Word: canto
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Dante's masterpiece remains the universal truth of its central story--that of finding oneself spiritually lost. Dante writes in the first tercet, the story of the pilgrim's journey is that of "nostra vita," "our life," not just his. And Dante's guide through hell, Virgil, observes in canto XII: "It is necessity,/And not just pleasure, that puts him on this road...
Pinsky's attention to the original language of the poem is notably apparent in canto XIII. In his description of the suicides--those condemned for being violent against themselves--Dante fills the canto with the language of negation...
Pinsky remains faithful to the importance of the canto's "negativeness," which stems from suicide's result--the negation of the soul. The repetition of "no"s and "not"s evokes Dante's contrapasso, his system of retributive justice in which sin is literalized...
...even as fine translator as Pinsky or Allen Mandelbaum (whose 1980 black verse translation of the Comedy is a Harvard classroom staple) cannot convey the full effect of Dante's dark anaphora that opens the thirteenth canto: six of the first eight lines begin with the word "Non," producing a hauntingly landscape of negation...
...addition to its vibrant language, students will find this edition of the Inferno helpful for its reference chart which serves as a key to Dante's plan of hell. The guide lists each canto, its locale in hell, the endemic demons, the classes of souls and the names of the individual sinners who reside there. Extensive notes by Nicole Pinsky, a daughter of the translator and thirty-five black-and-white monotypes by the illustrator Michael Mazur (a department) add to this edition's offerings...