There is at least one English poet who could use terza rima successfully and that is Shelley. He does it in "Ode to the West Wind" and most impressively in his unfinished "Triumph of LIfe."
What a lovely reading, both in the words themselves and their meaning and imagery, as well as the purely aural sound and flow of the text (amplified by your vocal reading of it). And of course it is primarily your enjoyable comments about the passage too that Word and Song is all about.
My [late] wife Angelee and I have your translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in toto and I remember your comments in its introduction about the terza rima scheme working well in Italian, but being less amenable to the rhyme-stingy English language (side-track: I use that adjectival description since Angelee and I heartily laughed at, and long remembered -- and used ourselves when occasion called for it -- a review about two Volcano movies that came out about the same time many years ago, ie, "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" that gave Dante's Peak the better review of the two, but did at least criticize it as being somewhat "lava-stingy" in comparison to the movie "Volcano," since lava IS, after all, the prime reason anyone would watch a movie about a volcano in the first place :-) )
Anyway, you had mentioned (as I remember -- I hope my memory is holding up properly here) that for that reason you tried to keep the first and third lines of the tercets rhyming as far as reasonable but with less emphasis (if any) on the second line joining in -- leading, rather -- with the rhyme for the first and third lines of the subsequent tercet.
And so we see that scheme decision followed in this selection from your translation. And I think it works admirably, and your reading makes me want to go back and read the entire set again (Angelee and I had read most of your Inferno aloud, but alas, didn't get all the way to the end, let alone making it to the other two volumes -- though she of course did read them all to herself separately from our reading aloud efforts).
You and Debra probably know, from comments I've made elsewhere, of my particular fascination with how the metrical and functional (eg, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, etc, even to the point of including intentional "violations" of "rules") that may contribute actively to how a poem reads to the ear in terms of adding presence and atmosphere to the actual meanings of the words themselves. And I see that sort of thing all over the place here, and in your other writings that I've read. Just one easy example (out of several I could pick without much effort) is the delightful assonance of the line, "...and here, Calliope, strike a higher key," that highlights with its repetition of the long "i" sound in the words, the very meaning of the line itself.
Well, that's a general subject that I'm sure a focus on is out of place on Word and Song, a site that is intended to focus rather on particular word, literary, poetic, and movie and song examples, as opposed to discussions of general literary and poetic principles. But for whatever reason (my inner mathematician child being the prime mover of such "particular" interests I expect), I tend to focus on and "notice" such things consciously (I say "consciously" because, for instance, Angelee could often "feel" such things that made a something "work" without consciously recognizing those sorts of "mechanical" bits and pieces -- though of course she would recognize "obvious" examples -- but often, when I would point such things out (often in her own writings) she would acknowledge the effect after the fact, even though she hadn't consciously intended them as such when she wrote the words down, instead, "hearing them" as a whole unsegmented unit of appreciation of a passage.
Ok, so all that to say that I wonder if you know of any books or articles, or perhaps even of your own lectures that may be available as videos online, that might delve deeper into such "more generalized" aesthetic and poetic issues (as opposed to topics about particular works). As a particular example of that sort of discussion, we might fully agree that too much attention to absolutely strict meter in poetry can (though there be exceptions I think) result in sing-songy type rhythms that can detract from the reading by calling attention to themselves too strongly. And of course the opposite problem might be how much of "modern free-verse poetry" (as opposed to "blank verse") that seems almost to disdain and avoid any metrical limitations at all.
But my tendency would be (always allowing for the inevitable exception of course) to lean toward the idea that if there are "violations" or veerings away from, say, strict metrical conditions, the writer should at least have "reasons" (even if not consciously decided reasons, but only "hearing" that the quality "sounds right" internally as Angelee seemed capable of) for any veering (as opposed to a rather mundane explanation of, say, "I was just trying to avoid sounding sing-songy" as a kind of catch-all and null-hypothesis motivation -- Gah! Sorry for the mathematical-sounding statistical terminology there, but it seemed to fit at first blush... :-) )
Again, a subject that I'm sure is WAY too particular (and too generalized at the same time) for Word and Song's purposes, but if you have any suggestions of books or videos or places to go to (hopefully not in the direction of the actual inferno :-) ) about the subject, I would be in paradisio, I think.
