path disappeared.13. When I woke up near the hill, 8
Hill, according to the explanation of most commentators, it means virtue, according to others, ascent to the highest good. In the original, Dante awakens at the foot of a hill; base of the hill- the beginning of salvation, that minute when a saving doubt arises in our soul, the fatal thought that the path along which we have followed until this moment is false.
Where is the limit of that vale? 9
The limits of the vale. The vale is a temporary area of life, which we usually call the vale of tears and disasters. From the XX Song of Hell, Art. 127–130, it is clear that in this vale the flickering of the month served as the poet’s guiding light. The month signifies the faint light of human wisdom. You save.
In which horror entered my heart, -16. I looked up and saw the head of the hill
In the rays of the planet that is on the straight road 10
The planet that leads people on a straight path is the sun, which, according to the Ptolemaic system, belongs to the planets. The sun here has not only the meaning of a material luminary, but, in contrast to the month (philosophy), it is complete, direct knowledge, divine inspiration. You save.
Leads people to accomplish good deeds.19. Then my fear, so much, fell silent for a while.
Over the sea of hearts raging into the night,
Which proceeded with a lot of anxiety. 11
Even a glimpse of divine knowledge is already able to reduce in us partly the false fear of the earthly vale; but it completely disappears only when we are completely filled with the fear of the Lord, like Beatrice (Ada II, 82–93). You save.22. And how, having managed to overcome the storm,
Stepping barely breathing onto the shore from the sea,
Doesn't take his eyes off the dangerous waves:25. So I, still arguing with fear in my soul,
He looked back and fixed his gaze there, 12
That is, he looked into the dark forest and this vale of disasters, in which to remain means to die morally.
Where no one alive walked without grief.28. And having rested in the desert from labor,
I went again, and my stronghold is strong
It was always in the lower leg. 13
When climbing, the leg on which we rely is always lower. “Ascending from the lower to the higher, we move forward slowly, only step by step, only then, as we firmly and truly stand on the lower: spiritual ascent is subject to the same laws as physical.” Streckfuss.31. And now, almost at the beginning of the steep mountain,
Covered with motley skin, circling,
Leopard rushes both light and agile. 14
Leopard (uncia, leuncia, lynx, catus pardus Oken), according to the interpretation of ancient commentators, means voluptuousness, Leo - pride or lust for power, She-Wolf - self-interest and stinginess; others, especially the newest ones, see Florence and the Guelphs in Leo, France and especially Charles Valois in Leo, the Pope or the Roman Curia in She-Wolf, and, according to this, give the entire first song a purely political meaning. According to Kannegiesser's explanation, Leopard, Leo and She-Wolf mean three degrees of sensuality, moral corruption of people: Leopard is awakening sensuality, as indicated by its speed and agility, motley skin and persistence; The lion is a sensuality that has already awakened, prevailing and not hidden, demanding satisfaction: therefore he is depicted with a majestic (in the original: raised) head, hungry, angry to the point that the air around him shudders; finally, the She-Wolf is the image of those who have completely given themselves over to sin, which is why it is said that she has already been the poison of life for many, and therefore she completely deprives Dante of peace and constantly drives him more and more into the vale of moral death.34. The monster did not run away from sight;
But before that my path was blocked,
I thought about escaping downstairs more than once.
37. The day was already dawning, and the sun was setting out on its journey
With a crowd of stars, as in the moment when it
Suddenly I felt a sense of divine love40. Your first move, illuminated with beauty; 15
In this terzina the time of the poet’s journey is determined. It, as stated above, began on Good Friday in Holy Week, or March 25: therefore, around the spring equinox. However, Philalethes, based on the XXI canto of Hell, believes that Dante began his journey on April 4. – Divine love, according to Dante, there is a reason for the movement of celestial bodies. – A crowd of stars denotes the constellation Aries, into which the sun enters at this time.
And everything flattered me with hope then:
Animal luxurious fleece,43. The hour of morning and the young star. 16
The poet, enlivened by the radiance of the sun and the season (spring), hopes to kill Leopard and steal his motley skin. If Bars means Florence, then the calm state of this city in the spring of 1300, when the White and Black parties were in apparently perfect agreement with each other, could indeed give rise to some hope for the duration of peace in a superficial observer of events. But this calm was only apparent.
