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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The All-In-One Dante,
By Sara (New York) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Portable Dante (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
"The Portable Dante" provides readers with the complete "Divine Comedy" (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise), an excellent biography on the author, historical background, a great translation by one of the the best translators of the genre, and Dante's often forgotten work "La Vita Nuova". What more could you ask for? Essentially, this volume has it all. I would highly recommend it for anyone who wishes to read the entire "Divine Comedy" from Hell to Heaven. It's better than having to buy each book separately. And nothing is lost from putting it all into one place. Each Canto is complete and excellently translated into verse form (as it should be). This edition makes the often difficult work easier to read by providing a summary at the beginning of each Canto (though I often skip over these because I don't want to spoil the surprise, but they're there if you need them) and notes at the bottom of each page (instead of in the back of the book like another edition I read), making them easy to refer to while reading.
There are a lot of editions of this timeless work out there, but this is the one to get. Great translation and excellent organization.
43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best you can do without Italian...,
By
This review is from: The Portable Dante (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Dante's Divine Comedy is one of the greatest works of an individual author in the history of literature. I did my undergraduate thesis on a topic in it, so I guess I could be a little biased. I'm not reviewing the Commedia, but the Musa edition.My director, an expert in Medieval Studies (Toronto Ph.D., Notre Dame professor), preferred this edition because it attempts to capture Dante's meaning, and is best equipped of the English translations to do that. It doesn't attempt to replicate his meter or rhyme, which we wouldn't be able to do without significant damage to the text. It's also not a translation based on other translations for the most fluid reading (Pinsky). Musa is specifically a scholar of medieval Italian. While I consulted Mandelbaum, he is foremost a poet/translator. His work is impressive as such, but a lot of the philosophical or theological finesse is lost when reading his translation. Not being contrived, I find Musa still compelling to read. He lets Dante speak for himself, mostly, and that's a tremendous attribute in a translator. If you want the full impact of the beauty, you had better start learning Italian. But if you seek to grasp the plot and basic meaning of Dante, this book is what you're looking for. The book design is very good. I got tons of used out of this paperback, but it never fell apart and didn't show much wear and tear. The pages are soft on the eyes and are of good enough quality to write on (which I did a lot!). As others have mentioned, having footnotes at the bottom is much better than having to flip to the back (Mandelbaum) or use another book (Singleton). Don't be afraid to consult these notes or read the canto introductions, you will find that these will help your reading, not serve as crutches. One reviewer insinuated that Musa pared down the version to make it so comparably short. That is an unbelievably stupid assertion; unlike other translations, he uses prose (less spacing, more words per line) and doesn't have the facing Italian text. Nothing cut here. In one portable volume you get works of near-peerless literature at a great value price.
36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent translation, but some drawbacks to this edition,
By Thomas Hochmann (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Portable Dante (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
First, a word about Mark Musa's translation of Dante's works. His interpretations of the Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova are very beautiful, extremely readable, and as true to Dante as you can be in English. Musa's scholarship is excellent, and his introductory essays on Dante and his works are a pleasure to read, offering a broad understanding of what Dante is all about.
However, it is important that you keep in mind that a number of concessions had to be made for this book. Collecting the massive poems of the Divine Comedy, along with La Vita Nuova, is no mean task - I'm astounded Penguin Classics pulled it off in such a compact and readable volume. But this collection comes at the expense of some features that range from minor to outright baffling. First, the minor stuff. This edition lacks the informative diagrams and illustrations of the standalone Divine Comedy volumes from Penguin Classics (Inferno, et al). Given the complexity of Dante's creation, it is very helpful to have maps to show you where the various parts of the afterlife are, and who inhabits them. Puzzlingly, /The Portable Dante/ includes a detailed map of Purgatory, but only a very vague and un-labeled map of Inferno, and NO map of Paradiso and the celestial spheres. Very strange and disappointing. More unfortunate is the lack of a glossary. The Penguin Classics /Inferno/ has an excellent glossary of people and places that appear in the poem. This is a phenomenal resource for figuring out who is where in Hell, what they represent, and what Dante is doing with them. However, the most (potentially) major issue with this volume is the sparse commentary. The individual books of The Divine Comedy have extensive endnotes, detailing broad sections and individual passages in great detail. The notes offer a better understanding of what Dante is doing, because virtually every line of poetry includes multi-faceted references to classical mythology, Christian scripture, and contemporary or historical Italian culture. For the majority of the Divine Comedy, well over 50% of the notes (as compared with the individual Penguin Classics books) have been removed. The endnotes have been converted to non-intrusive footnotes, which is a welcome shift. But I can't help but feel that also including a detailed endnotes section would have added much, so that at the very least the reader could explore the more obscure references (passages from the Aeneid, the Bible, and so on) if they so desire. I also noticed some notes rather crucial to understanding have been removed completely, which is very unfortunate. So how come, after all this whining and moaning, I still give /The Portable Dante/ a full five stars? Because Mark Musa's translation is so fluid and vital, and having such a beautiful collection in a compact volume is extremely valuable. There is enough supplementary material that casual readers can enjoy Dante's mastery and creativity, and they will perhaps be tantalized to explore the deeper meanings he plants throughout. Here's the bottom line: /The Portable Dante/ is what I use when I wish to read Dante to others, or to simply read through for my own enjoyment. If you need extensive scholarly information, I recommend also buying the Penguin Classics editions of the individual parts of The Divine Comedy. But as a smooth and very readable base camp for your exploration of Dante, I can think of no better book than this. Highly recommended, whatever your level of interest in this fascinating poet and his works.
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