Divine Comedy: I am the way into the city of woe &c

[QMF]

I think it's eatis...

 

[legio septima]

Hmm, interesting, since easily one could use the closest sounding Latin word to translate. But, alas, two translations arise, one of the Italian and one of the English. Let's see...

English to Latin
Note: Ultima may be used as greatest and I prefer aevus over tempus as it hints 'passage of time'.

Via in urbem miseriae sum
Via ad gentes relictas sum
Via in aeternam maestitiam sum

Sacra Iustitia Aedificem meum movit
Hic statuta sum divina omnipotentia
item amore pristino menteque ultima

Elementi illi solum quem aevus non consumat
facti sunt ante me et extra aevum sto
Proicite spes omnes qui hic introeunt

Italian to Latin
Per me ingrediamini in urbem dolentem
Per me ingrediamini in aeternum dolorem
Per me ingrediamini post gentes perditas

Iustitia movit meum altum factorem
Me fecerunt potestas divina
summa sapientia et primus amor

Ante me nullae res factae sunt
si non factae sunt aeternas, et ego in aeternum permaneo
linquite omnes spes vos qui intrant

Any foibles, errors, please report ASAS (as soon as noticed).

Hello everyone,
Sorry for digging up this old thread, but I don't understand two things ( related to translating original italian into latin).
why did Andy write vos qui intrant? voi ch'entrate means you who are entering
should it not be correct to write vos qui intratis
also should it not be spes omnes deponite? Is there even such expression like linquere spem or proicere spem ?

 

[Dantius]

Yeah, it should be vos qui intratis

There's an example of linquite spem in Valerius Flaccus but deponite would probably be better.

 

[Glabrigausapes]

Sorry for digging up this old thread

No harm. A little amusing to see what these relics were up to.

 

[Glabrigausapes]

In any case, everyone seems to have done this at one time or another.

 

[legio septima]

Yeah. It's hard to believe some threads date back to 2005

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

I've never understood why it's considered bad form to do this. Obviously a one-off poster is unlikely to profit from it (though it's possible), but whatever is added might be interesting in its own right to others. The forum rules stress that threads are permanent, and if nobody's reading them, there wouldn't be much point in wasting bandwidth on them.

 

[Andy]

Hello everyone,
Sorry for digging up this old thread, but I don't understand two things ( related to translating original italian into latin).
why did Andy write vos qui intrant? voi ch'entrate means you who are entering
should it not be correct to write vos qui intratis
also should it not be spes omnes deponite? Is there even such expression like linquere spem or proicere spem ?

You're completely right. And spes omnes deponite is much more in line with the poetic construction of the original.

 

[Gregorius Textor]

I looked up some info about the poem; the rhyme scheme is called terza rima, and the meter is iambic tetrameter. The meter is obscured sometimes, however, by the fact that Italian (like Spanish and French) heavily liaisons adjacent vowels, and sometimes even elides consonants in the various "small words" that appear between content words. So, while the first line follows the meter almost perfectly (underscores indicate liaisons or elisions):

Per me si va ne_la città dolente

A few other lines require quite a stretch of syllable compression to fit the meter:

Giustizia mosse_il mio alto fattore

(joos-TEE-tsya MOHS-sayl myo AHL-toh fat-TOH-reh)

Dinanzi_a me non fuor cose create

(dee-NAHN-tsya meh NOHN fwor KOH-seh kreh-AH-teh)

Lasciate_ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate

(lah-SHAH-tyony speh-RAHN-tsa VOY keen-TRAH-teh)

The "tyony" here is one syllable; both y's are consonantal.

Basically, try to make the four stressed syllables in each line follow a regular rhythm, and allow the syllables in between to compress and run together in order to make everything fit. This isn't allowed in English, but is common in Italian and Spanish.

It is indeed terza rima, but is it really iambic tetrameter? That would be 4 feet, 8 syllables, per line.

Terza rima per se does not have any particular rhythm. But, in the Divine Comedy, quoth Wikipedia: "the verse scheme used, terza rima, is hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ....". (A tercet is a three-line group.)

Eleven syllables per line seems to be a better fit than iambic tetrameter. The first tercet fits perfectly, although I think some elision might still be needed in other parts.

1 Per me si va ne la città dolente,
2 per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
3 per me si va tra la perduta gente.

4 Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
5 fecemi la divina podestate,
6 la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.

7 Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
8 se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
9 Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate