Carson, Ciaran - Sean O'Brien (review date 10 January 2003)

Sean O'Brien (review date 10 January 2003)

SOURCE: O'Brien, Sean. “Geographer of Hell.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5206 (10 January 2003): 27.

[In the following review, O'Brien praises Carson's translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, noting the “sustained energy and ingenuity” of his adaptation.]

In the introduction to his bold new version of the Inferno, Ciaran Carson explains:

When I began looking into the Inferno, it occurred to me that the measures and assonances of the Hiberno-English ballad might provide a model for translation. It would allow for sometimes extravagant alliteration, for periphrasis and inversion to accommodate the rhyme, and for occasional assonance instead of rhyme; it could accommodate rapid shifts of register. So I tried to write a terza rima crossed with ballad.

Carson also emphasizes the vernacular character of the poem. The...

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