There Goes Dante; Who’s Next? By Richard Miller (London)
It is sad that the state of multiculturalism has led to things such as Dante having to be censored to not offend the minorities, but that is just how it is with diversity. You cannot have robust free speech and diversity at the same time, as they clash.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/03/27/new-dutch-translation-dante-censor-mention-mohammed/
“A new Dutch translation of the medieval classic the Divine Comedy by Italian poet Dante Alighieri removes mention of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, who appears in Hell.
The new translation is said to be aimed at younger readers and censors any mention of the Islamic prophet to “not hurt unnecessarily”, according to the translator of the new edition of the work, Lies Lavrijsen.
Lavrijsen stated on Dutch-speaking Belgian radio that the redacted section involved Dante’s visits to one of the nine circles of Hell in the Inferno, specifically the eighth circle in which he meets the Islamic prophet, Mohammed, reports Le Figaro.
The section that mentions Mohammed — in this translation by nineteenth-century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published by Project Gutenberg — reads as follows:
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
Was never shattered so, as I saw one
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
That maketh excrement of what is eaten.
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
He looked at me, and opened with his hands
His bosom, saying: “See now how I rend me;
CENSORED
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
While much of the passage of Canto XXVIII has been preserved, Mohammed’s name and the lines in which the Muslim prophet was punished for spreading Islam, or creating the “schism”, has been completely removed.
“The publisher’s goal was to make Inferno accessible to the widest possible audience, especially the younger audience, and we knew that if we left this passage as it was, a large part of the readers would have been unnecessarily hurt,” Lavrijsen said.
The translator added that the decision was made in concert with the book’s publisher, in the context of the murder of teacher Samuel Paty, according to Le Figaro.
Paty, who showed cartoons of Mohammed to his class last year during a lesson on freedom of expression, was subject to a social media campaign by Islamists and was later beheaded in the street by a Chechen refugee.”
The decision to censor the passage in question, which I have censored here too, is right in the present environment, because the passage would offend. That does not mean we should be happy with this state of affairs, but it is part of the new normal. Liberalism has died by the hand of diversity. Welcome to the New World Order.
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