Dante Alighieri.
The fame of the Fiero Ghibellino, as the Italians are wont to call Dante Alighieri, is great, not in extensiveness, but in weight. Wherever and to whomsoever he is known, his name and his works carry a charm and an authority vouchsafed to only a few in the department of authors. Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare are the poets, whose names are enshrined on an elevation above the rest; they breathe, so to speak, in an atmosphere of their own. They are, indeed, masters and guides,
"Maestri di color che sanno."
In truth, to understand their works, the study thereof must needs be made a specialty. Yet even those who have lisped their names in their mothers' tongue find that "ars longa, vita brevis." The student will drink at those pure fountains with ever-increasing pleasure. "How often have you been in St. Peter's?" asked of us a venerable monk, the first time we entered the Vatican. "Never before, sir." "Well," replied he, "I have been coming here almost every day for the last thirteen years, and every day I find some new thing to admire and study!" The same has been averred by those who have been familiar with Dante, Homer, and Shakespeare.
We well remember how, in our youth, and in our native schools, we were so trained in the study of Alighieri that it was an easy matter to discover whether an author, be he poet or prose-writer, had been formed on Dante, whether he had drunk at the head fountain or at side streams. Only few poets we remember whose verses we read with an enchanted devotion—Gasparo Leonarducci, of Venice; Vincenzo Monti, of Milan; and Alfonso Varano, of Ferrara. Of the prose-writers, Paolo Segneri, Sforza Pallavicino, of the seventeenth, and Pietro Giordani, of the nineteenth century, are the only Danteschi in whom we delighted, as we were delighted in reading Homer transformed into the succum et saporem of the AEneid. Those above mentioned were poets, historians, and orators, than whom more ardent and persevering students of Dante are not recorded in the annals of Italian literature. Theirs was not, however, a pedantic servility: Dante was the father that engendered their style, the eagle who provoked them to fly; and they did fly, and soared above the rest, and fixed their pupils on the brightness of the sun. Which remarks afford us also the measure by which to value the success of those who have attempted to translate Dante into foreign languages, an attempt which to the Italian scholar sounds almost presumptuous. For, if the style and the meaning of Dante have proven a matter of so much difficulty and labor to the countryman of Dante, how much more laborious and difficult must they prove to the foreign-born student?
Whoever attempts to translate a poet must join "the fidelity of rendition to the spirit of a poet." The former presupposes a thorough knowledge of the two languages, even to the commonest idioms. Then, unless one is born a poet, the attempt will be the very madness of folly, which truth receives additional evidence when the work to be translated is one of transcendent merit in its originality; ay, more, when it is incomparable: incomparable, we mean, as a human work can be.
Such is the Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri. Pindaric in flights, supernatural in conception, inventive in expression and language, (for Dante is "the father of the Italian tongue,") Dante stands before the scholar as a most difficult author. Nor are the numberless commentators and voluminous comments, agreeing or conflicting, ingenious or absurd, a mean proof of our assertion!
Commentators have, in fact, pushed their folly and their presumption to an excess equalled only by the absurd twisting of Holy Writ in favor of the thousand and one senses which defenders of opposite doctrines have fancied they read in one and the same text. A witty Italian imagines he sees Dante crouching low, and vainly endeavoring, with wild gesticulations and lusty cries for help, to parry the blows by which clergymen and laymen, laico o cherco, endeavor to force him to admit such meanings into his words as he never dreamt of; at the same time they, falling out among themselves, exchange blows, and throw at each other's head their heavy comments, bound in wood, and rudely embossed with brazen studs. It is related that once the stern poet, while passing by a smithy, heard snatches of his poem sung, but so interlarded with strange words, and the ends of verses so bitten off, that the grating upon his ears was unendurable: whereupon he entered the shop, and fell around wantonly throwing into vast confusion the tools of the churl, who, thinking him mad, rushed upon him and yelled: "What the —— art thou about?" "And what art thou doing?" retorted Dante, sobering down at once. "I am at my work, and thou art spoiling my tools!" replied the smith. "If thou wishest me to leave thy things alone, leave mine alone also." "And, pray, what am I spoiling of thine?" "You are singing my verses, but not as I made them; it is the only art I possess, and you spoil it." [Footnote 92]
[Footnote 92: Had Shakespeare this anecdote in mind when he made Orlando cry out, "I pray you, mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favoredly"? (As You Like It, act iii. sc. 2.)]
