A month before this archive marks another year, I find myself reflecting on how quietly, insistently, my reading habits have shifted across that time. One consequence of long-term writing in public is that former tastes and judgments remain visible. There are older entries I now read with discomfort, not because today’s impressions are necessarily more refined, but because what feels definitive one month often becomes provisional the next.
Over these nine years I have read indiscriminately and without design. The books chosen, the routes taken, each decision shaped by accident, instinct, and the magnetic pull of certain sentences. Many of those books I’ve forgotten, though not altogether lost. They exist in some submerged continuity: a book read nine years ago may resurface unexpectedly, prompting me to lift another from the shelf today. Reading forms its own geology of sediment and pressure, links and strata.
Next year, I intend to read differently. Not more slowly, exactly, but with a different kind of attention. I plan to read one book, and to read around it, behind it, and beneath it. T. S. Eliot wrote: “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.” My temperament has always leaned toward Dante. Yet unlike Shakespeare, to read The Divine Comedy demands a surrender not only to the text but to what lies beyond it: the commentaries, the precursors, the vastness that surrounds its hundred cantos.
This will not be my first approach. I have read Inferno several times, Purgatorio twice. Paradiso still waits. Dante’s poem is a site of convergence: dozens of other works are invoked, many more were shaped by its movement. How long this return will last, I cannot say. Perhaps until distraction intervenes. Perhaps until another thread insists on being followed.
For now, I will read with Virgil as guide, and with others: Prue Shaw, Dorothy Sayers, Erich Auerbach, Graham Harman, Peter Hawkins. And alongside, perhaps, more from Jan Zwicky, Dorothy Richardson, and Peter Handke. But Dante will be the axis.
Alas. You know, I was hoping, somehow, that you would help me get some closure – or at least a good opening – on Clarice Lispector in 2018. Why did I think this? Have you mentioned her much?
Am reading my way through Iris Murdoch and wondering how I can be said to be “reading” at all.
Looking forward to your divagations, as well as your determined strides.
Yes, I am enthusiastic about Lispector’s work, though find it fiendishly difficult to write about coherently. I did write about Água Viva, which I like very much. I might well read more Lispector next year; I’ve always intended to. See how fickle I am – you’ve sidetracked me already! I’d also like to read more Murdoch sometime.
Thanks for commenting.
I approve of your plan. I have just finished a year’s project of reading Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura with the help of Cyril Bailey’s edition with Latin and English on facing pages, and much commentary. It is, as you may know, an Epicurean Atomist’s philosophical poem, six books long, and utterly engaging. My high school Latin has been improved immeasurably by doing it, and I have been able to draw a number of people into following it day by day, week by week. The Dante project will prove just as rewarding for you, I am sure. The Bolligen edition of Dante — darn, can’t remember who did it, is also facing pages Italian and English. If you post the verses you are discussing in you blog, we can all learn along with you! Good Luck!!
Have you read Jane Bennett’s The Force of Things: Steps toward an Ecology of Matter or the superb Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things? Both draw heavily on Lucretius in their investigation into nonhuman forces. My copy of De Rerum Natura (unread) must be abridged, as it certainly doesn’t run to six volumes. Did you write about your project on a blog? If so, might you share the link please?
Thanks for the suggestion and the Murdoch plug.
Well I know about both of those books and should read them. deRerum is a six book poem not six volumes! In Bailey’s edition it’s two volumes of text and one of commentary. I did the DeRerum as a project for myself and a group of about 35 regular readers. What we shared was that we are all jazz singers, at all d
Aah, I understand now. My misunderstanding. Thanks.
p.s. just a plug for Murdoch’s The Green Knight — one of her very very best.
I am glad I’m not the only one who reads unsystematically – I often wish I wasn’t so easily swayed. Nevertheless, I’ll be very interested to follow your thoughts on Dante. I read Inferno and Purgatorio decades ago but stalled at Paradiso (as you do…) and I suspect read them very badly. Look forward to hearing how you get on.
Thanks, Karen. Rather than think of the three sections, I’m going to focus canto by canto.
Abandon all hope, you who enter your reading itineraries online! But it’s a wonderful plan. Dante scholar Prue Shaw’s husband, if I am not mistaken, is Clive James, that versatile wordsmith, poet, critic, broadcaster, and translator, still going strong at the end. Will James’s recent Englishing of the Divine Comedy into fluent quatrains — flipping Italian threes into Anglo fours — enter into your voyage to Paradiso?
It is on my mind, though Nick Lezard’s review is lukewarm. I couldn’t agree less with James’ comment, “Perhaps boldly, I would say that all the reader needs to know is in the poem as I have presented it.”
at all different points in our singing and I did it as a challenge to see if it would interest people from very different backgrounds and interests. I am now going to delete it and go back to other things. It isn’t scholarly in the way it should be and since I am retired academic, I wouldn’t feel right about doing more with it. If you are interested, I’d be happy to send you an essay I did publish on Lucretius and the Sublime, published in Tate Research Papers.
