JOHN CIARDI
American Poet and Translator

Born: June 1916

Died: March 1986(69 years old)

Languages: English, Italian, Latin

Not a lot is written about John Ciardi’s personal life prior to his adulthood, he had a simple upbringing raised by his Italian mother. After his father died she cared for him and his three sisters on her own. She was illiterate but she and family members saved money to nurture his love for reading and language. Ciardi studied under John Holmes at Tuft University, and he had books of poetry published before and after WWII. Ciardi spent years working on his translation of Inferno which were praised, “Dante for the first time translated into virile, tense American Verse” (Fitts) and criticized “The constant stretching for a heartier, more modern and American idiom not only vulgarizes; it also guarantees that wherever Dante expresses himself by implication rather than by direct statement, Ciardi will either miss or ignore the nuance” (Ross). Ciardi was passionate about bringing poetry to people and making it accessible, though he was sometimes he was seen as a harsh critic. He would argue that “a critic’s role is to examine the work itself, not the popularity of the artist” (poetry). Ciardi’s poetry was also controversial, “the probable contention was that the words used in the poems were those of first-grade difficulty…not all the attention was positive by any means” (Nims).

Things to consider regarding Dante’s Translations

Ciardi was passionate about bringing poetry to a wide audience. He wanted to share his passion of words and rhyming

Ciardi’s Italian was scholarly, not conversational. He studied Italian and Latin in Harvard specifically for the translation of Dante

Ciardi had a great respect for Dante, he believed it to be one of the greatest works of Western Literature