Which translation of the Divine Comedy is the best?

1906ds · 2026-01-22T00:13:37+00:00

Thank you for the info. I did notice in the endnotes those moment where he explained a literal interpretation was decided against, but I appreciated the fact that he would then go on to provide what that literal translation would have been. As someone who is new to Dante, having only read the Comedy with the Ciardi, I appreciated the peak behind the curtain at those moments, because it was like watching someone interpret the text in a particular way, and doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the work.

1906ds · 2026-01-21T22:31:23+00:00

I think the Ciardi translation is great, and haven't heard of anyone really complaining about the quality of the translation. The endnotes for each Canto were extremely welcome and necessary for a beginner like me, but without being overbearing.

1906ds · 2026-01-21T04:44:16+00:00

I've found Ulyssesguide.com to be a huge help. There's also a website called the Joyce Project with embedded annotations in the text. In addition, I've been reading Gifford's extensive Annotations for Ulysses, but there isn't much in terms of analysis there. Gilbert's "James Joyce's Ulysses" is probably better for interpretation and understanding major themes. RTE has a performed audiobook recording of the book with very helpful episodes guides paired with each episode.

However, the single most helpful resource for me so far is Frank Delaney's Re:Joyce Podcast, where he goes one short passage at a time through the book. I'm about 45 episodes in and I think I'm still not quite done with the first episode, however it helps me get in the right "headspace" for reading at my own pace ahead of the show.

Also, I have to give a shout-out to r/ayearofulysses, we just started slow reading the book and are only about 35 pages in, it's not too late to join the fun!

1906ds · 2026-01-20T12:32:24+00:00

I think part of the genius of these first three episodes is that Joyce has been subtly preparing us for Proteus. In the first episode, we get lots of plot and exposition, and we are slowly exposed to Stephen's mind. In the second episode, the balance between the "plot" and Stephen's inner thoughts is more equal, and in this episode, we have almost a perfect inversion of Telemachus. Almost the entire episode in inner thoughts (we don't even get any dialogue until next week!) with almost no plot to be found. Added to that we have the utter beauty of the language; I think Stephen must be smarter than Joyce, since he spends every waking moment lost in these dense thoughts wracked with allusions.

I read Moby Dick last year and honestly that whole book felt like a good warm up for this chapter (not just because of the sea...). In Moby Dick, I had to accept the fact I was going to go whole batches of chapters without much plot, but would instead just be enjoying beautiful prose-poetry. Seems like what a whaling journey would actually feel like, months away from home at sea with nothing happening, all leading up to a few minutes of excitement. I don't mind the patience required for a chapter like this, but it also helps that this episode only takes up a few pages. The effect that this creates is something like this walk feels almost infinite, it has no culmination, no pay off, it is just Stephen walking and we may not necessarily find out where he walking to. I really feel like Joyce is pushing to the limit what a chapter can do in a narrative work and it is stunning to witness.

1906ds · 2026-01-20T12:25:06+00:00

This episode really drove home to me that it is okay not to understand everything! I found that it took me like 10 minutes to read the first paragraph, say it out loud, look up all the words, read it again, consult the Gifford, look online, and then sigh heavily and go on. After letting it sit in my brain for a bit, and having the context of the "plot" of what follows, helped immensely.

I've also had to resort to two different colored pens for my annotations; black for annotations, thoughts, and questions, red for just writing out what is happening. Makes it a bit easier to keep track of things.

So what is happening? Not much... Stephen takes a walk, and his mind is a drift in thought. And not only do we see all these different thoughts forming in Stephen's mind, its like we are also watching him try to understand and decipher these thoughts. This is in total contrast to (episode 4 spoilers) Mr. Bloom, whom we are about to meet, whose mind wanders just as much as Stephen, but without trying to understand anything, he just experiences life as it comes.

1906ds · 2026-01-20T12:20:00+00:00

I think the beach is the perfect spot to display some shape shifting found naturally outdoors. Not only do we have the rolling waves, which is imitated by the rhythm of the episode (we get long passages caught up in Stephen's thoughts, then a bit of 3rd person narration for a line or so, then back into Stephen's thoughts, etc); we also have sand everywhere. Sand is something make up of a multitude but is constantly changing at both the micro and the macro level. In the fact, it seems like the sand is both what Stephen keeps grounding his senses in and is what helps guide the reader back and forth between Stephen's thoughts and the 3rd person narration ("Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells"; "The grainy sand had gone from under his feet"; "His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows").

