HELL

Dante's Divine Trilogy Part One. Decorated and Englished in Prosaic Verse by Alasdair Gray

Dante Alighieri, Alasdair Gray

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786892881
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Italienische Poesie

One of the masterpieces of world literature, completed in 1320, Dante's La Divina Commedia describes his journey through Hell, Purgatory and his eventual arrival in Heaven. In this new version of Dante's masterpiece, Alasdair Gray offers an original translation in prosaic English rhyme.Accessible, modern and sublimely decorated, this remarkable edition told in three parts yokes two great literary minds, seven hundred years apart, and brings the classic text alive for the twenty-first century.

1: The Dark Wood. Virgil

1 In middle age I wholly lost my way,

finding myself within an evil wood

far from the right straight road we all should tread,

4 and what a wood! So densely tangled, dark,

jaggily thorned, so hard to press on through,

even the memory renews my dread.

7 My misery, my almost deadly fear

led on to such discovery of good,

I’ll tell you of it, if you care to hear.

I cannot say how I had wandered there, 10

when dozy, dull and desperate for sleep

my feet strayed out of the true thoroughfare,

till deep among the trees an upward slope 13

gave to my fearful soul a thrill of hope

as rising ground at last became a hill,

and looking up I saw a summit bright 16

with dawn – the rising sun that shows us all

where we should travel by its heavenly light.

This quieted a little while the fright 19

that churned the blood within my heart’s lagoon

through the long journey of that gloomy night.

Like shipwrecked swimmers in a stormy sea 22

who, tired and panting but at last ashore,

look back on swamping breakers thoughtfully,

I turned to view, though wishing still to leave, 25

the terrifying forest in the glen

no living soul but mine had struggled through.

My weary body rested then until, 28

rising, I climbed the sloping wilderness,

so that each footstep raised me higher still.

But see! The uphill climb had just begun 31

when suddenly a leopard, light, quick, gay

and brightly spotted, sprang before my feet,

dodging from side to side, blocking the way 34

so swiftly and with such determination

she sometimes nearly forced me to retreat.

37 The sun had reached a height dimming the stars

created with him on the second day,

after the birth of time and space and light,

40 and this recalled God’s generosity,

letting me feel some good at least might be

within the leopard’s carnival ferocity,

43 so dappled, bright and jolly was that beast,

but not so bright to stop me shuddering

at a fresh shock – a lion came in sight,

46 his mighty head held high, his savage glare

fixed upon me in such a hungry way

it seemed to terrify the very air.

49 A wolf beside him, rabid from starvation,

horribly hungry, far more dangerous,

has driven multitudes to desperation,

52 me too! For she established my disgrace,

(that worst of beasts) by killing my desire

to climb up higher to a better place.

55 A millionaire made glorious by gain

then hit by sudden loss of all he has,

cries out in vast astonishment and pain.

58 So did I, shoved down backwards, foot by foot,

by pressure of that grim relentless brute

till forced into the sunless wood again.

61 Appearing in its shade a human shape

both seemed and sounded centuries away,

murmuring words almost beyond my hearing,

therefore I yelled, “Pity and help me, please, 64

whether you be a living man or ghost!”

and pleaded, crouching down before his knees.

“Not man – though once I was, in Lombardy, 67

where both my parents dwelled in Mantua,

and I was born in Caesar’s reign,” said he,

“but educated in Augustan Rome 70

when the false gods were worshipped everywhere.

I sang the epic of Anchises’ son,

pious Aeneas, who fled blazing Troy 73

and founded Rome. I was a poet there.

Why are you here? Why turn back from your climb

towards the bright height of eternal bliss 76

and come again to a bad place like this?”

“You must be Virgil!” Awestruck, I replied,

“Fountain of all our pure Italian speech!” 79

Rising, I bowed and told him, “All I know

of poetry derives from what you teach!

The style which makes me famed in Italy 82

I learned from you who are my dominie!

Help me again, for see at the hill foot

the brute whose threats have rendered me distraught! 85

Master, please save me – show me the right way.

That rabid wolf has driven me so mad

my pulse and every sense have gone agley.” 88

I wept and, “Take another road,” he said,

“and leave this wasteland, leave that wolfish whore

91 who lets none pass before she bites th...