Jamming up the Flax Machine: Ciaran Carson’s Dante
Matthew Reynolds, 8 May 2003
“The great merit of his translation is that it employs a language as mulitple and fragmented as Dante’s Italian – perhaps more so. It sounds less like an epic and more like The Canterbury Tales. Everyday insults – ‘up yours’, ‘you little squit’ – jostle grandiose phrases such as ‘convocation of melodic air’; markedly Irish and Scottish words (’stirabout’, ‘tawse’) come up against venerable poeticisms (’the bosky chase’) and Sloaney exclamations (’O such an awful nook!’).”