“The Divine Comedy” with a Preface by Roberto Benigni
Dante, THE DIVINE COMEDY.
Volume 1: Inferno. Volume 2: Purgatorio. Volume 3: Paradiso. Translated by Robert and Jean Hollander, Verona, Italy Edizioni Valdonega 2007, slipcase 700 pages.
The English version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, printed by Edizioni Valdonega.
“Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost”.
E’ arrivata sugli scaffali mondiali “The Divine Comedy”, l’ultima fatica degli studiosi Robert e Jean Hollander, con un contributo speciale di Roberto Benigni, che firma una “Lettera a Dante” nella prefazione. Gli autori della traduzione in lingua inglese della Commedia di Dante sono Robert Hollander (*) e Jean Hollander. Uniti nella vita e nella carriera letteraria, Robert e Jean hanno introdotto, tradotto e commentato ogni singola rima dantesca. Hollander ha raccontato che “Negli Stati Uniti ci sono persone che si incontrano tutte le domeniche per leggere ‘La Divina Commedia’. Purtroppo l’interesse è ancora circoscritto, ma Roberto Benigni sta facendo tanto per far conoscere il Sommo Poeta nel mondo”
For the edition printed in Verona at the beginning of the third millennium, Monika Beisner (**) lent her inspired hand; she is probably one of the first women – if not the first – to illustrate Dante’s masterpiece, seven hundred years after it was first printed. A hundred colour plates, reproduced with great accuracy and fidelity to the colours, on velvety ivory-coloured paper (Gardapat 13 in the Klassica version of the Cartiere del Garda), help the reader to access and comprehend this poem, whose means of expression differ more and more from our day-to-day language – so much so that in the “strictly personal” preface, written in the form of a letter by the irrepressible actor and director Roberto Benigni, it is defined as “very difficult, mysterious, incomprehensible: I had to ask my illiterate grandparents to explain it to me before I could understand it.”
The English edition, which follows the Italian edition of two years ago, has been graced with a wonderful preface written by Roberto Benigni, which, as the saying goes, is worth the price of the ticket alone. Worried by inflation in Purgatory, which could damage him in the eyes of his muse, Benigni speaks directly to Dante in order to recognise his ownership of the rights to the work. Benigni is currently touring Italy with the work and has already performed Cantica V of the Inferno to over seven hundred thousand fans in the main city squares of Italy.
This is the strength of this timeless masterpiece: it excites the minds of artists like the Tuscan jester Benigni and it has generations of ordinary people stuck to their seats listening excitedly to its rhythms and rhymes.
The English edition, translated by one of the greatest experts on Dante in the world – Robert Hollander, who worked hard alongside his wife Jean on the translation – will be distributed on the American market. In his humorous and ironic preface, Benigni said of the Hollanders’ version that it is “a masterpiece, so good that when I read it again in Italian, I though the Italian version was the translation!” What better endorsement?
Laid out using the Centaur font in the Stamperia Valdonega Group’s special VAL version, the English version has been printed in a limited edition of five hundred numbered copies in collaboration with Grafiche Siz, part of the same corporate group.
(*) Roberto Benigni and Prof. Robert Hollander, will be conducting a Serata Dantesca on April 23 at the University’s Sir Temi Zammit Hall in Malta.
During his visit Benigni will be conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University, on the initiative of the Faculty of Arts. On April 23 the evening will start with a discussion on Dante between Benigni and the eminent Dante scholar Robert Hollander, Professor of European Literature Emeritus at Princeton University and the founding director of the Princeton Dante Project. Following the discussion, Benigni will give a much-anticipated recitation of one of his favourite “canti” from the Divina Commedia.
(**) While in Malta, Benigni will also be inaugurating an exhibition of illustrations of the Divina Commedia by the artist Monika Beisner at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Valletta. The illustrations form part of a translation into English of the Divina Commedia by Robert and Jean Hollander with a Preface by Roberto Benigni published by Edizioni Valdonega in 2007.
Filed Under: Dante, Divina Commedia • Roberto Benigni