On another occasion the poet met a churl driving before him a mob of donkeys, and enlivening his wearisome journey by singing also snatches of the divine poem. But, very naturally, he would intersperse his songs with an occasional pricking of the haunches of his asinine fellow-travellers with the goad, and the shout of arri, arri—the Italian g'long, g'long. Dante at once visited the fellow's back with an earnest blow, and cried: "That arri, arri, I never put it in that verse!" The poor asinaro shrugged his shoulders, and darted to one side, not well pleased with the uncouth salutation; but when at a safe distance, ignorant as he was of the cause of the blow and of the man who had inflicted it, he thrust his tongue out, and said, "Take that," an indecent act even for an Italian boor. Dante replied: "I would not give mine for a hundred of thine!"
What the smith and the drover did, in their own way, and in Dante's time, has been repeated down to our days. Volumes might be filled with merely the titles of essays, treatises, and theories, at times ingenious, seldom interesting, always betraying the conceit of the writer. Editions innumerable are crammed with interpretations conflicting with each other, and by which the sense of the poet has been cruelly distorted. We, who have been reared in the deepest reverence for Dante's orthodoxy, have always felt indignant at the irreligious and unphilosophical inordinations to which the Divina Commedia has been made to afford foundation and development.
For the nonce we mean to deal with translations, yet not in a general or comprehensive treatise; for to treat of all English translations of Dante, down to Sir J. F. W. Herschel's, the latest of all, would carry us over fields too extensive and uninviting. We have been led to beg for a corner of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, in order to introduce to its readers what, after a close and careful study, we deem the best of all translations of Dante. We allude to The First Canticle (Inferno) of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Thomas William Parsons. Boston: De Vries, Ibarra & Co. 1867.
That Mr. Parsons possesses the spirit of a poet, no one who has read ever so little of his original compositions will gainsay. Whatever he writes has the true ring; there is nothing transcendental in him, and no mannerism; his sentiments are spontaneous, and flow into his diction with a naturalness that takes hold of the heart of the reader at once, like a peaceful streamlet mingling its waters with kindred waves. Opening a collection of his poems at random, we do not hesitate to transcribe, without any studied choice, what first offers itself to our eye. He writes on the death of his friend, the sculptor Crawford, and thus he suddenly gives vent to his feelings:
"O Death! thou teacher true and rough!
Full oft I fear that we have erred,
And have not loved enough;
But, O ye friends! this side of Acheron,
Who cling to me to-day,
I shall not know my love till ye are gone
And I am gray!
Fair women, with your loving eyes,
Old men that once my footsteps led,
Sweet children—much as all I prize,
Until the sacred dust of death be shed
Upon each dear and venerable head,
I cannot love you as I love the dead!
"But now, the natural man being sown,
We can more lucidly behold
The spiritual one:
For we, till time shall end,
Full visibly shall see our friend
In all his hands did mould—
That worn and patient hand that lies so cold!"
On a Palm-Sunday, as he wends his way to the bedside of a dying young convert, he begs of a little Catholic girl a twig of the blessed palm she is carrying home. Whereupon he extemporizes the following:
"To A Young Girl Dying:
With A Gift Of Fresh Palm-leaves.
"This is Palm-Sunday: mindful of the day, I bring palm branches, found upon my way: But these will wither; thine shall never die— The sacred palms thou bearest to the sky! Dear little saint, though but a child in years, Older in wisdom than my gray compeers! We doubt and tremble—we, with 'bated breath, Talk of this mystery of life and death; Thou, strong in faith, art gifted to conceive Beyond thy years, and teach us to believe!
"Then take my palms, triumphal, to thy home, Gentle white palmer, never more to roam! Only, sweet sister, give me, ere thou go'st, Thy benediction—for my love thou know'st! We, too, are pilgrims, travelling toward the shrine: Pray that our pilgrimage may end like thine!"