But again fear awakened in my heart
A fierce Lion, appearing with proud strength. 17
As a symbol of France, which “darkens the entire Christian world” (Pur. XX, 44), the Lion here represents violence, a terrifying material force.46. He seemed to come out to me,
Hungry, angry, with a majestic head,
And, it seemed, the air was trembling.49. He walked with the She-Wolf, lean and crafty, 18
Dante turned the wolf of Scripture into a she-wolf (lupa) and even more harshly outlined the greed of the Roman Curia (if it should be understood under the name She-Wolf), for lupa in Latin has another meaning. Dante's entire poem is directed against the Roman Curia (Ada VII, 33 et seq., XIX, 1–6 and 90-117, XXVII, 70 et seq.; Pur. XVI, 100 et seq., XIX, 97 et seq., XXXII , 103–160; Raya IX, 125, etc., XII, 88, etc., XV, 142, XVII, 50, etc., XVIII, 118–136, XXI, 125–142, XXII, 76, etc. , XXVII, 19 126).
What, in thinness is full of everyone’s desires,
For many, this life was poison.52. She was such a hindrance to me,
What, frightened by the stern appearance,
I was losing hope of going up.55. And like a miser, always ready to save,
When the terrible hour of loss comes,
Sad and crying with every new thought:58. So the beast in me shook the calm,
And, coming to meet me, he drove all the time
Me to the land where the sun's ray has faded.61. While I was falling headlong into terrible darkness,
An unexpected friend appeared before my eyes,
Voiceless from long silence. 19
Mute, in the original: fioco hoarse. This is a clever hint at the indifference of Dante's contemporaries to the study of Virgil's works.64. “Have mercy on me!” I suddenly cried out 20
In the original: Miserere de me, and there is an appeal not to Virgil alone, but also to divine goodness. At the foot of Mount Purgatory, the souls of those violently killed sing the same thing. (Pure V, 24.)
When I saw him in a deserted field,
“O whoever you are: a man or a spirit?”67. And he: “I am a spirit, I am no longer a man;
I had Lombard parents, 21
68. Virgil was born in the town of Andes, the present village of Bande, otherwise Pietola, near Mantua, on the Mincio. His father, according to some reports, was a farmer, according to others, a potter.
But in Mantua those born into poverty.70. Sub Julio I saw the light late 22
He was born in 684 AD. Rama, 70 years BC, under the consuls M. Licinius Crassus and Prince. Pompey the Great, on the Ides of October, which, according to the current calendar, corresponds to October 15. – Virgil, poet of the Roman Empire (princeps poetarum), saying that he was born under Julius Caesar, wants to glorify his name: Dante looks at Caesar as a representative of the Roman Empire; those who betrayed Caesar, Brutus and Cassius, are punished by him with cruel execution (Ada XXXXV, 55–67). – Sub Julio there's one of those Latin expressions, of which there are so many found in Dante’s poem, according to the general custom of not only poets and prose writers of that time.
And in Rome he lived in the happy age of Augustus;
In the days of the gods I became numb in false faith. 23
With these words, Virgil seems to want to justify himself in his paganism.73. I was a poet, and I sang the truthful
Ankhiz's son, who built a new city,
When the arrogant Ilion was burned.76. But why are you running back into this darkness?
Why are you not in a hurry to the joyful mountains,
To the beginning and cause of all joy? 24
Virgil asks why Dante, being a Christian, did not rush to the true path leading to a happy mountain or hill? - Dante, without answering him to this, pours out animated praise to the poet. This seems to express the desire of the poet, who has experienced the sorrows of life, to find solace in poetry.79. – “Oh, are you Virgil, that stream that
The waves of words roll like a wide river?”
I answered, bowing my eyes shyly. 25
Virgil in the Middle Ages was in great respect: the common people looked at him as a sorcerer and soothsayer, enthusiasts as a semi-Christian, the reason for which, in addition to his fame, passed down from antiquity, was his famous fourth eclogue. He was the favorite poet of Dante, who taught him for a long time and valued him unusually highly, as can be seen from many places in his poem. However, Dante’s Virgil is not only his favorite poet, but also a symbol of human wisdom, knowledge, and philosophy in general, in contrast to Beatrice, who, as we will see in her place, personifies divine wisdom - Theology.82. “O wondrous light, oh the honor of other singers!
Be kind to me for my long study
And for the love for the beauty of your poems.85. You are my author, my mentor in song;
You were the one from whom I took
A wonderful style that has earned me praise. 26
That is, the style is Italian. Dante was already famous for his Vita Nuova and poems (Rime).88. Look: here is the beast, I ran before him...
