Nineteenth century poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translates Inferno, featured in this 2013 book. More information about this translation can be found here.
UCLA’s Dante in the Americas
“The literary appropriation of Dante over the last century has been enormous. His influence has been front and center in all major modern literary traditions—from T.S. Eliot to William Butler Yeats, from Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Jorge Luis Borges to Derek Walcott, from Giorgio Bassani to Giuseppe Ungaretti. Why such fascination? What are the textual characteristics of Dante’s Commedia that make it an ideal vehicle for literary appropriation, thereby allowing it to enjoy a sustained cultural afterlife? What, moreover, are the more accidental factors (e.g., taste, world view, political agenda, religious, and mystical convictions) which account for the popularity of Dante—after 300 years of neglect during which the Florentine poet was relegated to the shadows of Petrarch and his works—among artists, novelists, poets, playwrights, and cinematographers? This symposium, co-organized by Professor Massimo Ciavolella (Italian, UCLA), Professor Efraín Kristal (Comparative Literature, UCLA), and Heather Sottong (Italian, UCLA), considers these questions, concentrating on Dante’s influence in North America and especially in Latin America.” —UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 2011
“Un correttore molto scrupoloso: Capitini lettore di Dante (e di Contini)”
“Risale all’autunno del 1935 nella città di Perugia, la nascita dell’amicizia tra il filosofo Aldo Capitini e il filologo Gianfranco Contini. Quest’ultimo era approdato nel capoluogo umbro come titolare della cattedra di lettere al liceo classico ‘Annibale Mariotti’. Nel corso della loro frequentazione, protrattasi lungo l’anno scolastico 1936-37, molti saranno stati gli argomenti di conversazione tra i due, non ultimo Dante Alighieri.
“Al sommo poeta Capitini aveva dedicato nel 1927 la tesina intitolata Sulla Vita Nuova di Dante nell’Ottocento in Italia, e l’anno successivo un capitolo della tesi di laurea Realismo e serenità in alcuni poeti italiani (Iacopone, Dante, Poliziano, Foscolo, Leopardi). Primo abbozzo, sotto la guida di Attilio Momigliano, presso l’Ateneo di Pisa; mentre Contini, da parte sua, si avviava a pubblicare il primo fondamentale contributo agli studi danteschi con l’edizione delle Rime.” [. . .] –Carlo Pulsoni, European Insula, January 21, 2021.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Paradiso, XXXI, 108” in Dreamtigers
“Beside a road there is a stone face and an inscription that says, ‘The True Portrait of the Holy Face of the God of Jaen.’ If we truly knew what it was like, the key to the parables would be ours and we would know whether the son of the carpenter was also the Son of God.
“Paul saw it as a light that struck him to the ground; John, as the sun when it shines in all its strength; Teresa de Jesus saw it many times, bathed in tranquil light, yet she was never sure of the color of His eyes.
“We lost those features, as one may lose a magic number made up of the usual ciphers, as one loses an image in a kaleidoscope, forever. We may see them and know them not. The profile of a Jew in the subway is perhaps the profile of Christ; perhaps the hands that give us our change at a ticket window duplicate the ones some soldier nailed one day to the cross.
Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the face died, was erased, so that God may be all of us.” [. . .] –Jorge Luis Borges, The Floating Library, September 15, 2008.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Inferno, I, 32” in Dreamtigers
“From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: ‘You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.’ God, in the dream, illumined the animal’s brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast.
“Years later, Dante was dying in Ravenna, as unjustified and as lonely as any other man. In a dream, God declared to him the secret purpose of his life and work; Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life. Tradition relates that, upon waking, he felt that he had received and lost an infinite thing, something that he would not be able to recuperate or even glimpse, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of men.” [. . .] — Jorge Luis Borges, The Floating Library, July 28, 2008.