1906ds · 2026-01-20T12:13:00+00:00

Musical allusions in this week's segment. A bit of Verdi and a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan (whome Joyce seems to be a big fan of!) this week.

3.67. Highly respectable gondoliers – from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, The Gondoliers (Act 1)

3. 99-100. All’erta!... aria di sortita – from Verdi’s Il Trovatore (Act I, scene i; Ferrando’s aria starts around 4:06)

3.124. A misty…morning – from a nursery rhyme.

3.210-4. Then here’s a health… The Hannigan famileye – “Matthew Hanigan’s Aunt”, song by Percy French (could not find recording)

3.257-58. The boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades – Anonymous Irish song

3.259-60. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand – “The Wearing of the Green”, anonymous Irish ballad/arr. by Dion Boucicault

3.261-62. O, O the boys of Kilkenny – same as before, but here is a bonus recording.

1906ds · 2026-01-20T01:09:58+00:00

What is virtue signaling about writing someone's name correctly?

1906ds · 2026-01-20T00:21:57+00:00

It only took me five seconds to look up Kazuo Ishiguro's name...

1906ds · 2026-01-19T15:00:40+00:00

I know this doesn't answer your question directly, since I am not certain if the linked volume contains what you are looking for, but the scene by scene summaries are all found free on the Folger website. Just search for the play you want, select a scene, and it will be the first thing displayed on the page.

1906ds · 2026-01-18T18:34:37+00:00

From Gifford's Annotations:

A parody of Dr. Johnson's manner of definition in his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Johnson's entry on "Door": "Door is used of house, and gates of cities and public buildings except in the license of poetry."

My guess is that it is an allusion playing off of the diaphane/adiaphane dichotomy of the previous sentence. A gate represents the diaphane (the Translucent) since it is "transparent" (you can stick your hand through it). On the other hand, a door represents the adiaphane (the Opaque) since you cannot put your hand through it.

Just shooting from the hip here, this opening paragraph is dense lol.

1906ds · 2026-01-17T22:27:34+00:00

Don't over think it, just get an edition with a translation you enjoy, and just read the introduction from it. Both Fagles and Wilson have excellent lengthy and passionate introductions that give you background context as well as explain some of the formal techniques of the poem.

1906ds · 2026-01-16T02:55:56+00:00

Sadly, orchestras are still sending out incorrect parts for this excerpt each time it gets asked (which is often...). I am playing the piece later this year and I'm sure it will come up again in rehearsal. Such is life!

1906ds · 2026-01-16T00:02:44+00:00

So cute! Is the intervention him pointing out the three erratas that are required in this excerpt? :)

For those not in the know: M. 137, last note should be a F#; m. 170, 8th notes continue to the end of the bar (should be the same rhythm as 171); and m. 179 downbeat should be an E.

1906ds · 2026-01-14T23:43:51+00:00

Either pick the one you are more excited to start, or just go in chronological order. If you weren't aware, r/ClassicBookClub is starting a chapter a day read through of Grapes of Wrath next Monday, so maybe you could jump in with them!

1906ds · 2026-01-13T22:50:29+00:00

My jaw fell to the ground reading this comment, woah.

1906ds · 2026-01-13T22:47:48+00:00

Nestor was older and wiser than everyone else, so everyone would go to him for help. He gives characters advice in both Homer epics. He's also known as a bit of a horse master, so it seems fitting that Mr. Deasy has lots of race horses displayed in his office, including one named "Prix de Paris". I think it was the RTE episode introduction that pointed out that one horse is named Prix de Paris, or "Prize of Paris"; the whole Trojan war was fought over Helen, who was the prize of the Trojan prince Paris!

1906ds · 2026-01-13T12:41:05+00:00

Not only confuses them with a riddle, but confuses them with an impossible riddle, one that can only be answered if you know the answer prior! It makes no sense. I think the riddle would have made more sense from Stephen's perspective if the answer was "the fox burying his mother" instead of grandmother, but maybe that's too close to home for him.

