Hi Andrew F., cool to hear that about Pinocchio! I had no idea. The great poets - Petrarch, Tasso or Ariosto, Montale or Quasimodo - I find hard going without a crib. My poor Italian is getting increasingly rusty. Dante, with my less than bilingual Italian, wasn't impenetrable, whereas Manzoni was an uphill climb. He reminded me a bit of Tolstoy. You'd think prose would be more accessible, but Dante made sense. One reason I love him.
On Commedia translations - there are plenty out there to be avoided. For one thing, Dante put a lot of work into his terza rima, and almost all English versions discard it. I believe the Penguin is in prose. Andrew, I'm glad to hear your thumbs up to Bickersteth, he gets little credit in my experience.
Cheers,
John
Update: if the Princeton Dante is free, that beats $4.49.
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