In both translations it is made clear that Canto 5 of Dante’s Inferno Dante is introduced to the second circle of Hell. This is where Dante meets Minos and Minos takes him on a journey. In the two translations by Charles Eliot Norton (written in 1902), and Patrick Bannerman (written in 1850), we are shown the same story, although it is carried out very differently. I expected to enjoy reading Norton’s translation at least a little bit more because it was written almost fifteen years after Bannerman’s translation, although I found myself more intrigued while reading Bannerman’s version of the translation.
Although Norton’s translation would probably be easier for a contemporary American reader to understand, I did not think that the quality of the text was as great and Bannerman’s translation. Norton’s translation did not contain a rhyme scheme, and therefore did not sound poetic. He kept the quotes from Mino’s in wording that sounded much less contemporary than the rest of the translation, and I thought that did not flow well. For example, he says, “‘O thou comest to the woeful inn’, says Minos to me, when he saw me, leaving the act of so great an office, ‘beware how though enterest, and to whom thou truest thyself; let not the amplitude of the entrance deceive there’”. In my opinion, Norton should have made the entire piece sound more contemporary and poetic.
On the other hand, Bannerman translated Canto 5 perfectly, because it was contemporary yet poetic at the same time because he kept a rhyme scheme. The message was very clear because of his word choice. The reader could easily emphasize with the pain and sorrow that Dante felt while entering this second circle of Hell. The first time where the reader truly feels Dante’s pain is when he says “And pierce my heart with sorrow, make me faint,
Struck with many an arrow of complaint.
I came to place where light itself was mute,
Rebelling as tempests make the sea,
When striving winds are flighting vehemently”.
This line was truly effective in getting the message across and also keeping the translation as poetic as Dante would have wanted.