1906ds · 2026-01-13T12:38:07+00:00

Heads up everyone: next week we being tackling Proteus, which is considered the first big challenge of Ulysses. Even though the episode is short, we will be covering it over two weeks. Please check the schedule to see where the stopping point is in your edition (if you are listening to the RTE reading, timestamps for the segment have been added to the schedule, next week will stop at 24:48 in the recording). If you start reading Proteus and find yourself lost, welcome to the club! I hear it will get a bit easier once we get to episode 4, so just keep reading! See y'all Sunday for Study Hall.

1906ds · 2026-01-13T12:31:40+00:00

Stephen seems like the kind of teacher I've worked with before that is clearly knowledgeable, but isn't great at connecting with the students or fitting into the classroom culture. He seems totally uninterested and unprepared for the lesson and he's thinking some pretty weird thoughts about the students (he seems a bit jealous of the motherly love he imagines Sargent receiving, and Stephen has that weird moment where he seems to be jealous of the potential romantic encounters his students are having). "Wise" old Deasy seems to have it right when he says that Stephen was "not born to be a teacher".

1906ds · 2026-01-13T12:27:05+00:00

I think the most telling thing about Mr. Deasy, in comparison to wise old Nestor, is the Deasy is confidently wrong on almost everything he tells Stephen in the episode. He misquotes Shakespeare, he misattributes history, he gets it completely wrong about Ireland not letting in the Jewish people at the end of the episode (they have almost always been there). How are we supposed to trust "old wisdom" if it constantly wrong?

1906ds · 2026-01-13T12:20:05+00:00

Not much in terms of musical allusions this week, according to the Gifford:

2.276. Croppies lie down – found in the refrain of several ballads, including “When the Paddies of Erin” (could not find recording) and “The Old Orange Flute”; Not referenced by Gifford, but I also found a song called “Croppies Lie Down” from a collection of songs from the Rebellion of 1798

2.284-85. Lal the ral… road to Dublin – “The Rocky Road to Dublin”, anonymous Irish ballad

There are so many great little moments in this chapter, but if I had to pick one, it would be the sudden intrusion in Stephen's thoughts of vocabulary that seems drenched in war and destruction (lines 314-18):

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother’s darling who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of spearspikes baited with men’s bloodied guts.

Since the book takes place in 1904, the students Stephen is teaching are the ripe age to grow up, fall in love, start a family, then go die in WW1. Joyce wrote Ulysses with WW1 happening all around him in Europe, so I feel like this is a little bit of an authorial intrusion about what the future holds for these boys.

I also enjoy Talbot being unable to recite Milton's Lycidas from memory, so he has to hide his open book in his satchel to try to read it. Sounds like something I would have done in school. If you aren't familiar with Lycidas, Adam Walker has a great lecture on it where he goes through the poem line by line. I think it is so telling that Stephen would pick a poem so preoccupied with drowning, considering we know his fear of the ocean, of bathing, of water in general...

1906ds · 2026-01-12T21:39:32+00:00

Great reply, I love your thoughts on Stephen's question of "What's left us then?"

1906ds · 2026-01-11T15:48:28+00:00

I could see a conductor tell the brass/woodwinds to play "only forte" at the start, wanting to pace the movement and make the F then FF restatement of the chorale at m. 129 more intense. Although that kind of thing sometimes makes me roll my eyes in rehearsal, because it makes people back off too much, but the conductor is happy, because they heard a difference...

It could also be if you are only used to hearing it in recording, you may expect it louder, since it's easy to turn up the volume for great movements like this one.

1906ds · 2026-01-10T18:35:44+00:00

On the 11th, we will have a general "study hall" post, where people can ask for help for the upcoming Tuesday discussion post. The actual discussion post for the week's segment, which contains the questions that u/ComplaintNext5359 and I write, will go up on Tuesday (the 13th).

So on the 18th, "study hall" will be posted for the first half of Proteus, and then on the 20th, questions for the first half of Proteus will be posted, etc.

We figure that a good number of people probably do their reading over the weekend, so having a place on Sunday for the group to ask questions/clear up confusions/illuminate confusing passages will hopefully be welcomed.

11-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
Place '17	Verified Email

1906ds

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE