I've read the entire Commedia a few times - mentioned before that I tend to consider Dante The Poet of his millennium. So this was a sneaky reread of L'Inferno, this time in the Dorothy L. Sayers translation. All love for Dante.

There are many many translations of the entire Comedy, and I've opinions on a bunch. To start with Dorothy: I think this is the only translation that somehow (!!) manages to maintain the poem in terza rima. This is kind of ridiculous as a poetic achievement and I've no idea how she did it so well as it is. It's not perfect. There are forced phrases and clunkiness here and there, but on the whole it's a genuinely convincing effort, and I'd recommend Sayers for those reading Dante for the first time. Also helpful in that she provides plot summaries at the opening of each canto and breaks down the various images in a commentary at the end.

Translations more broadly. I recommend wholeheartedly Mandelbaum and Longfellow as capable translations that come close to capturing the simultaneously rugged and acrobatic style. I hear good things about the J.G. Nichols translation also but haven't read it yet. Penguin Classics at the moment publishes Robin Kirkpatrick. Here I have issues - I'm sure he's accurate to the meaning of the Italian, but the whole tone really irks me. It feels like a failed attempt at modernising: the famous 'abandon all hope, ye who enter here' becomes, under Kirkpatrick 'surrender as you enter, every hope you have.' All seems terribly unnecessary to me. I find Dante is encountered best when the translator chooses to maintain the tercets, which Kirkpatrick also throws out. Beyond this, I recommend avoiding Sisson (Oxford World Classics), who seems inaccurate all too often. Durling I'm not yet familiar with but seems awfully like reading porridge. Stodgy prose misses the point of Dante entirely.

So thank you Dorothy for your efforts. My preference is still Mandelbaum/Longfellow, but she deserves a special commendation on poetic achievement alone.