Save me, O wise one, in this valley...
It is in my veins, it stirs the blood in my heart.91. – “You must take a different path from now on,”
He answered, seeing my sorrow,
“If you don’t want to die here in the desert.94. This fierce beast that has troubled your chest,
On his way he does not let others through,
But, having stopped the path, he destroys everyone in battle.97. And he has such a harmful property,
That greed is not satisfied by anything,
Following the food, he pushes even harder.100. He is associated with many animals,
And with many more he will copulate;
But the Dog is near, before whom he will die. 27
Under the name of the Dog (in the original: greyhound - veltro) most commentators mean Cana Grande (Great) della Scala, ruler of Verona, a noble youth, a stronghold of the Ghibellines and subsequently the representative of the Emperor in Italy, on whom Dante and his party had great hopes, but who while Dante's hopes began to be realized, he died in 1329 at the age of 40. But since Kan was born in 1290, and in 1300, the year of Dante’s journey in the grave world, he was 10 years old, it must be thought that Dante inserted this prediction about him later, or completely redid the beginning of the poem. Troya(Veltro allegorlco di Dante. Fir. 1826) in this Dog they see Uguccione della Fagiola, the leader of the Canov troops, the same one to whom he dedicated his Hell (Paradise is dedicated to Can), and who even before 1300 and before 1308, when Can was still young , rebelled for the Ghibellines in Romagna and Tuscany against the Guelphs and the temporal power of the popes. Be that as it may, Dante hid with them the one who should be understood by the symbol of the Dog: perhaps the state of political affairs of that time required this.103. Not copper and earth will turn into food for the Dog, 28
Copper is used here instead of metal in general, as in the original: peltro (in Latin peltrum), a mixture of tin and silver, instead of silver or gold. The meaning is this: he will not be seduced by the acquisition of possessions (land), or wealth, but by virtue, wisdom and love.
But virtue, wisdom and love;
Between Feltro and between Feltro the Dog will be born. 29
Between Feltro and between Feltro. If we understand by the name of the Dog Can the Great, then this verse defines his possessions: all of Marcha Trivigiana, where the city of Feltre is located, and all of Romagna, where Mount Feltre is: therefore, all of Lombardy.106. He will save Italy again for the slave, 30
In the original: umile Italia. It seems that Dante here imitated Virgil, who said in canto 3 of the Aeneid: humllemque videmus Italiam.
In whose honor the maiden Camilla died,
Turnus, Euriades and Nisus shed blood.109. The strength of the She-Wolf will rush from city to city,
Until she is imprisoned in hell,
Where did envy let her into the world? 31
"Invidia autem diaboli mors introivit in orbem terrarum." Vulg.113. So believe me, not to your detriment:
Follow me; to the fatal region,
Your leader, I will lead you from here.115. You will hear desperate, evil grief; 32
The souls of the great men of antiquity, kept, according to the concepts of the Catholic Church, on the eve of Hell or Limbo and not saved by baptism. They died in body, but desire a second death, that is, the destruction of the soul.
You will see a host of ancient souls in that country,
Those who vainly call for a second death.118. You will see the quiet ones who are on fire 33
Souls in Purgatory.
They live in hope that to the empyrean
Someday they too will ascend.121. But I don’t dare bring you into the empyrean:
There is a soul there that is a hundred times more worthy; 34
An allusion to Beatrice appearing to Dante in the earthly paradise (Pure XXX) and leading him to heaven.
When I am separated, I will leave you with her.124. Zane Monarch, whose power is like an adversary 35
In the original: Imperadore. The Emperor, as the highest judge on earth, seems to the poet the most worthy likeness of the Supreme Judge in heaven.
I did not know, now it forbids me
Lead you into His holy city. 36
God does not want human reason (Virgil) to achieve the highest heavenly bliss, which is a gift from above. You save.127. He is the King everywhere, but there He rules: 37
According to Dante, the power of God dominates everywhere, but His throne is in the highest heaven (empyrean), in which the other nine circles of heaven revolve around the earth, which, according to the Ptolemaic system, constitutes the center of the universe.
There is His city and unapproachable light;
O happy is he who enters His city!”130. And I: “I pray to you, poet,
That Lord, you did not glorify Him, -
May I avoid this and greater troubles, 38
Greater troubles, that is, hell, through which I will go.133. Lead to the land where you directed the path:
And I will ascend to the holy gates of Peter, 39
The Holy Gates of Petrov are the gates described in Pure. IX, 76. The mourners are the inhabitants of hell.
