Customer Reviews

Paradise Lost: Parallel Prose Edition

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

 

 

I am going to buy this book. Stanley Fish, a university literature professor who writes the "Think Again" blog for the New York Times, reviewed this book on 2008 November 30. The title of his blog column is "'Paradise Lost' in Prose." Just go to the New York Times website and search for the column (I can't include the URL here).

Fish fairly and lucidly explains the reasons for writing a translation of "Paradise Lost" in English, and he favors having the original poem side-by-side with the prose translation. He explains that the translator, Dennis Danielson, has to repeatedly make choices between ambiguous and multiple meanings of words, which unavoidably loses much of the poem's power and the poet's intent, but having the original text in parallel view mitigates this problem. Fish concludes that the prose translation is just the thing for readers who don't have the time or energy to read "Paradise Lost" with full appreciation, which by the way is quite a task.

Danielson's meticulous translation may be a godsend for struggling students. Yet the work is touted not so much as a cheat sheet, but as a pleasing alternative for admirers of the difficult poem. Those who are seeking pleasure reading, however, may be disappointed. Danielson is clearly a good writer and handles the archaic style well, but in attempting two things simultaneously--both an accurate translation and a pleasing narrative--he takes on an impossible task. Constrained by the "parallel" adhesion to every line, any real creativity is prohibited. Milton's poetry makes traversing his convoluted maze worth the effort. But stripped of the poetry, the narrative bogs down under its own weight. Which is probably why I find the 1994 prose adaptation by Joseph Lanzara: Paradise Lost: The Novel, which takes extraordinary liberties with the original, a more satisfying literary experience than Danielson's restrictive version.

You're better off with John Milton's Paradise Lost In Plain English: A Simple, Line By Line Paraphrase Of The Complicated Masterpiece. (The title says it all.) Example: Wonder why there's no "Look Inside" feature here? If there was, on the first page you'd see how Parallel Prose translates Milton's reference to "the Shepherd on Oreb or Sinai" into "the shepherd on Horab or Sinai." Big help, huh? The Plain English version (which does allow a Look Inside) translates it as: "Moses" (in plain English). Paradise Lost is crammed with these kinds of perplexing allusions to people, places and events from the Bible, history, mythology and classical literature. You do the math.