Καζαντζάκης - Δάντης: η θεία κωμωδία

Abstract

After a few general considerations on literary translations and the difficulties that the translator could find in the poetic texts, we draw the image of Nikos Kazantzakis as a unique figure of testimony of the time.

Facing the linguistic problems of Dante's text, the Canti in the translation of Kazantzakis overcome the dimension of time through senses, passions, allegories, symbols, landscapes, love, desire.

Every linguistic aspect has a double rule: syntactic frequencies that fuse between the text and the context, the presence of the sense in the space-time and the interior theatrical aspect of meaning.

A very important element for Kazantzakis is his focus on the text in the greek language and culture. Abolishing the hierarchy between the original and it's translation, he moves on to textual autonomy, to a recognition of his creation without elaborating further on his general literary value. His historical and social relations with the language and the culture constitute a "political" choice and these are incorporated in the critical construction of the different identity of the text.

Sometimes, under the practice of the hyper-translation or the hypo-translation, he arrives at reducing the complexity of the text according to his stylistic availability. This procedure of such a provocative and creative interpretation is not only a "service" but a reconstruction of the original. This is not a translation-introduction moved to read Dante, but a transformation of the original; in other words it is a translation-text.

The ideological-poetic writing that leads Kazantzakis to Dante is a very complex one and, of course, he doesn't aim at a comparison of the original and the translation. Perhaps Kazantzakis chose Dante out of pride because the Florentine was the biggest of the poets.