And I will see those whose sorrow you presented to me.”136. Here he went, and I followed him.
Canto II
Content. Evening is coming. Dante, calling on the muses to help, tells how at the very beginning of the journey a doubt arose in his soul: whether he had enough strength for a bold feat. Virgil reproaches Dante for his cowardice and, encouraging him to perform a feat, explains to him the reason for his coming: how, on the eve of hell, Beatrice appeared to him and how she begged him to save the dying man. Encouraged by this news, Dante accepts his first intention, and both wanderers set off on their destined path.
1. The day was passing and darkness fell in the valleys, 40
Evening of March 25, or, according to Philalethes, April 8.
Allowing everyone on earth to rest
From their labors; I'm the only one4. Prepared for battle - on a dangerous journey,
For work, for sorrow, what is the true story about?
I dare to draw from memory.7. O highest spirit, O muses, calls to you!
O genius, describe everything that I have matured,
May your proud flight appear!10. I began like this: “With all the power of my soul
Measure first, travel poet;
Then hurry with me on a brave journey. 41
The whole day passes in fluctuations of the mind; night comes and with it new doubts: the determination excited by reason has disappeared, and faith wavers. Dante asks himself: is he capable of performing a brave feat?13. You said that Silvius is the parent, 42
Aeneas, the son of Venus and Anchises, the father of Silvius from Lavinia, led by the Sibyl of Cumae, descended into Tartarus (Enemda VI) in order to learn from the shadow of his father, Anchises, how he could defeat Turnus, the king of the Rutuli.
Still alive and decaying, he descended
Witness to the underground monastery.16. But if the lot decreed this for him,
Then remembering how much fame he gained
And who is this husband? How truthful was he?19. A sound mind will consider him worthy:
He was chosen in order to create
Great Rome and to be the father of the state, -22. The powers of the one where – to be honest – * 43
To truly say - a hint that the Ghibelline spirit is prompting him to hide the truth, or to say the opposite. Lonbardi.
The Lord himself set the sacred throne
The Petrov governors should sit down.25. In this journey - you glorified him with them -
He learned the way to victory over the enemy
And he gave the tiara to the popes.28………………… …………………………..
………………… ………………………………
………………… ………………………………31. But should I go? who gave me permission?
34. And so, if I perform a daring feat,
I'm afraid he'll blame me for madness.
Sage, you will understand more clearly than I say.”37. Like someone who wants, but begins to fear,
Full of new thoughts, changing his plan,
Rejecting what I wanted to decide:40. So I languished in that dark jungle,
And, having thought it over, he threw it again,
At least he was devoted to her alone at first.43. “Since I have fully penetrated the meaning of the word,”
The shadow said to the generous one,
“Your soul is ready to experience fear.46. Fear of people takes away every day
From honest deeds, like a false ghost
It frightens the horse when a shadow falls.49. But listen - and dispel the anxious fear, -
What is my coming wine
And what the immutable lot revealed to me.52. I was with those whose lot is not complete; 44
That is, in Limbo, where the great men of antiquity are placed (see note to Hell. I, 115). – Whose fate is not complete in the original: che son sospesi. The pagans imprisoned in Limbo remain in doubt about their final fate; they are in a middle state between torment and bliss and are awaiting the Last Judgment (Ada IV, 31–45, and Pure III, 40 etc.).
There, hearing the voice of the beautiful Messenger, 45
Beautiful messenger(in the subtext donna beata e bella) - Beatrice, a symbol of divine teaching, theology (see below article 70, note). - “Divine teaching descends to the languid human mind, which once did not listen to God, so that it fulfills its true purpose - to lead man.” You save.
I asked: what will she command?55. Brighter than a star, a clear ray burned in my eyes, 46
Under the name stars here of course the sun, which is primarily called a star (Daniello, Landino, Velluteno, etc.). Heavenly wisdom in the Bible is often compared to the sun; so about her in the book. Wise VII, 39, it is said: “This is more beautiful than the sun, and more than any arrangement of stars, the first is found equal to light.”
