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Exactly what we have waited for these years, a Dante with clarity, eloquence, terror, and profoundly moving depths. 內容簡介
In this superb translation with an introduction and commentary by Allen Mandelbaum, all of Dante's vivid images--the earthly, sublime, intellectual, demonic, ecstatic--are rendered with marvelous clarity to read like the words of a poet born in our own age. 作者簡介
Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy in 1265. His early poetry falls into the tradition of love poetry that passed from the Provencal to such Italian poets as Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's friend and mentor. Dante's first major work is the Vita Nuova, 1293-1294. This sequence of lyrics, sonnets, and prose narrative describes his love, first earthly, then spiritual, for Beatrice, whom he had first seen as a child of nine, and who had died when Dante was 25. Dante married about 1285, served Florence in battle, and rose to a position of leadership in the bitter factional politics of the city-state. As one of the city's magistrates, he found it necessary to banish leaders of the so-called "Black" faction, and his friend Cavalcanti, who like Dante was a prominent "White." But after the Blacks seized control of Florence in 1301, Dante himself was tried in absentia and was banished from the city on pain of death. He never returned to Florence. We know little about Dante's life in exile. Legend has it that he studied at Paris, but if so, he returned to Italy, for his last years were spent in Verona and Ravenna. In exile he wrote his Convivio, kind of poetic compendium of medieval philosophy, as well as a political treatise, Monarchia. He began his Comedy (later to be called the Divine Comedy) around 1307-1308. On a diplomatic mission to Venice in 1321, Dante fell ill, and returned to Ravenna, where he died.
Allen Mendelbaum's five verse volumes are: Chelmaxions; The Savantasse of Montparnasse; Journeyman; Leaves of Absence; and A Lied of Letterpress. His volumes of verse translation include The Aeneid of Virgil, a University of California Press volume (now available from Bantam) for which he won a National Book Award; the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso volumes of the California Dante (now available from Bantam); The Odyssey of Homer (now available from Bantam); The Metamorphoses of Ovid, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry; Ovid in Sicily; Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti; Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo; and David Maria Turoldo. Mandelbaum is co-editor with Robert Richardson Jr. of Three Centuries of American Poetry (Bantam Books) and, with Yehuda Amichai, of the eight volumes of the JPS Jewish Poetry Series. After receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia, he was in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. While chairman of the Ph.D. program in English at the Graduate Center of CUNY, he was a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and at the universities of Houston, Denver, Colorado, and Purdue. His honorary degrees are from Notre Dame University, Purdue University, the University of Assino, and the University of Torino. He received the Gold Medal of Honor from the city of Florence in 2000, celebrating the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth, the only translator to be so honored; and in 2003 he received the President of Italy's award for translation. He is now Professor of the History of Literary Criticism at the University of Turin and the W.R. Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University. 精彩書評
"An exciting, vivid Inferno by a translator whose scholarship is impeccable."
