Comments on: Books That Built Me: the Inferno by Dante Aligheri, the John Ciardi translation http://sararyan.com/2008/01/books-that-built-me-the-inferno-by-dante-aligheri-the-john-ciardi-translation/ Novelist, comics writer, and librarian based in Portland, Oregon. Wed, 23 May 2012 03:45:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Talya http://sararyan.com/2008/01/books-that-built-me-the-inferno-by-dante-aligheri-the-john-ciardi-translation/#comment-3676 Talya Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:39:33 +0000 http://sararyan.com/2008/01/books-that-built-me-the-inferno-by-dante-aligheri-the-john-ciardi-translation/#comment-3676 I read The Iliad at about that age (the Richard Lattimore translation, which I didn't like so much; and the Robert Graves one, which I loved). I read it lying on the floor of our living room, and I still associate the opening lines with the blue and red geometric pattern of the carpet. It gave me all sorts of ideas about honor and warfare that made me even more of an oddity as a girl in NYC, and marked the start of my interest in ancient military history. It also gave me the setting for one of my more memorable stress dreams, in which I was chased around the walls of Troy by a Latin text book. I read The Iliad at about that age (the Richard Lattimore translation, which I didn’t like so much; and the Robert Graves one, which I loved). I read it lying on the floor of our living room, and I still associate the opening lines with the blue and red geometric pattern of the carpet.

It gave me all sorts of ideas about honor and warfare that made me even more of an oddity as a girl in NYC, and marked the start of my interest in ancient military history.

It also gave me the setting for one of my more memorable stress dreams, in which I was chased around the walls of Troy by a Latin text book.

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