And in a quiet, harmonious tongue in response
She spoke like a sweet-voiced angel:58. “O Mantua, affable poet,
Whose glory filled the light far away
And it will be there as long as the light lasts! 47
The light will last. I followed here the text of the Nidobeatan manuscripts, the libraries of Corsini, Chigi, etc., which is followed by Lombardi and Wagner (Il Parnasso Ilaliano), where: quanto "I mondo (in others: moto) lontana*61. My favorite, but not the favorite of rock,
I met obstacles on the empty shore
And he runs back, frightened and cruel.64. And I am afraid: so he went astray on him,
Isn’t it too late that I came with salvation?
How in heaven there was news of this to me.67. Move forward with wise conviction
Prepare everything for his salvation:
Deliver him and be my consolation,70. I, Beatrice, beg again...... 48
Beatrice, the daughter of a wealthy Florentine citizen Folco Portinari, whom Dante, still 9 years old, met for the first time on the first day of May 1274. According to the custom of that time, the first of May was celebrated with songs, dances and festivities. Folso Portinari invited his neighbor and friend, Allighiero Allighieri, father of Dante, and his whole family to his holiday. Then, during children's games, Dante fell passionately in love with eight year old daughter Folco Portinari, however, in such a way that Beatrice never knew about his love. This is Boccaccio's story about Dante's love - a story, perhaps somewhat embellished with poetic fiction. However, Dante himself spoke about his love in sonnets and canzones (Rime) and especially in his Vita Nuova. Beatrice, who later married her husband, died in 1290 at the age of 26. Despite the fact that Dante retained the feeling of first love throughout his life, soon after Beatrice’s death he married Gemma Donati and had six sons and one daughter from her. He was not happy in his marriage and even divorced his wife. – By the symbol of Beatrice, as we have repeatedly said, Dante means theology, the favorite science of his time, a science that he studied deeply in Bologna, Padova and Paris.
………………… ………………………………
………………… ………………………………73. There, before my Lord, with compassion,
Poet, I will often boast about you.”
I fell silent here, I began with an appeal76. “O grace, by which alone
Our mortal race has surpassed all creation
Under the sky that completes a smaller circle! 49
Look at the sky that makes a circle. Here, of course, is the moon, which, belonging to the planets in the Ptolemaic system, rotates closer than all other luminaries to the earth and, therefore, makes a smaller circle (see note to Hell. I, 127). The meaning is this: man, by divine teaching, surpasses all creatures in the sublunary world.79. Your commands to me are so sweet,
That I am ready to accomplish them immediately;
Don't repeat your prayer.82. But explain: how can you descend
Without trembling into the universal middle 50
World Middle(original: in queeto centro). The earth (see note to Hell I, 127), according to Ptolemy, is located in the middle of the universe. Dante's hell is located inside the earth, as we will see below: therefore, according to his concepts, it constitutes the real center of the whole world.
From the mountainous countries, where are you going to soar? -85. – “When you want to know the reason for it,”
She advertised, “I’ll give you a short answer,
Almost without fear I will go down to you into the abyss.88. One should only fear that harm
Inflicts on us: what a fruitless fear,
How is it not fear of something in which there is no fear? 51
Only then do we not feel fear not only of earthly horrors, but also of hell, when, like Beatrice, we are imbued with divine wisdom, the fear of the Lord. (See note Ad. I, 19–21).91. Thus I was created by the goodness of the Lord,
That your sorrow does not burden me
And the flames of the underworld do not harm me. 52
Although Virgil and other virtuous pagans are not punished with any torment, and although there is no hellfire in Limbo, Beatrice’s words are nevertheless true, because Limbo is still part of hell.94 There a certain Intercessor mourns
About who I am sending you to,
And for her the cruel trial is broken. 53
Cruel judge(original: duro giudicio). The poet meant: “Judicium durissimum iis, qui praesunt, fiet” Sapient IV, 6.97. She, having raised Lucia…. 54
Lucia(from lux, light), as a martyr of the Catholic Church, is called to the aid of those who suffer from bodily eyes. This seems to have led Dante to choose her preferentially for the role she plays in his poem. She is mentioned in Pure. IX, 55, and Rae, XXVII.
Advertisement: Your faithful one is waiting for you in tears,
And from here I entrust it to you.100. And Lucia, the hard-hearted enemy,
Having moved forward, she spoke to me where forever
With ancient Rachel I will sit in the rays: 55
Rachel is a symbol of contemplative life (Pur. XVXII, 100–108), like her sister, Leah, of active life. – Dante very thoughtfully places the divine teaching (Beatrice) near Rachel, eternally immersed in the contemplation of the ineffable Good of Landino.103. “Oh Beatrice, a heartfelt hymn to the Creator!
