Dante - Inferno (trans. Sayers)

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
Readable and enjoyable

Mark Twain once (possibly apocryphally) described a "classic" as a book everybody wants to have read but nobody wants to read. I suspect a lot of people view Dante in this light, but I found this excellent, readable translation of Inferno surprisingly enjoyable and very rewarding. It is well worth reading Inferno for its narrative skill and its exceptional insights into human frailty and it is surprisingly engrossing - but then, if you're looking at this page you probably don't need me to tell you that.

My academic discipline is physics, not literature so I am not able to comment on this translation's accuracy or suitability for academic study, but for the interested general reader like me it is terrific. Dorothy L. Sayers was a very considerable scholar and a fine writer (as her Lord Peter Wimsey books show). This combination produces an excellent translation here. It is eminently readable and seems designed to draw the reader into the narrative and carry them along without ever losing the intellectual weight and important content of what Dante was saying.

Sayers has a deep understanding of the 14th Century mind and of the intricacies of Florentine politics which inform quite a lot of the book, and she brings it all alive very vividly. She uses a verse-form which tries to capture the spirit of the original which I found very engaging, with a summary of the story of each Canto at its start. There are excellent notes and readable, witty and scholarly introduction if you're interested or if you need explanations. I suggest that you read a few of the sample pages available here to see whether it's to your taste; personally I was hooked after a very few pages.

Sayers writes that The Divine Comedy has an enduring beauty because it is built upon noble bones. I agree, and Sayers herself has done a fine job in making that beauty available to modern readers. I warmly recommend this book - it has been a source of enormous pleasure for me.