Michael Palma’s new translation of The Divine Comedy [by Terence Winch]

                    Dante, as depicted by Domenico di Michelino in 1465. This painting is located in Florence Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore.

 

The end of the year brings with it a stunning new translation of the entire Divine Comedy by the poet/scholar Michael Palma, already celebrated as the preeminent translator of Italian poetry into English. What he achieves in this monumental volume is quite extraordinary---"As a poet myself," he writes in the frontmatter, "I have sought to re-create the poetry of Dante's Commedia, as I see it on the page and hear it in my head when I read the original. To me, a large and necessary part of what this means is an attempt to re-create the terza rima structure."  This he accomplishes brilliantly, as I discovered when I read the first canto aloud at my desk last night. Here is a 700-year old poem in Italian, in a complex verse form, springing to life in 21st-century English with all of its structural grandeur intact. A miracle of rare device indeed.  I should also mention that his introduction is as good an overview of Dante and his work as you will find anywhere.

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I was delighted to discover that NPR did a short piece on the new book, which you can listen to here. I should further note that Michael and I go back a long way, to our meeting as college freshmen in 1963. Even back then, at 18, he was an impressive repository of literary knowledge, clearly destined for the kind of achievement that his new translation of The Divine Comedy represents. 

                                                                                       Michael Palma, 1967

 

 

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

Michael Palma is a wonderful poet, and this exploration through his eyes will be fascinating.Thank you Terence.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

Terence: Your extraordinarily compelling response to Michael Palma's translation of Dante Alighieri's THE DIVINE COMEDY had me hurtle headlong today into ordering it. The power of your own words convinced me to encounter the power of Palma's translation of an apogee text in all of literature. My thanks to both you and Michael for steering me back to it.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Earle. I'm sure you won't regret it.

[Angelo Verga]

Palma's rendition of Dante does justice to the sublime Comedy. We are lucky to have him in our time and place.