Save the one who loved you so much
What has become alien to you to the careless crowd. 56
With his love for Beatrice Portinari, Dante rose above the crowd, on the one hand, indulging in poetry, on the other, studying theology, which Beatrice personifies.106. Do you not hear how sad his crying is?
Can't you see the death he fought?
In the river, in front of it is the ocean without strength?109. No one in the world has strived so quickly 57
Under the name rivers(in the original: fiumana, whirlpool, gurges, aquaram congeries, Vocab. della Crueca) refers to the worries of life; the storms of everyday misfortunes surpass all the turbulence of the ocean.
From destruction, or to one’s own gain,
How my flight accelerated from those words112. From the bench of the blessed to the abysses of the earth -
You gave me faith with wise words,
And honor to you and to those who listen to them!”115. Then, having told me this, with tears
Grief raised a radiant gaze,
And I flowed in the fastest steps.118. And, as desired, he arrived at that time,
When this beast stopped in a deserted field
Is yours shortcut to that beautiful mountain.121. So what? why, why does he hesitate longer?
What kind of low fear do you harbor in your heart?
What happened to courage, to good will...124. ……………………………………………………
………………… ………………………………
…………………………………………………?»127. And like flowers, in the cold of the night
Bent over, in the silver of the day's rays
They stand with their heads open on the branches:130. Thus I was raised by my valor;
Such wondrous courage flowed into my chest,
What did I begin, as if I had thrown off the burden of chains:133. “Oh glory to her, giver of goodness!
O honor to you, that right words
He believed and did not slow down!136. So my heart longs for your footsteps
You kindled your journey with your wise words,
That I return to the first thought myself.139. Let's go: hope is strong in the new heart -
You are the leader, the teacher, you are my master!”
So I said, and under his cover142. Descended through a wooded path into the darkness of the abyss.
Canto III
Content. Poets come to the door of hell. Dante reads the inscription above it and is horrified; but, encouraged by Virgil, he follows him into the dark abyss. Sighs, loud cries and screams deafen Dante: he cries and learns from his leader that here, still outside the bounds of hell, the souls of insignificant people, those who did not act, and cowards, with whom the choirs of angels are mixed, are being punished in the midst of eternal darkness. who did not take the side of His adversary. Then the poets come to the first hellish river - Acheron. The gray-haired Charon, the helmsman of hell, does not want to accept Dante into his boat, saying that he will penetrate into hell in a different way, and transports a crowd of the dead to the other side of the Acheron. Then the banks of the infernal river shake, a whirlwind rises, lightning flashes and Dante falls unconscious.
1. Here I enter the mournful city to torment,
Here I enter into the eternal torment,
Here I enter the fallen generations.4. My eternal Architect has been moved by truth:
The Lord's power, the omnipotent mind
And the first loves of the Holy Spirit7. I was created before all creation,
But after the eternal, and I don’t have a century.
Abandon hope, everyone who comes here! 58
The famous inscription above the door of hell. The first three verses express the teaching of the church about the infinity of hellish torment, the fourth indicates the reason for the creation of hell - the Justice of God. The last verse expresses the hopelessness of the condemned. – There is no way to fully convey this wondrous inscription in all its gloomy grandeur; after many futile attempts, I settled on this translation as being closer to the original.10. In such words, which had a dark color,
I matured the inscription above the entrance to the execution area
And he said: “The meaning of it is cruel to me, poet!”13. And like a sage, he spoke, full of affection:
“There is no room for any doubts here,
Here let all the vanity of fear die.16. This is the land where, as I said, we will see
An unfortunate race that has lost its soul
The light of reason with the most holy good. 59
Light of the mind(in the original il ben dello "ntelletto) there is God. The wicked have lost the knowledge of God, the only good of souls.19. And took my hand with your hand*
With a calm face my spirit was encouraged
And he entered with me into the secrets of the abyss. 60
Virgil introduces Dante under the arch of the earth, which, according to the poet’s idea, covers the huge funnel-shaped abyss of hell. We will say more about the architecture of Dante's Inferno in its own place; Here we will only note that this abyss, wide at the top, gradually narrows towards the bottom. Its sides consist of ledges, or circles, completely dark and only in places illuminated by underground fire. The uppermost outskirts of hell, directly under the arch of earth that covers it, constitutes the dwelling of the insignificant ones that Dante speaks of here.22. There in the air without sun and luminaries
Sighs, cries and screams rumble in the abyss,
And I cried as soon as I entered there.25. A mixture of languages, speeches of a terrible cabal,
Gusts of anger, groans of terrible pain
And with a splash of hands, now a hoarse voice, now wild,28. They give birth to a roar, and it swirls throughout the century
In the abyss, covered with timeless darkness,
Like dust when the aquilon spins.31. And I, with my head twisted in horror, 61
With a head twisted in horror. I followed the text adopted by Wagner; (d"error la testa cinta; in other publications; d"error la testa cinta (by ignorance of the midwife).