Mr. Parsons's poetical gift manifests itself most sensibly in what might be called "fugitive pieces." They are gems, like the above, and as they are offered to the reader they are at once set in the most fitting corner of his heart. We regret our limited space will not allow us to transcribe the poems To Magdalen, "Mary from whom were cast out seven devils;" or the death of Mary Booth; or the Vespers on the Shores of the Mediterranean, when the Italian mariner
"In mare irato in subita procella
Invoca Te nostra benigna Stella."
But we must be allowed to quote one little poem; an impromptu one, written on the death of a Catholic prelate (February 13th, 1866) whose memory is held in benediction by a vast number of our readers:
"Son of St. Patrick, John, the best of men,
Boston's blest bishop bids good-by again.
Not long ago we parted on the shore,
And said farewell—nor thought to see him more:
That brain so weary, and that heart so worn
With many cares! The parting made us mourn.
But he came back—he could not die in Rome.
Tho' well might those bones rest by Peter's dome,
Or Ara Coeil—and the sacred stair
That climbs the Capitol—or anywhere
In that queen city. …
"Scholar and friend! old schoolfellow, though far
Past me in learning, that was ne'er a bar
To our free intercourse; for thou hadst thine
One muse to worship—leaving me the nine.
Thy faith was large, even in thy fellow-men:
And it pleased thee to patronize my pen
When I turned Horace into English rhyme,
And thought myself a poet for the time,
In Latin school-days—but, alas! thy shroud
Drives from remembrance all this gathering crowd
Of tender images; farewell to all!
I cannot think of these beside thy pall.
Thine, good Fitzpatrick, noble heir of those
Who went before thee—Fenwick and Bordeaux's
Gentle apostle Cheverus, and Toussaud—
Whom in my boyhood I was blest to know.
"But the bell moves me. Christian, fare thee well.
I loved my bishop and I mind his bell."
Let us now approach our subject more closely. But here the difficulty is how to enable our readers, who are not acquainted with the original Italian, to appreciate the fidelity of the American translator—a fidelity the beauty whereof consists in that Mr. Parsons translates almost literally and at the same time his translation is poetry. After all, he is not entitled to extraordinary praise who, being endowed with poetical genius, catches the sense of the original and gives it in foreign verses. The best plan seems to us to give the text, then a literal (pedantic or lineal) translation, and afterward Parsons's. Thus, for instance, Dante reads on the architrave over the entrance to hell:
[Transcriber's Note: The arrangement of the text of pages 217, 218, and 219 is confusing, including two parallel renderings and numerous footnotes. The renderings have been placed in sequential order and the footnotes placed following the references.]
"Per me si va nella città dolente. [Footnote 93]
Per me si va nell' eterno dolore:
Per me si va tra la perduta [Footnote 94] gente.
Giustizia mosse 'l mio alto Fattore:
Fecemi la divina Potestate,
La somma Sapienza, e 'l primo Amore.
Dinanzi a me non fur cose create,
Se non eterne, ed io eterna duro:
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi, che 'ntrate."
[Footnote 93: Dolente means sorrow without any mixture of hope— wailing and gnashing of teeth.]
[Footnote 94: Perduta, in the sense of that pecunia sit tibi in perditionem, (Acts viii. 20,) absolute condemnation. Uemo perduto in Italian is the ruptus disruptusque of Cicero, a "gone" man, beyond all hope of moral recovery.]
To wit:
Through me you go into the doleful city;
through me you go into eternal grief;
through me you go among the lost people.
Justice moved my lofty Builder;
Divine Power made me;
and the supreme Wisdom and the first Love.
Ere me were no things created—unless eternal, and I eternal last;
relinquish all hope, you who enter.
Now compare with Parsons's:
"Through me you reach the City of Despair:
Through me eternal wretchedness ye find:
Through me among perdition's tribe ye fare.
Justice inspired my lofty Founder's mind:
Power, Love, and Wisdom—Heavenly First Most High—
Created me. Before me naught had been
Save things eternal—and eterne am I:
Leave ye all hope, O ye who enter in!"
