Simon West: The Poetic Beauty of Dante

Robert Frost once defined poetry as what gets lost in translation. Fortunately this hasn’t discouraged the many translators from Chaucer to Clive James who have grappled with Dante’s poetry. Accompany Simon and Dante’s translators on a journey into the beauty of the language of the Comedy, its rhyme, metre, metaphor, and what Dante called the “legame musaico armonizzato” – the musical and harmonious connections. Dr Simon West is a poet and an Italianist. He teaches Italian literature at The University of Melbourne, including a long running subject called To Hell with Dante, and runs close reading groups through all three canticles of ‘The Divine Comedy’ at the Dante Alighieri Society Melbourne. His publications on Dante include ‘Squaring the Circle: Dante, Memory and the Project of Writing’. His most recent book is a collection of essays entitled ‘Dear Muses: Essays in Poetry’ (Puncher and Wattman 2019). Part of 3MBS Dante700 Festival.