Huge news came in the development of my new “Divine Comedy.
Back story first: when I first made Inferno in a facing-page translation, I wanted to use my preferred English translation by Charles Singleton. There are so many things I love about his work. For starters, he doesn’t try to turn Dante’s specific poetic form into verse nor does he use the rhyming terzina (three-lined poetic form,) found in the original text. In my humble opinion, that challenge is insurmountable in English and frequently results in awkward language and lines of wildly varying line-length. Singleton sidestepped the problem by creating a prose translation, allowing for greater accuracy in presenting the poem in its most “correct” and accurate translation.
Another bonus is that Singleton’s lines don’t correspond to Dante’s (poetry vs prose) which allows for the presentation of a very clean block of text. At the time of publication, to make the edition truly contemporary, Inferno’s publisher wanted to use an English version made by a living translator who has done the complete poem. This narrowed the field significantly. In the end, we settled on Anthony Esolen’s very good version . With the new edition of the full Commedia being produced by a different publisher, my options have opened up. My new complete edition will not be published using a facing-page translation presentation, and will instead, be in either Italian and English only. So I finally had the chance to use Singleton’s version, if Princeton University Press who owns the rights, would allow me its use. I have just learned this week that they have approved my request!
So now I can move forward using my favorite translation for the English edition. It is an incredible honor to place my art along with Singleton’s unsurpassed translation and I can’t wait to make it happen.
P.S. Another wonderful connection for me is that my Italian professor at Sarah Lawrence College, Dr. Judith Serafini-Sauli (who I can honestly say changed the course of my life), studied with Singleton himself at Princeton. Oh, and my grandfather Douglas George Cochrane Sr. was a Princeton alumnus. Circles in Circles.