He asked: “My teacher, what do I hear?
Who are these people, so killed by grief? -34. And he answered: “This vile execution
That sad family is punishing………………..
……………………………………………………………….62
Sad kind(in the original: l "anime triste; tristo has the meaning of sad and evil, dark), who has not deserved either blasphemy or glory in life, there is a countless crowd of insignificant people who did not act, who did not distinguish their memory with either good or evil deeds. That is why they will forever remain unnoticed even by justice itself: there is no destruction for them, there is no judgment for them, and that is why they envy every fate. How, people who did not act, who never lived, as the poet puts it, the world forgot about them; they are not worth participating; they are not even worth talking about. Eternal darkness looms over them, like over the dark forest in the first canto (also Ada IV, 65–66), which is their faithful representative. Just as in life they were occupied by petty worries, insignificant passions and desires, so here they are tormented by the most useless insects - flies and wasps. The blood now shed by them for the first time can only serve as food for vile worms. You save and Streckfuss.37. Those choirs of evil angels are mixed with him,
That they stood up for themselves,
……………………………………………………………….40. ………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………»43. – “Teacher,” I asked, “what is the burden
Are they being forced to complain like this?” -
And he: “I won’t waste time for them,46. The hope of death does not shine for the blind,
And blind life is so unbearable,
That each fate is enviable to them,49. Their trace in the world disappeared faster than smoke;
There is no compassion for them, the court despised them,
What do they say about them? take a look and pass by!”52. And I looked and saw the banner there:
It was soaring as it ran,
That, it seemed, rest was not his destiny. 63
Among the insignificant, Dante also places cowards, whose banner, cowardly abandoned by them in life, is now doomed to eternal flight, so fast that it seems he will never stop. – Not for him- in the original it is even stronger: Che d "ogni posa mi pareva indegna (unworthy of any peace).55. Behind him ran a line of dead so abundant,
That I could not believe that the lot would overthrow
Such a multitude in the darkness of the grave.57. And I, recognizing some there, went up
I looked and saw the shadow of the one who
Out of baseness he rejected the great gift, 64
No matter how colorless or dark the life of the people condemned here is, Dante recognizes some of them, but who exactly, he does not consider worthy to say. He especially points to the shadow of someone who has rejected a great gift. Commentators guess in her that Esau, who ceded the right of birthright to his brother Jacob; then the Emperor Diocletian, who in old age resigned his imperial dignity; then Pope Celestine V who, through the machinations of Bonaiface VIII, refused the papal tiara in favor of the latter. Finally, some see here a timid fellow citizen of Dante, Torreggiano dei Cerchi, a supporter of the Whites, who did not support his party.61. I instantly understood - my eyes were convinced of that -
What is this mob……………………….
……………………………………………………………….64. A despised race that never lived,
Kicked and pale, was wounded by swarms
And the flies and wasps that flocked there.67. Blood rolled down their faces in streams,
And mixed with a stream of tears, in the dust,
At the feet, eaten by vile worms.70. And I, straining my eyesight, far away
I saw a crowd on the shore of the great
Rivers and said: “Leader, favor73. Explain to me: what does a host mean?
And what attracts him from all sides,
How can I see through the darkness in the wild valley? -76. – “You will find out about this,” he answered me,
When we reach the shore of Krutovo,
Where Acheron flooded with swamp 65
Dante places the Acheron of the ancients on the uppermost edge of the funnel-shaped abyss of hell in the form of a stagnant swamp.79. And I lowered my embarrassed gaze again 66
Throughout the poem, Dante portrays with extraordinary tenderness his attitude towards Virgil as a student to a teacher, achieving an almost dramatic effect.
