Classics on the Subway

While I have found the TTC to be extremely trying this past week or two (and I certainly hope I can start biking again in earnest this spring), it does give me more time to read (at least if I am not squished up against several people).  It does take extra concentration if you are reading something "serious," such as Homer, but I can usually make it through without too many distractions.

Anyway, I was settling into Lattimore's take on the Iliad when I saw the woman seated across from me had a Penguin classics with a very odd cover.  I finally was able to see that it was Dante's Inferno! 

It actually looked like part of a totem pole, though when I looked it up later, I could see it was one of the damned souls.

Hardly light subway reading (though to be fair, often the commute does feel like a kind of purgatory).  This is actually a reprint of Mark Musa's translation from the early 90s.*  I've always been the most partial to John Ciardi's translation, as it is the one that is the closest experience to reading Dante's terza rima scheme in English.  However, there are times that this requires stretching the meaning of the poem.  I took a quick look through the first few pages of Musa's translation, and it is pretty solid (it also is well footnoted).  

While I am not expecting to reread Dante in the immediate future, I might pick up a copy of Musa's translation and then when the time comes, I can alternate Ciardi and Musa.  I think I'd actually get Musa's The Portable Dante, which has the entire Divine Comedy, as well as Dante's Vita Nuova.  Unfortunately, it costs quite a bit more to get it up here,** so I think I'll hold off until I'm making a pass through the States, and I'll get it at that time.  As I said, I'm not in any particular hurry.

* Actually his Dante translations came out in the 1970s and 80s!  But then got picked up by Penguin in the 90s.

** Apparently, the Kindle version is all jacked-up, so I'd only get an actual print edition.