Metaglossia: The Translation World

Mary Jo Bang's new translation of Dante's...

Stopped mid-motion in the middle
Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky --
Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.

So begins Dante's arduous decent into the depths of Hell with Virgil in a new translation of the classic epic by award-winning poet Mary Jo Bang.

Bang worked on the project for six years after being inspired by Caroline Bergvall's poem, "Via (48 Dante Variations)," which is composed entirely of those first three lines from 47 different translations.

"How might the lines sound if I were to put them into colloquial English? What if I were to go further and add elements of my own poetic style?" Bang writes in her note on the translation. "Would it sound like a cover song, the words of the original unmistakably there, but made unfamiliar by the fact that someone else's voice has its own characteristics? Could it be, like covers sometimes are, a tribute that pays homage to the original, while at the same time radically departing from it?"

The translation is true to the moral and emotional intensity of the original, but Bang infuses the text with her own voice and modern allusions to Stephen Colbert and "South Park." The text is accompanied by drawings by Henrik Drescher, which adds to the modern but still haunting tone.

We first profiled Bang on the NewsHour in 2008 for her book "Elegy," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the author of six books of poetry and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

A new translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno by Mary Jo Bang, illustrated by Henrik Drescher, adds layers of meaning to the original, with an assortment of modern allusions, ranging from modern European and American poetry to jazz and architecture.

Mary Jo Bang's bold new translation of Dante's classic offers sometimes alarming new interpretations.

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them. There is no third,” T.S. Eliot wrote. Dante’s great Christian epic Divine Comedy, set in 1300, offers us a pitiless examination of his life and time. He may justly be called the first Protestant. Centuries before Luther, he put popes in hell.
Mary Jo Bang’s bold new translation of the first canticle, “Inferno,” (Italian for “hell,”) gives us a new reason to re-examine Dante’s masterpiece. Pursuing Ezra Pound’s dictum to “make it new,” she offers us sometimes alarming new choices.
Virgil, Dante’s guide, explaining his position in a benign part of hell, states simply that he believed in the “false and lying gods.” Dante’s contemporaries thought that the pagan gods were demons. Bang unaccountably translates this as “Back when the gods were false and told sweet-talking lies.” Pure invention on her part.
Her strenuous effort to make it new betrays her frequently, as with her translation “Piece your days together like a boundless Cornell box.”
Huh?

EDISON — Emanuel di Pasquale, professor and poet-in-residence at Middlesex County College, has translated Dante’s classic work “The New Life.” The translation, co-authored by Bruno Alemanni, a retired writer and editor, was published in July. “The New Life,” written in the 13th century, was Dante’s first book. He complied love poems he had written for a young woman named Beatrice, and introduced them with prose and described the circumstances of their creation.

“The book is about the mystery of love,” di Pasquale said. “Human love, which is a sign of the divinity in the human. What makes us divine, in other words, is our ability to love each other – love in all its forms: Love of children, love of family, love of father and mother, brother and sister; love of all humanity eventually.”

The translation is aimed at American readers, but does not sacrifice Dante’s literary style.

The poet Joseph Kennedy calls this work “a fresh new version.”
“As I dipped into their slim volume I found myself unexpectedly hooked,” he said. “The text is full of self-contained poems, sonnets rendered into distinguished modern verse. And what’s intriguing: Dante gives us detailed accounts of how he wrote them. I don’t know another book that takes us into a poet’s workshop like this. (‘The New Life’) is an impressive prelude to ‘The Divine Comedy,’ essential reading for a fuller knowledge of Dante, and actually a pleasure all the way through.”

Di Pasquale’s colleague, Daniel Zimmerman, professor of English at Middlesex, also says this work breaks new ground.

Read more: http://njtoday.net/2012/07/31/middlesex-county-college-professor-writes-translation-of-dantes-the-new-life/#ixzz22Gkfgaoe
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Middlesex County College Professor Writes Translation of Dante's "The New Life"

Emanuel di Pasquale, professor and poet-in-residence at Middlesex County College, has translated Dante's classic work "The New Life." The translation, co-authored by Bruno Alemanni, a retired writer and editor, was published in July. "The New Life," written in the 13th century, was Dante's first book. He complied love poems he had written for a young woman named Beatrice, and introduced them with prose and described the circumstances of their creation.

"The book is about the mystery of love," Professor di Pasquale said. "Human love, which is a sign of the divinity in the human. What makes us divine, in other words, is our ability to love each other – love in all its forms: Love of children, love of family, love of father and mother, brother and sister; love of all humanity eventually."

The translation is aimed at American readers, but does not sacrifice Dante's literary style.

The poet Joseph Kennedy calls this work "a fresh new version."

"As I dipped into their slim volume I found myself unexpectedly hooked," he said. "The text is full of self-contained poems, sonnets rendered into distinguished modern verse. And what's intriguing: Dante gives us detailed accounts of how he wrote them. I don't know another book that
takes us into a poet's workshop like this. ('The New Life') is an impressive prelude to 'The Divine Comedy,' essential reading for a fuller knowledge of Dante, and actually a pleasure all the way through."

Professor di Pasquale's colleague, Daniel Zimmerman, professor of English at Middlesex, also says this work breaks new ground.