Halfway tree. The journey of our life found me / there at midnight in a ramshackle state. So begins Lorna Goodisons astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, a poet she once described as uncompromising as an Old Testament prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder.
This Jamaican Dante, a quarter-century in the making, is as much transformation as it is translation: the poets narrator, its Dante figure, is now guided through an underworld by Goodisons great Jamaican predecessor Louise Bennett, Miss Lou in the book. Goodison draws on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech yet securely grounds the action in Dantes formal architecture, bringing an entire world to life: we encounter other poets, including Goodisons friend Derek Walcott, as well as Caribbean politicians, reggae innovators and other public figures. Here, she recreates the journey through the unpaved and rocky road of Dantes Hell for a contemporary audience and attempts to do for Caribbean vernacular what Dante did for his Italian language in the fourteenth century - endow it with an entirely new vocal music and power.