And, so as not to offend the leader, to the shores
I walked along the river without saying a word.82. And now the boat is rowing towards us
A stern old man with ancient hair, 67
The old man is stern– Charon, to whom Dante in Art. 109 gives the appearance of a demon with wheels of fire around his eyes. We will see below that Dante turned many mythical figures of antiquity into demons: this is exactly what the monks of the Middle Ages did with the ancient gods. Mythological figures in Dante's Poem mostly have a deep allegorical meaning, or serve a technical purpose, giving plastic roundness to the whole. However, the habit of mixing the pagan with the Christian was a common practice in medieval art: the exterior of Gothic churches was often decorated with mythological figures. – Charon in the Last Judgment Michel Angelo wrote based on Dante’s idea. Ampere.
Shouting: “Oh woe, you evil ones, woe to you!85. Here say goodbye to heaven forever:
I'm going to throw you over the edge
Into eternal darkness and into heat and cold with ice. 68
Darkness, heat and cold characterize the general outline and the correct sequence of the three main divisions of hell, in which ice is located on the very two. (Ada XXXIV).88. And you, living soul, in this order,
Part with this dead crowd!
But seeing that I was standing motionless:91. “In another way,” he said, “in another wave,
Not here, you will penetrate into the sad land:
The lightest boat will rush you like an arrow. 69
Dante is not a light shadow like other souls, and therefore the weight of his body would be too burdensome for the light boat of shadows.94. And the leader said to him: “Harom, do not forbid!
So there want where every wish is
There is a law: old man, don’t ask! 70
That is, in the sky. With these same words, Virgil tames the wrath of Minos, the infernal judge (Ada V, 22–24).97. The swaying of the shaggy cheeks has died down here 71
A plastically faithful image of a toothless old man who, when he speaks, makes his cheeks and beard move violently.
At the helmsman, but the wheels of fire
The sparkle around the eyes intensified.100. There is a host of shadows, agitated chaos, 72
These are the souls of other sinners who do not belong to the host of insignificant ones and must hear a sentence from Minos, according to which they will take their places in hell.
His face became confused, his teeth chattered,
As soon as Charon pronounced the menacing judgment, 73
Charon's words plunge sinners into horror and despair. Their state at this decisive moment is presented in an inimitably terrible way.103. And he cursed his parents with blasphemies,
The whole race of people, place of birth, hour
And the seed of the seed with their tribes.106. Then all the shadows, crowding into a single host,
They burst into tears on the cruel shore,
Where will everyone be in whom the fear of God has faded away?109. Charon, the demon, his eye sparkling like coal,
Alluring, he drives a host of shadows into the boat,
Strikes the stragglers over the stream with an oar. 74
Imitation of Virgil, although Dante’s comparison is incomparably more beautiful:
Quam multa in silvis antumni frigore primoLapsa cadunt folia. Aeneid. VI, 309–310.112. How the bore circles in the forest in autumn
Behind the leaf is a leaf, until its impulses
They will not throw all the luxury of the branches into dust:115. Like the wicked race of Adam,
Behind the shadow is a shadow, rushing from the banks,
To the rower's sign, like a falcon to calls.118. So everyone floats through the muddy darkness of the shafts,
And before they go ashore sleepy,
In that country a new host is already ready.121. “My son,” said the benevolent teacher,
“Before the Lord those who died in sins
From all lands they soar to the bottomless river 75
This is Virgil's answer to the question asked of him by Dante above (vv. 72–75).124. And they hurry through it in tears;
God's justice motivates them
So fear turned into desire. 76
Justice, which prompted God to create a place of execution, encourages sinners, as if of their own free will, to occupy the monastery prepared for them.127. A good soul does not penetrate into hell,
And if here you are greeted like this by a rower,
Then you yourself will understand what this cry means.” -130. Silenced. Then the whole gloomy valley is all around
I was so shaken that I'm still in cold sweat
It sprinkles me, as soon as I remember it.133. A whirlwind rushed through this tearful valley,
The crimson ray flashed from all sides
And, having lost my senses, in a desperate abyss136. I fell like one who is overcome by sleep. 77
Dante covered his crossing of the Acheron with an impenetrable secret. The poet falls into a sleep, during which he is miraculously transported to the other shore, just as in the first canto (Ada I, 10–12) he enters a dark forest in a deep sleep. In the same mystical dream he ascends to the gates of purgatory (Pur. IX. 19ff.). He also falls asleep before entering the earthly paradise (Pur. XXVII, 91 et d).