Dante's Poetical Form....

Submitted by kyranlucien on Tue, 08/11/2009 at 4:53pm.

Noahman: yes! thanks bro- your group is very cool, wierd and good :)

Noahman: thanks for inviting me

kyranlucien: your welcome buddy, thanks for joining.....

kyranlucien: hey Noahman, how are you budd.../ so you like frost poetry..?

Noahman: yes......i had a game titled "miles to go before we sleep" i thought that was why you challenged me first :) so i named it "frost fans"

Noahman: i saw "nothing gold can stay" on your profile :)

kyranlucien: i didn't know you like frost, until i you name the game frost fans, i thought you joined my team cause of our cosmik debris team, i posted couple of frost poems there before

Noahman: nice ! :) i like poetry- fav is Dante probibly

kyranlucien: wow, yes, Dante is huge, but i found the english translation really out of proportion, since he wrote in Terza Rima which is poetic form called as well tercetos, english language is not the best language to reflect the classic rhyme, something similar

kyranlucien: happened to the greek classics, I have read very few quality translations of Dante, none in english, mostly in spanish which is similar to italian...some just do prose in the translation which is a way of reading it but loosing half the beauty

kyranlucien: the best bet is to read in the original italian....but is just an idea, now, you gave me a wonderful topic here, probably i will do a blog about it in my home page...Thanks...!

I will try now, just for fun, give to myself some ideas on Dante's poetical form and the cultural influences he was taking when he wrote his inmortal poem.....

Dante's Inferno

http://www.settemuse.it/divina_commedia/inferno_immagini/dante_alighieri_ritratto_01x.jpg

Inferno Gallery

THIS is the way Dante imagined his Inferno. At the bottom of a dark wood, through a gate he starts his descent walking down 9 circles, each of which imprisons a different type of sinners, according to Dante's personal point of view, from bad to really rotten sinners....

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above are d-e-d, e or d-e-d, e-e. There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameter is generally preferred.

This is the way Dante created his immortal poem, and it is commonly accepted that Dante was the first one, or at least one of the first poets to use this way of writing...

The English language possesses a vocabulary more massive than that of Italian: because English is descended more or less equally from three different languages (Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and medieval French), it contains many synonyms. The word kingly, for instance, descends from Anglo-Saxon, while regal comes from Latin and royal comes from French. Despite this abundance of words, English provides far fewer possibilities for rhyme than Italian, which stems much more directly from Latin, a language that contains regimented systems for noun and verb endings. Nouns in Italian are thus much more likely to rhyme with one another than nouns in English; the same holds true for verbs.

It's been hard for me to find Dante's verses in italian online to present an example, but i found a verse written by Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's best friend, who as Dante himself was a poet and followed the example of his friend in Terza Rima:

S'io fosse quelli che d'amor fu degno,
del qual non trovo sol che rimembranza,
e la donna tenesse altra sembianza,
assai mi piaceria siffatto legno.
E tu, che se' de l'amoroso regno
là onde di merzé nasce speranza,
riguarda se 'l mi' spirito ha pesanza:
ch'un prest' arcier di lui ha fatto segno
e tragge l'arco, che li tese Amore,
sì lietamente, che la sua persona
par che di gioco porti signoria.
Or odi maraviglia ch'el disia:
lo spirito fedito li perdona,
vedendo che li strugge il suo valore.

The chain of verses is clearly following a simmetrical estructure in which every ending sounds or rhyme like the next and precedent stanzas....

i'll continue with translation and english examples in a future opportunity

The Divine Comedy
Inferno: Canto I

The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ahi...! quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai,¹⁰
tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,¹⁰
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

» posted in kyranlucien's Blog

| 135 reads | 8 comments

Comments:

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by Yuyuuchan - 7 months ago
Koromubusu United States

Member Since: Nov 2007
Member Points: 4886

^_^ Arigato. And see you later.

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by kyranlucien - 7 months ago
Calgary Canada

Member Since: Jun 2009
Member Points: 3371

That's right Yuyuusita kun...!

Rich people, political oponents.....( In Italy in Dante's time, there were 2 only political forces able to control the state, Guelfos, divided into (whites), that criticized the corruption of the Pope,Boniface VIII, but supported of the spiritual mission of the church, and (black) that supported the pope, and Gibelinos, you either were one or the other, Dante's activism led to exile in 1302.

i will work a brief history as soon as i get the time, as well i'll go through his poetical form, which is what i'm interested in....

good day yuyuusita kun...!

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by Yuyuuchan - 7 months ago
Koromubusu United States

Member Since: Nov 2007
Member Points: 4886

o.O...You mean h wrote about the people he did not like in such a way that he said that they went to the worst place?

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by kyranlucien - 7 months ago
Calgary Canada

Member Since: Jun 2009
Member Points: 3371

of course at the bottom of the last circle you will find the greatest sinner of all, lucifer himself, Dante was Christian and fanatic, political and controversial, many of the sinners he sent to his inferno were personal enemies....hehehe, i like the guy....

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by Yuyuuchan - 7 months ago
Koromubusu United States

Member Since: Nov 2007
Member Points: 4886

Wow...o.o

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by kyranlucien - 7 months ago
Calgary Canada

Member Since: Jun 2009
Member Points: 3371

thanks for your comments, i will keep going on little by little....

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