medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
some here might be interested in this --though i can't imagine whyfor.
c
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Received: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 02:03:20 PM EDT
From: The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: TMR 12.04.20 Hollander and Marchesi, La 'Commedia' di Dante Alighieri
(Botterill)
Hollander, Robert, ed.; Marchesi, Simone, trans. <i>La 'Commedia' di
Dante Alighieri</i>. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2011. 3 vols. Pp.
lxx, 290, vi, 316, vi, 396. Euros 160,00. ISBN: 978 88 222 5966 0.
Reviewed by Steven Botterill
University of California, Berkeley
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Between 2000 and 2007, Robert Hollander crowned a career as long and
distinguished as any in the history of American literary scholarship--
he began his five decades of teaching at Princeton in 1961 and
published the first of his two dozen books (so far) in 1969--with the
appearance of a parallel-text edition of Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>
(New York: Doubleday), in which he supplied an exhaustively detailed
factual and interpretative commentary to accompany English
translations of <i>Inferno</i>, <i>Purgatorio</i>, and <i>Paradiso</i>
prepared by his wife, the poet Jean Hollander. The edition was widely
reviewed, as each successive volume came out, both in publications
aimed at a general audience and by scholarly journals (though not,
apparently, by <i>The Medieval Review</i>); and a clear consensus
emerged from that variegated critical response. Jean Hollander's
translation was generally (and in my view quite rightly) admired; but
many non-specialist reviewers, while seldom referring less than
respectfully to Robert Hollander's contribution, seemed to find it
hard (if they even tried) to conceal their sometimes shamefaced but
finally undeniable response: boredom at worst, bafflement quite often,
or, at best, a sense that quite so many footnotes (however erudite),
and quite so vast a bibliography (however up-to-date)--and Robert
Hollander's work never fails to be both erudite and up-to-date--might
perhaps, in the end, be seen as just a little bit too much of a no
doubt perfectly wonderful thing. Conversely, academic reviewers
(among whom Dante scholars and medievalists of other stripes
inevitably predominated), finding themselves better placed, as a
natural and benign consequence of their <i>déformation
professionelle</i>, to recognize Robert Hollander's work for the truly
extraordinary achievement that it is, did their best to argue that its
presence alongside Jean Hollander's translation not only helped the
translation's many admirable qualities to emerge in still sharper
relief, but also afforded the edition's readers (none of whom, after
all, would actually be forced to desert the one Hollander's pages for
the other's) a valuable opportunity to, if they so chose, deepen the
intensity of their engagement with Dante's poem in ways that would
likely, and regrettably, have remained beyond their ken had Robert
Hollander not been there to play Virgil as they took their first
faltering steps along the <i>cammin</i> marked out by Dante
<i>personaggio</i>.
Taken as a whole, then, the American reviews of Robert and Jean
Hollander's <i>Divine Comedy</i> provide a fascinating illustration of
the anxieties and conflicts of value that continue to shadow even the
most well-meaning effort to make textual artifacts from the distant
past more widely available to a contemporary audience unfamiliar with
the language of those artifacts' original formulation--although
optimists like myself will find comfort in the fact that, for
instance, the customer reviews of the Hollanders' <i>Paradise</i>
currently available on Amazon.com, none of which claims any academic
expertise for the reviewer, all see Robert Hollander's commentary as
adding value to Jean Hollander's translation rather than detracting
from it. The publication under review, however, adds another layer of
complexity to any attempt to think cogently about the relationship of
commentary and textual artifact in general, or about the merit of
Robert Hollander's commentary on Dante's <i>Commedia</i> in
particular, because it presents Hollander's work in a cultural and
linguistic context that are alike profoundly different from those in
which it made its début, and thereby completely redefines the terms of
the debate surrounding it.
The three handsome and satisfyingly hefty volumes of this edition are
notable first for their austerely elegant design, including a mise-en-
page that reproduces, with striking and strangely beautiful results,
the typical layout of a Trecento <i>Commedia</i> MS, as a small
rectangular block of poetic text in larger type is surrounded on three
sides by commentary text in smaller type. The effect is reinforced by
the use of unostentatiously luxurious materials (high-quality paper,
sturdy binding, a robust slipcase decorated in the art nouveau-ish
style that Italians call <i>stile Liberty</i>). Such seemingly
trivial details of book-making are, in fact, revelatory: they convey,
to even a casual glance (and touch), how much care has been lavished
on what the prestigious Florentine <i>casa editrice</i> Leo S. Olschki
announces as its contribution to last year's celebrations of the 150th
anniversary of Italy's national unification, and how much significance
the publishers clearly hope this contribution will carry in areas
outside the strictly academic.