Can any translation be more literal? Can it be more faithful? We have tried to find fault with it, but gave it up in despair; yea, the more we strain our critical eye, the more perfectly does the original beauty appear reflected in the translation. It is not the reflection of the mirror; it is the reflection of the sun's light on the moon's face.
To economize room, we shall give no more text: we will only add a lineal translation by way of note, presuming on the reader for his trust in our knowledge of both languages, and in our honesty.
The long extract we are going to make is, perhaps, the noblest specimen of descriptive poetry in the Italian language. It is, however, founded on a historical mistake, inasmuch as Ugolino was starved to death not by Archbishop Ruggieri, but by Guido da Montefeltro, Lord of Pisa. The true account runs thus: Ugolino dei Gherardeschi, Count of Donovatico, and a Guelf, had, with the connivance of the archbishop, made himself master of Pisa. But having put to death a nephew of Ruggieri, and sold some castles to the Florentines, that prelate, at the head of an infuriated mob, and aided by Gualandi, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, three powerful leaders, attacked the count in his own palace, and made him prisoner with his two sons Gaddo and Uguccione, and three nephews, Ugolino Brigata, Arrigo, and Anselmuccio. Thus bound, they were all thrown into the donjons of the Tower at the Three Roads. Montefeltro, having meanwhile got the power into his own hands, forbade any food to be administered to his prisoner rival, whereby Ugolino and the rest died of hunger. Dante, (Inferno, c. xxxii. and xxxiii.,) admitted to the ninth circle, or bolgia, on entering that part of it which was called Antenora, witnessed the horrible punishment of the traitor and of the murderer:
[Transcriber's note: Rendering 1]
"In a single gap,
Fast froze together other two I saw,
So that one head was his companion's cap:
And as a famished man a crust might gnaw,
So gnawed the upper one the wretch beneath,
Just where the neck-bone's marrow joins the brain:
Not otherwise did Tydeus fix his teeth
On Menalippus' temples in disdain.
While thus he mumbled skull and hair and all,
I cried: 'Ho! thou who show'st such bestial hate
Of him on whom thy ravenous teeth so fall,
Why feedest thou thus? On this agreement state:
That, if thou have good reason for thy spite,
Knowing you both, and what his crime was, I
Up in the world above may do thee right,
Unless the tongue I talk with first grow dry.'
From his foul feast that sinner raised his jaw,
Wiping it on the hair, first, of the head
Whose hinder part his craunching had made raw.
Then thus: 'Thou wouldst that I renew,' he said,
'The agony which still my heart doth wring,
In thought even, ere a syllable I say;
But if my words may future harvest bring
To the vile traitor here on whom I prey
Of infamy, then thou shalt hear me speak,
And see my tears too. I know not thy mien,
Nor by what means this region thou dost seek;
But by thy tongue thou'rt sure Florentine.
Know then, Count Ugolino once was I,
And this Archbishop Ruggieri: fate
Makes us close neighbors—I will tell thee why.
'Tis needless all the story to relate,
How through his malice, trusting in his words,
I was a prisoner made and after slain.
But that whereof thou never canst have heard,
I mean how cruelly my life was ta'en,
Thou shalt hear now, and thenceforth know if he
Have done me wrong. A loophole in the mew
Which hath its name of Famine's Tower from me,
And where his doom some other yet must rue,
Had shown me now already through its cleft
Moon after moon, when that ill dream I dreamed
Which from futurity the curtain reft.
He, in my vision, lord and master seemed,
Hunting the wolf and wolf-cubs on the height
Which screeneth Lucca from the Pisan's eye:
With eager hounds, well trained and lean and light,
Gualandi and Lanfranchi darted by,
With keen Sismondi—these the foremost went;
But after some brief chase, too hardly borne,
The sire and offspring seemed entirely spent,
And by sharp fangs their bleeding sides were torn.
When before morn from sleep I raised my head,
I heard my boys, in prison there with me,
Moaning in slumber and demanding bread.
If thou weep not, a savage thou must be:
Nay, if thou weep not, thinking of the fear
My heart foreboded, canst thou weep at aught?
