There is a new edition of Dante out--an anthology of English translations--and Harvard poetry critic Helen Vendler has some pointed comments to make about how Eric Griffiths' hundred-page introduction to the volume treats both the poet and his time:

...the manner of the introduction is so peculiar that its information is less salient than its expression. Did you know that Dante is so 'besotted . . . with the verb rispondere in all its forms . . . that the poem reads at times like a string of "I said to him I said"s'? Did you know that 'the mystic senses of the Scriptures were the cocaine of some clerics'? Were you aware that the Vulgate 'had itself been when it was composed an exercise in dumbing-down such as the Commedia in part aims to be'? Does your recollection of the Paradiso portray Dante 'mute and about to weep before Beatrice and the encircling blessed, harrowed with embarrassment, like a man who convivially declares "My shout!" and then finds he has forgotten his wallet'? Remembering the entrance to the infernal city, would you say that 'having made the tricky entrance into the city of Dis, Virgil rests--to take the weightlessness off his feet a while'? Would you, in commenting on the hideous episode in which Ugolino and his sons are starved to death in an 'orribile torre', remark that 'a tower is a Mr Big'? Can we infer that Dante's use of the word tencione makes 'the spectacle of the proud' seem a 'game like one of those "how many elephants are hidden in this picture?" teasers'? And when we hear Virgil say to Dante 'Che pense?', would you render it as 'What's on your mind?' Still less, when Beatrice, after cataloguing Dante's transgressions in the Purgatorio, asks him 'Che pense?', would you say: 'She waits only a moment before snapping "Che pense?"' Can we conceive of Beatrice 'snapping' like a shrew? And when remarking on the paradox of time passing in the eternity of Hell, would we feel that 'it could rightly be said: "If you're passing through it, it ain't hell"'?

There is desperation behind such a manner--the terror that nobody will pay any attention to Dante unless he is jazzed up in contemporary slang. It's a desperation that anyone teaching or writing about poetry is tempted to feel, so great is the gap between the ordinary discourse of our culture and the specialised discourses of poetry. But frenzied updating is not the solution; poetry can take care of itself, and there are other, and better, ways of drawing readers to Dante (some of them evident in Griffiths's introduction: remarks, for instance, on the strength of Dante's myth-making, his sense of dramatic occasion, his linguistic variety).

And all this time we never knew that Cacciaguida was actually refrring to 21st Century "critics"!

E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,/
sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia/
con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle;/

che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia/
si farà contr' a te; ma, poco appresso,/
ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia./

Di sua bestialitate il suo processo/
farà la prova; sì ch'a te fia bello/
averti fatta parte per te stesso.

I'm not in favor of trendy translations, and shudder to think of what some translators have probably done with "The love that moves the sun and the other stars." But I thought that the observation:

"after the invention of printing, ‘it became easier to feel that you had “finished” the Bible as you might finish an Agatha Christie, and correspondingly easier to think of the sacred writings as like a . . . spiritual “miracle diet” with a defined set of unambiguous recommendations and vetoes'"...was interesting and was not necessarily "patronizing of medieval spirituality." It does seem likely that modes of communication, including the change from oral and manuscript culture to printed-book culture, have at least some influence on modes of consciousness.

"...palpable embarrassment about the theological foundations of Dante's work..."

This kind of thing gets on my nerves. I was quite irritated to read the introduction printed in the front of my paperback copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin and find that the author had to make sure his readers knew that he found Stowe's religiosity and Victorian apostrophes distasteful. It is a book of its time. You get stuff like that from period literature. For some of us, this adds to the charm. Plus, Stowe wrote from her heart. If you pick that book up and expect Danielle Steele, you're an idiot. I feel like telling these people, if you don't get it, if you find yourself rolling your eyes, then don't write about it. But that's not right either, because some things deserve honest criticism.

A tutor at St. John's College in Santa Fe was once quoted as saying, "My job is to not get in the way of the text," which I find a refreshing approach to teaching. Those who write the frontmatter for books ought to follow the SJ tutor's example.

The Dante case detailed above reminds me of a sermon given in the middle of the 80s film "Heathers" in which the preacher refers to Christ as a "righteous dude." I mean, if it prevents teenage suicide...

Since I have dared to introduce Heathers to the board, I might suggest that Griffiths add to the second edition an allusion to the end of "Heathers" that will play very well to an audience of a certain age. The allusion goes:

Beatrice: Dante, you look like Hell.
Dante: Yeah, I just got back.

No attribution necessary.

I do find it somewhat amusing that Christians are so villified in current academia that the academics have to distance themselves from anything that might imply any sort of affinity for, or approval of, a Christian.