Oh, and I also meant to mention in my already way overlong reply above a sort of side-comment. Your mention of "blue" both here and in the word of the day column along with my observation a while back about your book The Hundredfold of how it seemed to have several references to the deep blueness of the dome of the sky and in relation to the Virgin Mary, reminds me of how upset Angelee was when Crayola crayons officially got rid of (in 1990 as I find in a quick search online) her favorite color as a child -- and as an adult -- in their boxes of crayons, ie, "Blue-Violet." My favorite color was always "Violet-Blue," one of the very few differences of opinion we had over 38 years of marriage -- but that's another story...
But she would have swooned at your various descriptions about that color blue and its sweeping meaning for us in the sky and in our lives. Blue was definitely HER color and the deeper the better. Even to the point of painting (against all sensible "rules" about "dark" ceilings being a decorative no-no for rooms and living spaces) the ceiling of our then-newly-added-on family room (that we named "Crickhollow") a deep blue as a sort of projection of the sky outside). As proof, here is a to a picture of it:
Fairfield NJ, near where I live, has a population that's about 45 percent Italian descent. Up until a few decades ago the Italian Consulate in New York City had been giving Fairfield"s public school board financial support to continue teaching the Italian language in the township's two grammar schools. But after pressure from the State of NJ, the board of ed switched to teaching Spanish. At the next school board meeting a little lady from the Italian Consulate vocally laced into board members like Christ driving money changers from the Temple. The opportunity for future students to read Dante in his own language one day became severely curtailed.
Those people were idiots, then. We have Spanish everywhere. Where's their concern for diversity, all at once? Why should ALL the schools go to Spanish first? I'm not saying anything against Spanish, but why can't we have a few schools teach German first, or French, or Italian, or Portuguese, depending on the makeup of the city -- or Russian, or Polish?
Good for her, speaking up, even if to no avail. Italian was offered in my own NJ public high school, along with French, German, Spanish, and if I am not mis-remembering, Russian for awhile. The worst thing that ever happened to public education was the giving it over to the authority of the teachers' union (NATIONAL) and state government. Parents lost all say over what went on in the schools, which increasingly fleeced them tax-wise to support whatever the stupid "innovation" of the day was. And now it's all politics and "activism" running the show. And an ugly show it is, too, public "education." By the way, Italian was not taught in my husband's parochial high school whose students were grandchildren on Italian immigrants in the 1970's .. and that says a lot about what public education USED TO offer. Tony finally taught himself Italian in graduate school.
There is at least one English poet who could use terza rima successfully and that is Shelley. He does it in "Ode to the West Wind" and most impressively in his unfinished "Triumph of LIfe."
What a lovely reading, both in the words themselves and their meaning and imagery, as well as the purely aural sound and flow of the text (amplified by your vocal reading of it). And of course it is primarily your enjoyable comments about the passage too that Word and Song is all about.
My [late] wife Angelee and I have your translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in toto and I remember your comments in its introduction about the terza rima scheme working well in Italian, but being less amenable to the rhyme-stingy English language (side-track: I use that adjectival description since Angelee and I heartily laughed at, and long remembered -- and used ourselves when occasion called for it -- a review about two Volcano movies that came out about the same time many years ago, ie, "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" that gave Dante's Peak the better review of the two, but did at least criticize it as being somewhat "lava-stingy" in comparison to the movie "Volcano," since lava IS, after all, the prime reason anyone would watch a movie about a volcano in the first place :-) )
Anyway, you had mentioned (as I remember -- I hope my memory is holding up properly here) that for that reason you tried to keep the first and third lines of the tercets rhyming as far as reasonable but with less emphasis (if any) on the second line joining in -- leading, rather -- with the rhyme for the first and third lines of the subsequent tercet.
And so we see that scheme decision followed in this selection from your translation. And I think it works admirably, and your reading makes me want to go back and read the entire set again (Angelee and I had read most of your Inferno aloud, but alas, didn't get all the way to the end, let alone making it to the other two volumes -- though she of course did read them all to herself separately from our reading aloud efforts).
You and Debra probably know, from comments I've made elsewhere, of my particular fascination with how the metrical and functional (eg, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, etc, even to the point of including intentional "violations" of "rules") that may contribute actively to how a poem reads to the ear in terms of adding presence and atmosphere to the actual meanings of the words themselves. And I see that sort of thing all over the place here, and in your other writings that I've read. Just one easy example (out of several I could pick without much effort) is the delightful assonance of the line, "...and here, Calliope, strike a higher key," that highlights with its repetition of the long "i" sound in the words, the very meaning of the line itself.