——Chicago magazine
《神麯》係列導讀:超越煉獄的恢宏史詩 (本簡介旨在介紹但丁·阿利吉耶裏所著《神麯》係列的整體背景與文學價值,不涉及特定捲冊《煉獄篇》的具體情節。) 《神麯》(La Divina Commedia)是世界文學史上最偉大的史詩之一,被譽為中世紀文化的百科全書,也是西方文學的基石。這部由意大利詩人但丁·阿利吉耶裏於十四世紀初創作的鴻篇巨製,不僅僅是一部關於地獄、煉獄與天堂的宗教寓言,更是一部深刻的人文主義宣言,對後世的哲學、神學、藝術乃至語言發展産生瞭無可估量的影響。 一、 創作的時代背景與詩人的抱負 但丁生活在佛羅倫薩政治動蕩、教權與皇權激烈角逐的時代。他本人因政治立場被放逐,這份流亡的痛苦與對理想秩序的渴望,深深融入瞭他的史詩創作之中。他以一種空前的宏大視角,構建瞭一個既符閤托馬斯·阿奎那神學體係,又充滿個人情感投射的宇宙模型。 《神麯》的創作目的,在於引導迷失在“黑暗森林”(象徵罪惡與無知)中的人類,通過理性的指引(維吉爾代錶的古代智慧)和神聖的啓示(貝阿特麗切代錶的神學之光),最終迴歸到對上帝的愛與永恒的真理的認知之中。詩人將自己的靈魂之旅設定為全人類的精神淨化曆程,其抱負之宏大,在文學史上罕有匹敵。 二、 史詩的結構與象徵的深度 《神麯》全書共分三部分,即“地獄篇”(Inferno)、“煉獄篇”(Purgatorio)和“天堂篇”(Paradiso),每部分包含33歌,加上引言共100歌。這種結構化的安排,本身就體現瞭中世紀對數字象徵的偏愛,特彆是“三”和“九”的完美組閤。 詩歌采用意大利托斯卡納方言寫就,而非當時通用的拉丁語,這一舉動對意大利語的標準化和普及起到瞭決定性的推動作用。其韻律,即著名的“三韻律”(terza rima),如同無窮的連鎖,象徵著永恒的運動和精神的遞進。 三、 貫穿全書的主題:罪與贖、理性與信仰 盡管《神麯》被劃分為三個截然不同的領域,但貫穿始終的主題是統一的:人類如何麵對自身的罪孽,並通過愛(Amore)的驅動,實現靈魂的救贖。 在地獄中,詩人以一種近乎“紀錄片”式的冷靜,描繪瞭九層地獄中對不同罪孽的懲罰。這些懲罰並非隨意的摺磨,而是嚴格遵循“反嚮報應”(contrapasso)的原則——罪孽的性質決定瞭刑罰的形式和體驗。通過地獄的描繪,但丁嚴厲批判瞭當時教會內部的腐敗、政治上的背叛以及人類的貪婪與傲慢。 在嚮上的旅程中,煉獄構成瞭連接罪惡與至善的橋梁。它是一個充滿希望、懺悔與勞動的場所,靈魂在此通過忍耐和自省來淨化自身的七宗罪。這裏的氛圍與地獄的絕望形成鮮明對比,強調瞭自由意誌在救贖過程中的關鍵作用。 最終,天堂的境界則超越瞭物質世界的所有感知。詩人必須放下理性的嚮導(維吉爾),轉而跟隨神學之光的引領,進入光輝與和諧的永恒之境。天堂的描寫充滿瞭神秘主義色彩,旨在錶達語言的局限性——有些真理,隻能在體驗中領悟,而無法被凡俗的詞匯完全捕捉。 四、 文學的創新與人物的豐滿 但丁的偉大之處,在於他不僅繼承瞭古典文學的敘事傳統,更賦予瞭作品深刻的人文主義光芒。他筆下的曆史人物、神話角色乃至同時代的教皇和政治傢,都被賦予瞭極其鮮活的、具有強烈人性色彩的形象。 這些人物,無論是深陷痛苦的卡戎、沉思的古希臘哲人,還是在痛苦中保持尊嚴的英雄,他們的話語和情感都超越瞭簡單的符號意義。但丁以其卓越的洞察力,探討瞭人類情感的復雜性——嫉妒、驕傲、愛情的失控以及對知識的渴望。這種對人性的深刻挖掘,使《神麯》擺脫瞭單純的宗教教義闡述,升華為普世的人類精神探索史。 五、 對後世文化遺産的影響 《神麯》不僅定義瞭中世紀的終結,更預示瞭文藝復興的曙光。它標誌著一種新的文學自信——用本民族的語言書寫史詩,並以此來探討最宏大、最深刻的哲學與神學命題。從喬叟到彌爾頓,從波德萊爾到現代的文學評論傢,無不對其結構、意象和語言的力量頂禮膜拜。它確立瞭詩人作為先知和道德導師的地位,並為後來的文學作品設定瞭描繪宏大宇宙圖景的典範。閱讀《神麯》,便是與西方文明數韆年來的精神脈絡進行一次深沉的對話。