{"id":1818,"date":"2007-12-12T07:36:40","date_gmt":"2007-12-12T12:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/reader-request\/"},"modified":"2007-12-12T07:36:40","modified_gmt":"2007-12-12T12:36:40","slug":"reader-request","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/reader-request","title":{"rendered":"Reader Request"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, one of my pals asked me for advice on picking a translation of the Divine Comedy<\/a>. I forgot to post it, but recalled it this week under typically convoluted circumstances.<\/p>\n

Early this year, I reread the Iliad<\/a>, so I decided to get back to the Odyssey<\/em> this week. (The logic of that statement doesn’t need explanation, right?) Rather than read my Lattimore<\/a> translation, I decided to try Robert Fagles’<\/a> version, because it has larger print. (I’m getting old.)<\/p>\n

The problem is, the Fagles translation seems a little too<\/em> “poetic” to me, as though it’s been sweetened for the reader. So I may have to go back to Lattimore, tiny print and all. Or maybe the Fitzgerald<\/a>, but I recall hearing horror stories about that.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this reminded me of my buddy’s request: Got any suggestions for a good Dante translation?<\/p>\n

I recall that Sayers<\/a> is supposed to be the pits, and I picked up Pinsky’s recent translation of the Inferno<\/a> on the cheap in a used bookstore a few months ago, but I really have zero expertise in picking a good translation of that work.<\/p>\n

So help a brother out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, one of my pals asked me for advice on picking a translation of the Divine Comedy. I forgot to post it, but recalled it this week under typically convoluted circumstances. Early this year, I reread the Iliad, so I decided to get back to the Odyssey this week. (The logic of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Reader Request”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-tk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}