Well, that's a general subject that I'm sure a focus on is out of place on Word and Song, a site that is intended to focus rather on particular word, literary, poetic, and movie and song examples, as opposed to discussions of general literary and poetic principles. But for whatever reason (my inner mathematician child being the prime mover of such "particular" interests I expect), I tend to focus on and "notice" such things consciously (I say "consciously" because, for instance, Angelee could often "feel" such things that made a something "work" without consciously recognizing those sorts of "mechanical" bits and pieces -- though of course she would recognize "obvious" examples -- but often, when I would point such things out (often in her own writings) she would acknowledge the effect after the fact, even though she hadn't consciously intended them as such when she wrote the words down, instead, "hearing them" as a whole unsegmented unit of appreciation of a passage.
Ok, so all that to say that I wonder if you know of any books or articles, or perhaps even of your own lectures that may be available as videos online, that might delve deeper into such "more generalized" aesthetic and poetic issues (as opposed to topics about particular works). As a particular example of that sort of discussion, we might fully agree that too much attention to absolutely strict meter in poetry can (though there be exceptions I think) result in sing-songy type rhythms that can detract from the reading by calling attention to themselves too strongly. And of course the opposite problem might be how much of "modern free-verse poetry" (as opposed to "blank verse") that seems almost to disdain and avoid any metrical limitations at all.
But my tendency would be (always allowing for the inevitable exception of course) to lean toward the idea that if there are "violations" or veerings away from, say, strict metrical conditions, the writer should at least have "reasons" (even if not consciously decided reasons, but only "hearing" that the quality "sounds right" internally as Angelee seemed capable of) for any veering (as opposed to a rather mundane explanation of, say, "I was just trying to avoid sounding sing-songy" as a kind of catch-all and null-hypothesis motivation -- Gah! Sorry for the mathematical-sounding statistical terminology there, but it seemed to fit at first blush... :-) )
Again, a subject that I'm sure is WAY too particular (and too generalized at the same time) for Word and Song's purposes, but if you have any suggestions of books or videos or places to go to (hopefully not in the direction of the actual inferno :-) ) about the subject, I would be in paradisio, I think.
Oh, and I also meant to mention in my already way overlong reply above a sort of side-comment. Your mention of "blue" both here and in the word of the day column along with my observation a while back about your book The Hundredfold of how it seemed to have several references to the deep blueness of the dome of the sky and in relation to the Virgin Mary, reminds me of how upset Angelee was when Crayola crayons officially got rid of (in 1990 as I find in a quick search online) her favorite color as a child -- and as an adult -- in their boxes of crayons, ie, "Blue-Violet." My favorite color was always "Violet-Blue," one of the very few differences of opinion we had over 38 years of marriage -- but that's another story...
But she would have swooned at your various descriptions about that color blue and its sweeping meaning for us in the sky and in our lives. Blue was definitely HER color and the deeper the better. Even to the point of painting (against all sensible "rules" about "dark" ceilings being a decorative no-no for rooms and living spaces) the ceiling of our then-newly-added-on family room (that we named "Crickhollow") a deep blue as a sort of projection of the sky outside). As proof, here is a to a picture of it:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4809205149602&set=a.2031398106162
Fairfield NJ, near where I live, has a population that's about 45 percent Italian descent. Up until a few decades ago the Italian Consulate in New York City had been giving Fairfield"s public school board financial support to continue teaching the Italian language in the township's two grammar schools. But after pressure from the State of NJ, the board of ed switched to teaching Spanish. At the next school board meeting a little lady from the Italian Consulate vocally laced into board members like Christ driving money changers from the Temple. The opportunity for future students to read Dante in his own language one day became severely curtailed.
Those people were idiots, then. We have Spanish everywhere. Where's their concern for diversity, all at once? Why should ALL the schools go to Spanish first? I'm not saying anything against Spanish, but why can't we have a few schools teach German first, or French, or Italian, or Portuguese, depending on the makeup of the city -- or Russian, or Polish?
Good for her, speaking up, even if to no avail. Italian was offered in my own NJ public high school, along with French, German, Spanish, and if I am not mis-remembering, Russian for awhile. The worst thing that ever happened to public education was the giving it over to the authority of the teachers' union (NATIONAL) and state government. Parents lost all say over what went on in the schools, which increasingly fleeced them tax-wise to support whatever the stupid "innovation" of the day was. And now it's all politics and "activism" running the show. And an ugly show it is, too, public "education." By the way, Italian was not taught in my husband's parochial high school whose students were grandchildren on Italian immigrants in the 1970's .. and that says a lot about what public education USED TO offer. Tony finally taught himself Italian in graduate school.
You go, Signora!