Customer Reviews

Dante's Inferno

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sandow Birk's illustrations are great Californian pastiches of Gustav Dore's original masterpieces. They are heartbreaking and satirical, and they really make the book sing.

I was just familiar enough with Dore's work to recognize what Birk was doing, but that's all. I suggest ordering this book along with "The Dore Illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy", so you can conveniently compare Birk and Dore side by side. I'm amazed at how Dore's work faded from view after being nearly universal during the first half of the twentieth century.

As for the complaints that Sanders' adaptation "lacks grace" and "isn't faithful" - there are a dozen extremely faithful and nuanced translations of Dante available right now. Take your pick. This one is also faithful and smart, but it doesn't let being faithful and smart get in the way of having a good time. It's refreshing. It's Dante's turn to be adapted into new and strange settings, like Shakespeare, or Verdi.

And it's a way in for lazy slobs like me who can actually read this version fast enough to get through it. I still haven't made it through my twenty-year-old copy of Dorothy Sayers' adaptation of "Dante's Inferno", but I zipped through this in two evenings.

So, rock on, Sanders and Birk. I've already ordered the Dore, and your "Purgatorio".

Dante's Inferno by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders is an excellent treatment on the first of the three parts of Dante Alighieri's well known and important Divine Comedy. The illustrations of Birk, heavily inspired by Gustave Dore's engravings further serve to increase the pleasure of reading this translation. Is this one of the most scholarly translations of the Inferno, certainly not. Is this one of the most readable and refreshing translations of the Inferno, without a doubt, yes. If you are looking for a translation of the Inferno for close and thorough study two time poet laureate (1997 + 1998) Robert Pinsky has an excellent version.

this book will grab you by the hand and drag you through the depths... visually fun and verbally humorous. entertaining and educational. will introduce readers to dante who might have never found him otherwise. written in 21st century teenspeak, the book tells dante's story very simply. perfect for anyone who wants to understand this great piece of literature without being challenged by a language long gone.

Im a fan of Dante. I've read a couple of translations, and as admirer of graphic art, I've always thourght that Dore's illustrations were classics.

I truly wanted to like this version. I'm from California, and I thought a surfer version could be witty and charming. But I was disappointed:

Fact: this is not a translation. The authors merely read other english translations, then rewrote the text in plain english, adding occasional contemporary references (Jason Blair, Dr. Laura) and obscenities.

Fact: The illustrations demonstrate the skill of junior-high school doodles. Not even close to Dore, or other book illustrators like Rockwell Kent or Tenniel.

I understand that tastes vary. But these pictures are downright awful. The reason they've been gotten some attention is that the pictures are set in urban settings (L.A., San Francisco, New York). How many times does Birk rely on McDonalds golden arches to get a chuckle? I lost track at 6. It was funny the first time.

Clearly, these authors had an outstanding publicist who got this book mentioned in prominently, and it has caught on to a limited extent. The book jacket repeatedly mentions the art gallery showings of Birk's graphic work, so I'm guessing this book was written mostly to promote sales of his artwork.

But if you are searching to buy a copy of Dante, get Musa's translation (very readable) and Dore's illustrations (timeless).

The Birk/Sanders version may be trendy in 2005, but it will soon fade into obscurity.

Suppose you updated Dante's "Inferno" into the modern setting putting in people we hate in our modern day and making the text more coherent to Mr. Average Joe on the street. It would be a unique, interesting project, and one they attempted here - but this rendition of Dante's masterpiece walks the thin line between modern and just flat-out unintentionally laughable.

In many ways it could be done well. There are people who write books on street life who are profane and vulgar - yet somehow, they come at you with a class all their own. Birk, unfortunately, can't do that. His take on the Dante's prose into modern life can be done in a very simple formula: 1) add swear words at the beginning of your sentence, and 2) occasionally replace Dante's original metaphors with phrases like "a bag of cheetos." Many of the metaphors don't make any sense - the most glaring example coming from one that compares two demons fighting to fighter jets clawing at each other. OK people, let's be serious here - how many of you have seen fighter jets "claw" at each other?

The update of Hell doesn't fit too well with location, either. Dante's originally version of Hell was several layers, each going deeper and deeper until finally at the very bottom pits of damnation you came face to face with Satan himself. Birk instead chooses random city locations for his "levels," with no real clear path like the original one Dante described to us. And it could have done so well, too - just imagine starting out perhaps at the start of a skyscraper, working your way down to the city, stopping at shops, reaching the boondocks, then entering the subway, and eventually down the sewers and below. Satan's place in the story and in Sandow Birk's sketching is along a highway. Nothing too spectacular about that really, compared to the very core of Hell that Dante originally gave us. As I pointed out, this was a wonderful opportunity to use the different levels of a city to go with the levels of Hell, but everything stays on two or three levels.

The best reason - in fact, the ONLY reason - to purchase this is for Sandow Birk's sketchings. They were wonderfully done and fit the idea of a modern Dante better than he could do in words. But you don't have to buy the book just to see them - in fact, I wouldn't suggest buying the book.

