Since my knowledge of Italian doesn’t go much beyond the ability to recognize obvious cognates, and since both translations seem etymologically plausible, I don’t know who’s closer to the mark here. The two translators’ very different renditions of “ virtute e canoscenze” - “manhood and recognition” vs. Ciardi condense’s Dante’s nine lines into six, makes the first sentence hard to parse by throwing in the random word “stand” (to rhyme with “thousand,” which it doesn’t really), cuts out “the world that is unpeopled” altogether, and stretches his poetic license to the breaking point when he chooses to translate “ Considerate la vostra semenza” as “Greeks!” (Mandelbaum’s only real liberty - adding “that gave you birth” - seems a necessary one, since otherwise “your seed” would seem to be referring to descendants rather than ancestors.) Mandelbaum is clearly the more faithful to Dante here. You were not made to live your lives as brutes,īut to be followers of worth and knowledge.’ The sun, and of the world that is unpeopled.Ĭonsider well the seed that gave you birth: To this brief waking-time that still is left ‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘o you, who having crossedĪ hundred thousand dangers, reach the west, Greeks! You were not born to live like brutes,īut to press on toward manhood and recognition!’ To the brief remaining watch our senses stand

Perils have reached the West, do not deny ‘Shipmates,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand

I chose one of my favorite parts, Ulysses’ speech to his shipmates (Canto XXVI, lines 112-120). As I did before with Goethe’s Faust, I want to compare the two translations in terms of their accuracy by looking at a sample passage. I just finished Allen Mandelbaum’s translation of the Inferno and found it much more moving that John Ciardi’s, the only other translation I’ve read.

The divine comedy mandelbaum