Now they woke also, and the hour was near
When used our daily pittance to be brought.
His dream made each mistrustful; and I heard
The door of that dread tower nailed up below:
Then in my children's eyes, without a word,
I gazed, but moved not; and I wept not: so
Like stone was I within, that I could not.
They wept, though, and my little Anselm cried,
'Thou look'st so! Father, what's the matter, what?'
But still I wept not, nor a word replied,
All that long day, nor all the following night,
Till earth beheld the sun's returning ray;
And soon as one faint gleam of morning light
Stole to the dismal dungeon where we lay,
And soon as those four visages I saw
Imaging back the horror of my own,
Both hands through anguish I began to gnaw;
And they, believing want of food alone
Compelled me, started up, and cried, 'Far less,
Dear father, it will torture us if thou
Shouldst feed on us! Thou gavest us this dress
Of wretched flesh—'tis thine, and take it now.'
So to relieve their little hearts, at last
I calmed myself, and, all in silence, thus
That and the next day motionless we past.
Ah thou hard earth! why didst not ope for us?
On the fourth morning, Gaddo at my feet
Cast himself prostrate, murmuring, 'Father! why
Dost thou not help me? Give me food to eat."
With that he died: and even so saw I,
As thou seest me now, three more, one by one,
Betwixt the fifth day and the sixth day fall;
By which time, sightless grown, o'er each dear son
I groped, and two days on the dead did call:
But, what grief could not do, hunger did then.
This said, he rolled his eyes askance, and fell
To gnaw the skull with greedy teeth again,
Strong as a dog upon the bony shell.
Ah Pisa! shame of all in that fair land
Where si is uttered, since thy neighbors round
Take vengeance on thee with a tardy hand,
Broke be Capraja's and Gorgona's bound!
Let them dam Arno's mouth up, till the wave
Whelm every soul of thine in its o'erflow!
What though 'twas said Count Ugolino gave,
Through treachery, thy strongholds to the foe?
Thou needst not have tormented so his sons,
Thou modern Thebes!—their youth saved them from blame—
Brigata, Hugh, and those two innocent ones
Whom, just above, the canto calls by name."
[Transcriber's note: Rendering 2; the dash at the end of each line is probably a typesetting artifact; all the poetic lines are run together.]
I saw two persons frozen in one hole,—
so that one head to the other was hat:—
and as bread in hunger is eaten,—
so the uppermost his teeth into the other stuck,—
there where the brain is joined to the nape.—
Not otherwise did Tydeus gnaw—
the temples of Menalippus through disdain—
than he did the skull and the other things.—
O thou who showest by so bestial token—
hatred over him whom thou eatest,—[Footnote 95]
tell me the why, said I: on such condition,—
that, if thou with reason of him complainest,—
knowing who you are, and his offence,—
in the world above I also may repay thee for it,—
if that [tongue] with which I speak does not become dry.
The mouth [he] raised from the beastly [Footnote 96] food,—
that sinner, wiping it on the hair—
of the head which he had disfigured (maimed) behind.—
Then [he] began: Thou wishest that I renew—
desperate grief, which me to the heart oppresses,—
even only thinking, before I speak of it.—
But if my words must (may) be a seed—
that will bear fruit of infamy to the traitor I gnaw,—
thou shalt see me both speak and weep.—
I know not who thou be nor by what means—
art thou come here below; but Florentine—
thou seemest to me truly, when I hear thee.—
Thou shouldst know that I was Count Ugolino,—
and this Archbishop Ruggieri:—
now I'll tell thee why I am such [Footnote 97] neighbor.—
How by the means of his evil mind,—
trusting in him, I was taken—
and then killed, there is no need of telling.—
But that which thou canst not have heard, (known), [Footnote 98]
that is, how cruel my death was,—
thou shalt hear; and [thou] shalt know whether he hath done me wrong.—
A narrow hole within the mew— [Footnote 99]
which from me has the title of Hunger,—
and in which it needs that others be confined,—
had shown me through its opening—
many moons already, when I had the fatal dream—
