News at Eleven: Quietly I got the project under way,

starting with the first line of the first canto. It would be a mistake to do the famous passages and then join them up: the welds might show. If my modified quatrain measure was to justify itself, it would have to work from the beginning, and be still working at the end--because The Divine Comedy ends as it begins, with the same feeling of exuberance that has been maintained throughout. Dante registers this exuberance even in his most desperate moments.

from The Telegraph: Clive James on translating Dante

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