SOURCE: O'Brien, Sean. “Geographer of Hell.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5206 (10 January 2003): 27.

In the following review, O'Brien praises Carson's translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, noting the “sustained energy and ingenuity” of his adaptation.

In the introduction to his bold new version of the Inferno, Ciaran Carson explains:

When I began looking into the Inferno, it occurred to me that the measures and assonances of the Hiberno-English ballad might provide a model for translation. It would allow for sometimes extravagant alliteration, for periphrasis and inversion to accommodate the rhyme, and for occasional assonance instead of rhyme; it could accommodate rapid shifts of register. So I tried to write a terza rima crossed with ballad.

Carson also emphasizes the vernacular character of the poem. The results may be a great deal more conversational, and at times less in thrall to theological gravity, than readers are accustomed to, while a sceptic might...