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'Renowned poet and critic Clive James presents the crowning achievement of his career: a monumental translation into English verse of Dante’s The Divine Comedy.
'The Divine Comedy is the precursor of modern literature, and this translation—decades in the making—gives us the entire epic as a single, coherent and compulsively readable lyric poem. Written in the early fourteenth century and completed in 1321, the year of Dante’s death, The Divine Comedy is perhaps the greatest work of epic poetry ever composed.
'Divided into three books—Hell, Purgatory and Heaven—the poem’s allegorical vision of the afterlife portrays the poet’s spiritual crisis in terms of his own contemporary history, in a text of such vivid life and variety that modern readers will find themselves astounded in a hundred different ways. And indeed the structure of this massive single song is divided into a hundred songs, or cantos, each of which is a separate poetic miracle. But unifying them all is the impetus of the Italian verse: a verbal energy that Clive James has now brought into English.
'In his introductory essay, James says that the twin secrets of Dante are texture and impetus. All the packed detail must be there, but the thing must move. It should go from start to finish with an unflagging rhythm. In the original, the basic form is the terza rima, a measure hard to write in English without showing the strain of reaching once too often for a rhyme. In this translation, the basic form is the quatrain. The result, uncannily, is the same easy-seeming flow, a wonderful momentum that propels the reader along the pilgrim’s path from Hell to Heaven, from despair to revelation.
'To help ensure that no scholastic puzzles get in the road of appreciation, James has also adopted the bold policy of incorporating key points from the scholarship into the text: uploading them from the footnotes, as it were, and making them part of the narrative, where they can help to make things clear.
'For its range of emotion alone, Clive James’s poetic rendering of ~The Divine Comedy would be without precedent. But it is also singled out by its sheer readability. The result is the epic as a page-turner, a work that will influence the way we read Dante in English for generations to come.' (Publisher's blurb)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Clive James: ‘I’ve Got a Lot Done since My Death’
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 15 March 2015; -
Comedic Cohesion : Clive James's New Verse Translation of The Divine Comedy
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 28 no. 1 2014; (p. 229-233, 254)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Atheist Clive James' Hymn to God
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 20 June vol. 24 no. 11 2014; (p. 42-44)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Epic Frameworks & Dramatic Portraits : Dante's Inferno
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Journal , vol. 3 no. 2 2014; (p. 73-77)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Burning Love
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 24 October vol. 35 no. 20 2013; (p. 19-20)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry
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The Onward Surge
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , July 2013;
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Hot Reads
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 14-15 December 2013; (p. 18-19)
— Review of The Very Brave Bear 2013 single work picture book ; Seadog 2013 single work picture book ; Ice, Wind, Rock : Douglas Mawson in the Antarctic 2013 single work biography picture book ; The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie 2013 single work children's fiction ; The Rules of Summer 2013 single work picture book ; The Dying Beach 2013 single work novel ; The Ballad of Dixie Lee 2013 single work picture book ; Life in Outer Space 2013 single work novel ; Refuge 2013 single work children's fiction ; The Midnight Dress 2013 single work novel ; Watching You 2013 single work novel ; The Best Australian Science Writing 2013 2013 anthology short story essay poetry autobiography ; Bitter Wash Road 2013 single work novel ; The Dunbar Case 2013 single work novel ; The Narrow Road to the Deep North 2013 single work novel ; The Night Guest 2013 single work novel ; Questions of Travel 2012 single work novel ; The Rosie Project 2013 single work novel ; The Childhood of Jesus 2013 single work novel ; Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry ; The Best Australian Poems 2013 2013 selected work poetry ; At the Close of Play 2013 single work autobiography ; Ned Kelly : The Story of Australia's Most Notorious Legend 2013 single work biography ; Forgotten War 2013 single work non-fiction ; Kerry Stokes : Self-Made Man 2013 single work biography ; The 39-Storey Treehouse 2013 single work children's fiction ; Twiggy : The High-Stakes Life of Andrew Forest 2013 single work biography ; WeirDo 2013 single work children's fiction ; Boomer & Me : A Memoir of Motherhood and Asperger's 2013 single work autobiography ; The Best 100 Poems of Dorothy Porter 2013 selected work poetry ; Clive : The Story of Clive Palmer 2013 single work biography ; Australian Poetry Journal vol. 3 no. 1 2013 periodical issue ; Shame and the Captives 2013 single work novel ; Coal Creek 2013 single work novel ; Barracuda 2013 single work novel -
Dante : The Most Vivid Version
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The New York Review of Books , 24 October vol. 60 no. 16 2013; (p. 41-43)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Burning Love
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 24 October vol. 35 no. 20 2013; (p. 19-20)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Epic Frameworks & Dramatic Portraits : Dante's Inferno
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Journal , vol. 3 no. 2 2014; (p. 73-77)
— Review of Divine Comedy : A New Verse Translation Clive James (translator), 2013 single work poetry -
Clive James Democratises the Divine Comedy
2013
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , September vol. 57 no. 9 2013; (p. 7-12) -
Clive James: ‘I’ve Got a Lot Done since My Death’
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 15 March 2015;