which tore from me the veil of the future.—
This [man] seemed to me leader and lord,—
driving the wolf and wolf-cubs [Footnote 100] to the mountain,
for which the Pisans cannot see Lucca.—[Footnote 101]
With hounds, [she-hounds,] lean, keen on the scent,
and well trained, (cagne magre studiose e conte,)—
Gualandi with Sismondi, and with Lanfranchi—
had [he] put before him in the van.—
After a short run they seemed to me borne down,—
the father and the sons, and by those sharp teeth—
I deemed their sides torn open.—
When I became awake ere the morning—
I heard weeping in their sleep my children,—
who were with me, and ask for bread.—
Indeed thou art cruel if thou dost not already grieve,—
thinking of what to my heart was then foreboded:—
and if thou weepest not, at what art thou wont to weep?—
They were now awake, and the hour was drawing near—
when food used to be brought in,—
and his dream gave each misgivings.—
And then I heard the door bolted [Footnote 102] below—
in the horrible tower: whereat I looked—
into the face of my children without saying a word.—
I was not weeping, so was I petrified (impietrai) within:—
they were weeping; and my little Anselm—
said: Thou lookest so! Father, what aileth thee?—
Yet I shed no tear, nor answered I—
all that day, nor the following night,—
until another sun arose over the world.—
As soon as a little gleam of light (un poco di raggio) began to creep—
into the doleful prison, and I saw in four faces my own very image,
both my hands through pain I bit;—
and they, thinking that I did it for wish of food, instantly arose,—
and said: Father, far less painful will it be to us—
if thou eatest of us; thou didst dress—
[us with] this miserable flesh, do thou take it off.—
I then calmed myself, not to make them more wretched.—
That day and the next we all lay silent:—
alas! cruel earth, why didn'tst thou open?—
After we had reached the fourth day—
Gaddo threw himself prostrate at my feet,—
saying: Father mine, why dost thou not help me?—
There he died; and, as thou seest me,—
did I see the three fall one by one,—
betwixt the fifth day and the sixth, whereat I began,—
already blind, to grope over each:—
and three days I called them after they were dead.—
Then more than the grief did the fasting overwhelm me.—
When he had said this, with eyes distorted—
he resumed the loathsome skull between his teeth,—
which, like a dog's, stuck to the bone.—
Ah Pisa! disgrace to the people—
of the fair land where the si sounds;—[Footnote 103]
as thy neighbors are slow to punish thee,—
let Capraja and Gorgona [Footnote 104] arise,—
and build a dam on Arno's mouth—
that may drown every mother's child in thee.—
For if Count Ugolino had the name—
of having defrauded thee of thy castles,—
thou shouldst not have put the children to such torture.—
Innocent were by their youthful age,—
Modern Thebes! Uguccione and Brigata,—
and the other two whom my song has mentioned."
[Footnote 95: Ti mangi, "thou selfishly holdest for thy dainty food." This is one of those idioms expressed by the reciprocal pronoun "ti," almost impossible to translate. Its meaning is felt only by the native Italian.]
[Footnote 96: Fiero, here as the carcass on which a beast of prey will feed, from fiera, savage beast.]
[Footnote 97: Tal vicino, a neighbor so barbarously distressing another.]
[Footnote 98: Inteso Udire, hear by chance; ascoltare, to listen, intendere, to understand what you hear, or are told.]
[Footnote 99: Muda, the place where the republic's eagles were kept during moulting-time. Mudare, to moult.]
[Footnote 100: Ugolino had the dream while suffering the acute pangs of hunger. He dreamt of a famished wolf and its whelps, hunted by she-hounds, under which allegory he recognizes the Ghibellines, himself being a Guelf.]
[Footnote 101: San Giuliano, a mountain between Pisa and Lucca.]
[Footnote 102: The Pisans, about eight months after Ugolino's imprisonment, bolted the dungeon's massive doors, locked them, and threw the keys into the Arno.]
[Footnote 103: Dante calls the language of Southern France the language of oc, and the Italian the language of si; both oc and si meaning "yes.">[
[Footnote 104: Two small islands at the mouth of the Arno.]