Sorry — lost the rest of my comment. I did the Lucretius project for a small (35 ) group of jazz singers, as a challenge to myself and them. Now it’s going into cold storage until I decide if there is something else I want to do with it. Since I am a retired academic, it wold have to become something more scholarly to see the light of day… however, I do have an essay in Tate Research Papers about Lucretius in the eighteenth discussion of the sublime. If it’s of any interest to you, I will send you the link! Annie J
Annie, that would be excellent. I’d love to read your Lucretius paper. Thank you.
That’s a great project. I thought about something similar myself but wasn’t able to carve out the required time. I’ll be looking forward to it. I am especially interested in the secondary literature you’re going to tackle.
Thank you! I’m especially interested in the secondary literature. There is just so much of it!
Anthony, in addition to Peter Hawkins, I recommend John Freccero’s Dante: the Poetics of Conversion, Teodolinda Barolini’s The Undivine Comedy and Borges’ Nine Dantesque Essays (in Selected Non-fiction/The Total Library). But what translation/s is/are do you plan to use? My favourite edition is the Durling/Martinez, with the Hollanders’ a close second.
Thanks, Steve, for those suggestions. I’ll seek them out. I haven’t decided yet which translation to use as my central pillar, but have Longfellow’s Italianate translation, Mandelaum’s and Kirkpatrick’s (both favourites of Nick Lezard), the Hollander and Sinclair’s prose version (excellent contextual notes). I’ve read none of Kirkpatrick’s so will probably use that (or the Hollander).
Steve – One of the essays I’ve found fascinating is Osip Mandelstam’s Conversation about Dante, available online [PDF].
Thanks Anthony. Fortunately I have that book, which I bought in 2002 and had forgotten about. But now I see it also has an extract from Charles Williams’ The Figure of Beatrice, which is difficult to find – yes, there are search results but from obscure publishers who don’t seem reliable.
Have you seen this new edition? It looks legitimate.
I had seen it but wasn’t sure about its legitimacy. Academic really, as I can’t afford it.
A great plan, and what is so great about it is that Dante is so infested with rabbits. So many rewarding rabbit holes. Endless rewarding rabbit holes. Who knows where you’ll end up.
Yes, that’s why Dante was such a clear choice. So many directions to go in.
My only plan for next year is to keep on reading an Iris Murdoch a month until I’m finished (again). Lovely to see her mentioned so much by other commenters here. Happy reading!
Thank you, Liz. I’m slowly acquiring nice Murdoch editions when I come across them and will binge one day.
Below the link to my Lucretius paper. Oh the three volume translation by John Sinclair is the one that has the Italian and English face to face. When I took a course on Dante with Freccero at Stanford back in the 1970s, he had us all buy that one. Its a way to learn or brush up your Italian as well, and I think its a great help to use it even if you choose a more literary or elegant translation to make you happy. The Sinclair will make you accurate.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/anne-janowitz-the-sublime-plurality-of-worlds-lucretius-in-thesup-supeighteenth-century-r1138670
(maybe you have to copy and paste into your browser — I will try it and see) … yeah, copy and paste.
Anyway, the way I did Lucretius was to give my readers say twenty to thirty lines a day (mon-fri)– first in Latin, and then my translation — a mishmash of Bailey and Highschool and also some random thoughts of my own – It was great fun….but it also required a lot of discipline to get up early in the morning before doing anything else… and I also did gain and lose readers throughout the year.
I shall be looking to see your blog posts! Annie J.
Thanks, Annie. I shall make some tea and read that this evening.
I’m pleased to say that the Hollander and Kirkpatrick translations also have the Italian on the facing pages. An Italian friend bought me the Sinclair, and that was my first reading of Inferno and Purgatorio before reading Hollander’s translation.
I used Anthony Esolen’s edition when I read the entire work, and I found both his translation clear and his notes helpful. I have heard excellent reports on Dorothy Sayers’ footnotes. I wish you the best in your intentions! How is your Italian?
Thank you. The little Italian available to me is based on schoolboy Latin.
Coincidentally*, Dante is next up for me, too. Which translations do you have? Is there one you prefer? (*I’m writing from a chilly hillside just south of Florence, so it’s not my most imaginative choice…)
(Ah – I see you have already answered this above. Should have read comments first…)
I’ll be interested to hear what choice of translator you make.
My modern Italian is better than it was thanks to this trip, which makes the facing-page editions enticing, but I’m confined to digital while we’re travelling, so will start with the Penguin Kirkpatrick in English only. I have Auerbach as guide (and the recent Clive James for comparison, although more as a curiosity than anything else).
I am curious about the James, especially as it benefited, apparently, from Prue Shaw’s guidance.
Yes, I saw that in another comment above. I’m ambivalent about him as a writer of verse. His poetry largely leaves me cold, but his song-writing collaborations with Pete Atkin in the 70s were an important part of my childhood. Their cadences were rooted in me very early, so much so that his turn of phrase is always deeply familiar.
His Poetry Notebook 2006-2014, from the bits I’ve dipped into, is reasonably interesting, a collection of pieces he wrote on poetry in various publications.