The volumes present the text of the <i>Commedia</i>, as established by
Giorgio Petrocchi in the 1960s for the <i>edizione nazionale</i> of
Dante's works sponsored by the Società Dantesca Italiana, along with
Robert Hollander's commentary as first published in English by
Doubleday, but now translated into Italian by Simone Marchesi, once
Hollander's graduate student, now his eminently worthy successor in
the <i>cattedra dantesca</i> at Princeton, and in some ways, perhaps,
the unsung hero of this whole heroic undertaking. Immediately,
therefore, the whole question of translation and its relationship to
commentary goes away, or, rather, is turned on its head; for where
Jean Hollander's version of Dante's poem presented it to an audience
that (presumably) did not know it well, or at all, in its original
form, and Robert Hollander's commentary was there to help such readers
over an obstacle-course of unfamiliarity, here Dante's text is
offered, in its original form, to an audience that (presumably) knows
it at least somewhat (if only from having gone through the Italian
education system!), and Hollander's commentary, now itself turned from
original into translation, seems less likely to be called upon to
dispel unfamiliarity than to be forced to confront the kind of
unfamiliarity's opposite that, proverbially, breeds contempt. As a
result, it seems, at the very least, worth suggesting that any attempt
to assess the situation of Hollander's commentary in its English-
language version and its American cultural context may not turn out to
be exactly the same critical enterprise as making a similar attempt
when both language and cultural context have become Italian.
In the long run, no doubt, such quibbles as these need only concern
theorists of translation and historians of the reception of Dante's
<i>Commedia</i>. Whether it appears in English or Italian (or in any
other language, for that matter), Hollander's monumental work is
designed to appeal, and to be useful, to an immeasurably larger
constituency--such readers of Dante's poem, present and future, into
whose hands it may come (or on whose screens it may glimmer)--and its
success in so doing, amply attested in my own experience and that of
my students, and reported from many other sources, seems likely to be
repeated, if doubtless <i>con variazioni</i>, in its fresh Italian
guise. And its publication is both fitting and historic in ways that
deserve underlining: fitting, as tribute to Robert Hollander's
standing as unquestionably one of the most important Dante scholars to
have been active in any language or country during the last fifty
years, and certainly the only American <i>dantista</i> since Charles
Singleton whose work--as it should be--is taken as seriously by his
Italian <i>confrères<i> as so many of them otherwise take only their
own; and historic, as the first time that any of the many meritorious
commentaries on the <i>Commedia</i> produced by English-speaking
scholars since the mid nineteenth century has been translated <i>in
extenso</i> into Italian, and published by an Italian, nay more, a
Florentine, publisher.
As one who has, during my own almost thirty years as teacher and
scholar of Dante, occasionally crossed swords with Robert Hollander,
and more than occasionally appreciated the unfailing courtesy (not
unmixed with vigor!) that he brings to argument, as well as the
searing intellectual honesty that is the unshakeable foundation of
every line he writes, I take real pleasure both in saluting the
quality of his <i>Commedia</i> commentary and in congratulating him on
the acclaim that greeted its publication in Italy. (Press cuttings
reproduced on the Olschki website, at
http://www.olschki.it/Plus/htm/2009/59660/59660.htm, give some insight
into what seems to have been a hugely enjoyable media circus involving
everyone from Roberto Benigni to President Giorgio Napolitano-—one
tries, ruefully and in vain, to imagine anything comparable taking
place in this country.) Whether <i>il commento di Hollander</i> will
ever have as much impact in English-speaking countries as it already
has in Italy may perhaps be doubted: apart from a rather endearing,
but very short, foreword by Hollander himself, there is virtually
nothing in these three volumes that is not already available in
"Hollander and Hollander" as published by Doubleday, and readers (let
alone cash-strapped libraries) that already have the earlier
publication will almost certainly not feel the need to invest over
$200 in acquiring this one. But the mere fact of its existence, given
the major contribution to scholarship and the international
recognition of its author's stature that it represents, is a matter
for celebration by all who care about Dante, Dante's <i>Commedia</i>,
or the countless readers whose understanding, and let us hope whose
love, of Dante and his <i>Commedia</i> alike Robert Hollander will
still be helping to enrich long after the rest of us are forgotten.
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