Guide to the Inferno
O the BBC for recording Laurence Binyon’s translation of Dante’s Inferno, and to the NZBS for broadcasting it, a sincere vote of thanks. The presentation of five cantos a time each week from 1YC has been among my most memorable listening experiences. By comparison. with Ciardi’s and Sayers’s translations, which I’ve been using as a guide, Binyon’s version seems a shade inflated, but it has nobility and dignity and a fitting vividness in the descriptive passages. Esmé Percy makes. a rather quavery Virgil, but Marius Goring is astonishingly good as Dante, completely subduing his very distinctive acting personality to the demands of the poetry. What a distance our radio has covered. since the days when spoken poetry consisted of "elocutionary entertainment." When we can hear one of the towering masterpieces of world poetry beautifully read in its entirety, it is indeed hard to be patient with those who complain of the mediocrity
of all radio material. The Inferno may not have won many new listeners for 1YC, but those who caught it must, like myself, have been grateful that, however unprofitable the roundabouts, the swings still show a handsome return.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570315.2.31.5
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 918, 15 March 1957, Page 21
Word count
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194Guide to the Inferno New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 918, 15 March 1957, Page 21
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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