We had marked one or two more pieces for transcription, but we deem it useless; for a diligent collation of Mr. Parsons's text with the literal translation we have given ad calcem will at once convince the reader of the faithfulness of the work. Of course, it would be absurd to expect that words were rendered for words. It is simply impossible. Again: there are words which cannot be rendered. We know the Italian language pretty well—and why shouldn't we?—yet we have never been able to find the Italian word corresponding with the English "home"; nor have twenty-three years of close and earnest study of the English language yet enabled us to find an English word corresponding with the Italian vagheggiare. We say, "He was lost in the contemplation of a picture:" the Italian will simply say, "Vagheggiava la pittura." Translate, if you can, "L'amante vagheggia la sua bella!" You can do it no more than the Italian can render with corresponding meaning the words, "Home! sweet home!"
In our opinion a too literal translation will not give us Dante; it will only give his words. Although we must admit that the meaning of the word, as it conveys the idea, must be scrupulously rendered as well as the idiom, yet it is evident that too great an anxiety in translating the word into that which bears the greatest resemblance to the original may lead into a misconception or misrepresentation of the author's idea. In an elaborate article in the Atlantic Monthly, of August, 1867, the word height, employed by Mr. Longfellow in his translation of Dante, (Purgat, xxviii. v. 106,) receives the preference over summit, employed by Cary. True, height is the literal rendition for altezza; yet Dante there employs altezza not in its literal meaning, which is one of measurement, but in that of a summit, or a top. A comparison with parallel cases in the Commedia will bear us out in our remark. We must not be understood as if we meant to prefer Cary to Longfellow. By no means: for the former gives us Cary's Dante, whereas the latter gives us, if we may be allowed the expression, Dante's Dante. Which remark, however, must not be taken as if we were disposed to endorse the fidelity of every line of the American translator. The very narrow limits to which he has confined himself often place him under the necessity of employing words which convey not the original's idea; while, on the other hand, often must he add words in order to fill up his line; for example,
"When he had said this, with his eyes distorted."
That his Dante never put there; why, it is a pleonasm.
While we do not like nor did ever like the freedom of Cary, nay, have felt indignant at the liberties he has taken with the text, we are amazed at the boldness with which Mr. Longfellow has endeavored to master his Procrustean difficulties; but we give preference to the work of Dr. Parsons, because his translation is easy (disinvolta, the Italians would call it) and yet faithful; it is poetical, and yet we challenge our readers to point to any idea which is not conveyed to the English mind in scrupulous fidelity to Dante's ideas. He sits in Alighieri's chair, and he is at home.
Were we requested by him who knew Italian only moderately as to the easiest method to understand and enjoy Dante, we would say: Read the text, collating it verse for verse with Longfellow; then read Parsons. Yet, to be candid, we hope no American scholar will form his idea of Dante's transcendental merit on the translation of Mr. Longfellow, who, it must be admitted, has done more meritorious work in behalf of Dante than the one hundred thousand and one who have written comments on him. But one feels a painful sensation in alighting from Dante's text on Longfellow's translation, whereas the transition from the perusal of the original to Parsons's causes no jerking in our soul, and the pleasure, decies repetita, never abates. To the Italian scholar Mr. Longfellow's translation will never prove satisfactory.
Lest our readers should think that we are blind admirers of Dr. Parsons, we will conclude this part of our paper with the remark that we wish different words were in a few occasions employed by him. Thus, for instance, the word, "in blackest letters," (Inf. c. iii, v. 10,) do not convey the full meaning of Dante's "parole di colore oscuro." Of course the doctor can easily defend his rendition (and we know he long pondered on the suitableness of the word) with the obvious remark that a scoundrel may be black without being an Abyssinian, hence his "blackest letters" must be taken in a moral sense; yet it requires an after-thought to understand it, whereas the word "oscuro" at once hints at something black in itself and dreadful in its forebodings. But what English word will convey the idea?
Our article, incomplete as it is, would yet appear more deficient were we not to give our readers a general idea of what the Divina Commedia is, what it proposes to convey to the reader's mind. Were we to form an idea of the nature of this poem from what has been written about it, we should call it a saddle. For there is no system, theological, philosophical, or political, the supporters whereof have not taken their proofs from Dante. According to some, Dante was a Catholic devotee; while others, especially in these our days, will represent him as the most determined and conscientious foe of everything Catholic, et sic de ceteris.
