John Anthony Ciardi

Ciardi's first connection to Italy is linked to his origins. Before emigrating to the United States, his father had studied enough to know how to read, write and appreciate literature. It is therefore not surprising that he read passages from the Divine Comedy and other Italian literary works, often aloud. It is debatable whether his passion directly influenced his son's choices, as he was fatherless at the age of three. However, Edward M. Cifelli highlights the psychological pressure his mother exerted on him. Ciardi acknowledged the rich cultural background passed on to him by his family, which included some “pagan superstitions”, Catholic rituals and popular beliefs (Cifelli 1997, p. 8). In Homeward to America (1940) he pays tribute to his mother's courage in leaving Italy, and in As If (1955) the poet confessed some of the insecurities linked to his origins, evoking episodes from his childhood and his pride in the land of his parents. This collection features the first of a group of eight poems that would later be grouped together in “Fragments from Italy” (Nona Domenica Garnaro sits in the sun). The collection Selected Poems (1984) would be, according to Ciardi, deeply Italian-American: the section “Tribal Poems” takes him autobiographically from his baptism (The Evil Eye) to the death of his mother (Addio). Ciardi's relationship with Italy was often problematic: as early as 1983 he wrote that he did not know whether he was a “dirazzato Italiano [denaturalised Italian], although” he believed he was one (Cifelli 1997, p. 439), only to conclude a few years later - “Vero e [sic] che sono italiano deracinato” (“True is that I am a deracinated Italian”, Ciardi 1991, p. 441).

In the mid-1930s, as a student at Tufts University, Ciardi read the Inferno in the Temple Classics edition. However, he was dissatisfied with its translation, which he felt was too literal and not faithful to the original meaning. Thus, he began to collect various existing translations until he started teaching at Harvard, in the mid-1940s, when he provided his students with excerpts that he had translated himself. This experience marked the beginning of the ambitious translation project that would occupy him for the following twenty years. Between 1949 and 1950, Ciardi was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled him to visit Europe for the first time and live in Italy for six months, where he completed the translation of the Inferno, which was later published by Rutgers University Press in 1954 and by the New American Library in paperback edition. In the same year, Folkways Records recorded the cantos read by Ciardi. Between 1954 and 1955 Ciardi also discussed literature on radio and television with Remigio Pane, head of the Romance Languages Department at Rutgers University.

In 1957 Ciardi won the Prix de Rome, which enabled him to study for a year at the American Academy. During his stay in Rome he completed the Purgatorio, published in 1961, which sold sixty thousand copies in the first six months alone, reaching one million the following year. Also in 1961, Ciardi gave up his university career to devote himself to writing and translating, although he did not give up attending conferences. After completing the Purgatorio, Ciardi wrote an article for the Saturday Review, “How to Read Dante” (3 June 1961). The essay aims to help the “uninitiated” to appreciate the great master. This was followed by a mini-course on the Divine Comedy, which was much valued by the students. Cifelli reports that one of them, Frances Carter, wrote to the editor of the SR that Ciardi was the first professor to give him a basis and reliable tools to fully understand Dante (Cifelli 1997, pp. 305-6). 

In 1963, Ciardi allowed the use of some passages from his translation of the Inferno for the drawings of Rico Lebrun, whom he considered the perfect illustrator of Dante, better than Gustave Doré. A limited edition of two thousand copies was published by Kanthos Press in November 1963. In 1965, the SR published Ciardi’s most comprehensive and profound analysis of the Commedia, “The Relevance of the Inferno” (15 and 22 May 1965). In the same year Ciardi took part in a series of lectures for the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth. (Cifelli 1997, p. 307). Finally, in 1970, the Paradiso was published. 

Even today, the most widely read English-language version of the Divine Comedy is Ciardi’s, particularly appreciated in that it preserves the feeling of the original while being a poem comprehensible to English-speaking readers.

Related Vectors

Documents

• Folkways Records - The Inferno (Dante Alighieri): The Immortal Drama of a Journey through Hell by John Ciardi