Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Ernie Brill's avatar

thorough,Lev.Grateful. You are one of the reasons Im staying on substack.Im very busy with several manuscripts Im sending out, along with trying to get an agent ( onceupon a time...etc- one passed away, the other disapppeared.

Expand full comment
LindaAnn LoSchiavo's avatar

My friend Michael Palma did not set out, intentionally, to translate Dante's Divine Comedy for W.W. Norton. But during the annual Maundy Thursday readings of Dante (at St. John the Divine, NYC), he found so many errors in published editions that he began translating the small passage he would read when it was his turn.

He decided to translate all of the Inferno, in Dante's original metrical form.

W.W. Norton loved Palma's translation of Inferno, done in an exacting terza rima (for which he won the Rome Prize) - - but they were disinclined to have him move forward with the other two books (Purgatorio, Paradiso).

After a long career in letters, Palma retired and was startled when -- a dozen years later -- W.W. Norton commissioned the remaining sections by Dante.

Now Norton was in a hurry, it seemed.

They wanted La Divina Commedia for a certain seasonal catalogue.

They moved up his deadlines.

Palma did his best and finished proofing last autumn (2022).

Not a word has he heard from his editors.

Expand full comment
9 more comments...

No posts