In the language of an accurate modern Italian scholar, "Dante lifted the Italian language from its cradle, and laid it on a throne: in spite of the rudeness of the times not yet freed from barbarism, he dared to conceive a poem, in which he embodied whatever there was most abstruse in philosophical and theological doctrines; in his three canticles he massed whatever was known in the scientific world; after the example of Homer and Virgil, he knew how to select a national subject which would interest all Italy, nay, all whose hearts were warmed by the warmth of Catholic faith; in a word, he became the mark either of decay or of prosperity in the Italian literature, which was always enhanced according as his divine poem was studied and appreciated, or laid aside and neglected." [Footnote 105]
[Footnote 105: Cav. G. Maffei, Storia Lit. Ital. I. iii.]
Dante was born in Florence, in March, 1265, and died in Ravenna an exile in 1321, September 14. His father's name was Alighiero degli Alighieri. His education was as perfect as the times could afford in science, belles-lettres, and arts. When only nine years old he became acquainted with Beatrice di Folco Portinari, a young damsel of eight summers, but endowed with great gifts of soul and body, and her praises he sang in prose and verse, and to her he allotted a distinguished place in paradise. Dante served his country faithfully both in the councils of peace and under the panoply of war. When only thirty-five years old, he attained the highest dignity in the gift of his countrymen. On the occupation of Florence by Charles of Valois, whose pretensions he had opposed and so far thwarted, Dante was banished from Florence, (Jan. 27, 1302.) At the time, he was in Rome endeavoring to interest Pope Boniface VIII. in behalf of his dear Florence. Dante never saw his native place again, but after nineteen years of exile and poverty he died highly honored and very tenderly cared for by the Polentas, the masters of Ravenna.
Dante was the author of many excellent works; but to the Divina Commediahe owes that fame by which he stands of all the Italians facile princeps. At first, it was his intention to write his poem in Latin verse; but seeing that that language was not understood by all, and many even among the educated laity could not read it, and just then the great transformation of the new language taking place he wisely conceived the plan of gathering all the words which were then used from the Alps to the sea, and exhibited a uniformity of sound and formation, and thus to write a poem that might be called national, and at the same time be a bond that would unite all the Italian hearts. This may be looked upon as the political or patriotic aim of his work. A moral end had he then in view: thus, laying down as the principle of common destiny that man was created for the double end of enjoying an imperishable happiness hereafter, to be attained by securing a happiness in this world, which should arise from attending to the pursuits of virtue, in Paradise he described the former, which cannot be attained without a soul entirely detached from the affections of this earth, a process of schooling one's self and purification so well represented by what he imagines to have witnessed in Purgatory. But as the soul needs be animated to do works of justice by the promise of reward, as well as by the intimidation of deadly punishment, so he depicts the horrors to which the lost people, those who were dead to even the aspiration of a virtuous nature, will be doomed in Hell.
Naturally, this triple state of the soul, lost, redeeming herself, glorified, gave him a chance of embodying into his work theological expositions of the duties of man, of the working of grace, and of the economy of religion; revelation, natural religion, and science, all in turn lend him a helping hand. And because examples should be adduced to practically prove the truth of his assertions, he freely quotes from the past and from the present; and while he is perfectly alive to the importance of placing in high relief the beautiful deeds of those who gained glory in paradise because of their being faithful to the behests of faith and religion in whatever concerns our relations to God, ourselves, and our neighbors, at the same time, his heart burning with love for his country, he will admit of no mitigation in the Conduct Of such as he considers unfaithful to it or in the least hostile to that Florence he loved so well.
And here we pause. We have not done justice to the subject: we have not said all we could wish about Dante and Mr. Parsons. Yet we hope the few remarks we have made will enkindle in the breast of some of our readers a desire of becoming better acquainted with the father of Italian literature, the idol of the Italian student, the Fiero Ghibellino:
"Onorate l'altissimo Poeta."