As a native Angeleno, reading about my hometown depicted as hell the week the temperature in my neighborhood hit 118 (the municipal thermometer broke at 113 downtown) made for some poetic justice. The tag of the gang that dominated my neighborhood graces a wall in one of the many illustrations that recall Dore as well as graphic art that Birk's known for, as in his witty SF vs. LA "war"-- it figures SF gets to be Purgatorio by comparison.

I have ten translations of the Inferno, and I like to compare their opening lines to judge the fidelity or flexibility of each version. "About halfway through the course of my pathetic life,/ I woke up and found myself in a stupor in some dark place./ I'm not sure how I ended up there; I guess I had taken a few wrong turns." This shows the casual prose and the matter-of-fact reporting that characterizes the mood of Dante's quest.

Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders offer a surfer's translation, and while this may feel as dated as, say, the Beats' hip slang in a half century from now if not sooner, it does ring true as the vernacular I hear around me now. The placement of such as Slobodan Milosevic, Jim Bakker (misspelled in the text), and Anna Nicole Smith, as well as Porta Potties, Duraflames, and Fred Flintstone's inflated figure in the subway may lead to puzzled readers soon enough, but for now, pop culture references may hook an audience on the original, many translations graced by excellent renderings often side-by-side with the Italian.

The most harrowing scene for me has always been Canto XXXIII, Count Ugolino having to eat his sons. The simple plaint: "'Why don't you help me, Dad?' were his very last words" combines contemporary tone and eloquent power.
The liberties taken with the text, as with the illustrations, naturally are the reason this version's published, so the carping with the freedoms by some reviewers appears beside the point. Birk and Sanders love their wretched city, show compassion for those trapped here, and give voice to the outraged and the outrages in 1300 or 2000.

Many sections rely on digression to incorporate recent references, and then cut medieval ones, and the summaries before each canto do compress a lot, making likely any reader having to go back to a more comprehensive edition for footnotes and commentary. Brother Michael Meister's accessible introduction does assist us, however, and the illustrated map of Hell is clearly drawn. While this may not be the end of one's Dantean adventure, it may be for some readers put off by more scholarly or fussy texts an ideal enticement to descend into classic terror and enduringly moral, and very Christian and ethical, drama.

Oddly enough, I found a copy of this version of Dante's Inferno while waiting for a visit at the jail. It was wildly out of place among old children's books and slightly out of date newspapers. It grabbed me right away by making the tale understandable as it was being read without having to look up endless references. Being recast in modern English and infusing the characters with modern personalities made it more like reading a whomping good adventure. The retelling returns the reader to a very real-time understanding of what is going on, all while retaining Dante's story and tone (he wrote in the Italian vernacular, so the tone is very close to the original.) I know I will return and re-read it multiple times.

Full disclosure: I am not a scholar of Dante, nor of medieval Italian literature, so I will leave the cavils about Birk's adaptation to the die-hard Dante lovers among us.

What Birk has done is present an "Inferno" (not THE "Inferno," but AN "Inferno") that leaps to brilliant, vivid relevance right now, with illustrations straight out of every portrait of American urban decay you've ever seen or lived through. Hell, Birk is saying, is here and now; it is of you and among you and around you. Find your circle.

Dante's text was written in "low-class" vernacular Italian; this text is written in very vernacular English, and the honesty and familiarity makes the words and ideas immediately relevant; it makes the Inferno a living text. To insert modern figures such as Pol Pot or Bill Clinton or the Bushes (both of them) into the various circles of Hell creates an even more vivid sense of relevance and immediacy. Birk's illustrations and adaptation take off the "old-time goggles," those distorting lenses through which we too often see texts from other centuries and make the Inferno as much a part of this present instant as of the Middle Ages.

What's more, it's gripping. I care about this Dante -- enough so that I'm truly excited about the prospect of rediscovering the original text I slogged through portions of in Humanities 250A in college. I know I won't see Jim Baker or Charles Manson there, but I'll be on familiar territory nevertheless.

Most translations of Dante sound like they're stuttering through the poem rather than rendering it into understandable English. But this one's different. It's readable. I mean the guy wrote it so it sounds like your neighbor talking, clear as a bell, no antiquated language. It's as easy to understand as the "No Fear Shakespeare" translations. Plus it adds some contemporary references to make up for all those old-fashioned outdated allusions Dante stuffed into the Divine Comedy. I'm a Dante aficionado and have read almost every translation and also some of the original Italian, and, in my opinion, this is the best English translation. Not that I don't love the John Ciardi translation (I do; it's terrific.), but this one tops them all for clarity. You won't be disappointed. Remember, Dante wrote in the vernacular so people of his day could understand him. He would have approved of this.

This book is about the spirit and ideas of Dante and not the literal text. I think the references to modern people and concepts make it more accessible to new readers. The drawings are a fun take on Dore. If you are looking for a literal translation, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a well written and thought out interpretation of Dante, I can recommend this book. I have read many translations of the Inferno but few that I have enjoyed as much. I look forward to Birk and Sanders' Purgatorio and Paradiso.