"Fiorenza dentro dalla cerchia antica,
Ond'ella toglie ancora e terza e nona,
Si stava in pace sobria e pudica.
Non avea catenella, non corona,
Non donne contigiate, non cintura
Che fosse a veder più che la persona.
Non faceva nascendo ancor paura
La figlia al padre, che il tempo e la dote
Non fuggian quinci e quindi la misura.
Non avea case di famiglia vote;
Non v'era giunto ancor Sardanapalo
A mostrar ciò ch'in camera si puote.
Non era vinto ancora Montemalo
Dal vostro Uccellatoio, che com'è vinto
Nel montar su, così sarà nel calo.
Bellincion Berti vid'io andar cinto
Di cuojo e d'osso, e venir dallo specchio
La donna sua senza'l viso dipinto:
E vidi quel di Nerli e quel del Vecchio
Esser contenti alla pelle scoverta,
E le sue donne al fuso ed al pennecchio:
Oh fortunate! e ciascuna era certa
Della sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla
Era per Francia nel letto deserta.
L'una vegghiava a studio della culla,
E consolando usava l'idioma
Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla:
L'altra traendo alla rocca la chioma
Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia
De'Trojani e di Fiesole e di Roma.
Saria tenuta allor tal maraviglia
Una Cianghella, un Lapo Salterello,
Qual or saria Cincinnato e Corniglia.
A così riposato, a così bello
Viver di cittadini, a così fida
Cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello,
Maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida;
E nell'antico vostro Batisteo
Insieme fui Cristiano e Cacciaguida."
Paradiso, XV. 97-135.
"Florence, within the ancient boundary
From which she taketh still her tierce and nones,
Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste.
No golden chain she had, nor coronal,
Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle
That caught the eye more than the person did.
Not yet the daughter at her birth struck fear
Into the father, for the time and dower
Did not o'errun this side or that the measure.
No houses had she void of families,
Not yet had thither come Sardanapalus
To show what in a chamber can be done;
Not yet surpassed had Montemalo been
By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed
Shall in its downfall be as in its rise.
Bellincion Berti saw I go begirt
With leather and with bone, and from the mirror
His dame depart without a painted face;
And him of Nerli saw, and him of Vecchio,
Contented with their simple suits of buff,
And with the spindle and the flax their dames.
O fortunate women! and each one was certain
Of her own burial-place, and none as yet
For sake of France was in her bed deserted.
One o'er the cradle kept her studious watch,
And in her lullaby the language used
That first delights the fathers and the mothers;
Another, drawing tresses from her distaff,
Told o'er among her family the tales
Of Trojans and of Fesole and Rome.
As great a marvel then would have been held
A Lapo Salterello, a Cianghella,
As Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
To such a quiet, such a beautiful
Life of the citizen, to such a safe
Community, and to so sweet an inn,
Did Mary give me, with loud cries invoked,
And in your ancient Baptistery at once
Christian and Cacciaguida I became."
Longfellow
"Florence, within her ancient limit-mark,
Which calls her still to matin prayers and noon,
Was chaste and sober, and abode in peace,
She had no armlets and no head-tires then;
No purfled dames; no zone, that caught the eye
More than the person did. Time was not yet,
When at his daughter's birth the sire grew pale,
For fear the age and dowry should exceed,
On each side, just proportion. House was none
Void of its family: nor yet had come
Sardanapalus, to exhibit feats
Of chamber prowess. Montemalo yet
O'er our suburban turret rose; as much
To be surpassed in fall, as in its rising.
I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone;
And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks,
His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw
Of Nerli, and of Vecchio, well content
With unrobed jerkin; and their good dames handling
The spindle and the flax: O happy they!
Each sure of burial in her native land,
And none left desolate abed for France.
One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it
With sounds that lulled the parent's infancy:
Another, with her maidens, drawing off
The tresses from the distaff, lectured them
Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome.
A Salterello and Cianghella we
Had held as strange a marvel, as ye would
A Cincinnatus or Cornelia now.
In such composed and seemly fellowship,
Such faithful and such fair equality,
In so sweet household, Mary at my birth
Bestowed me, called on with loud cries; and there,
In your old baptistery, I was made
Christian at once and Cacciaguida."—Cary.
It would be easy to extend our quotations; but we have given enough of Mr. Longfellow's translation to show with what conceptions of duty to the original he came to his task, and how perfectly that duty has been performed. According to his theory, then, as we gather it from these volumes, translation is not paraphrase, is not interpretation, is not imitation, but is the rigorous rendering of word for word, so far as the original difference of idioms permits. Its basis is truth to the form as well as to the thought, to the letter as well as to the spirit, of the text. The translator is like the messengers of the Bible and Homer, who repeat word for word the message that has been confided to them. He, too, if he would be true to his office, must give the message as it has been given to him, repeat the story in the words in which it was told him. Every deviation from the letter of the original is a deviation from the truth. Every epithet that is either added or taken away is a falsification of the text. The addition or the omission may sometimes be an improvement, but it is an improvement which you have no authority to make. It is not to learn what you think Homer or Dante might have said that the reader comes to your translation, but to see what they really said. When Cesarotti undertook to show how Homer would have written in the eighteenth century, he recast the Iliad and called it "The Death of Hector," and in this he dealt more honestly with his readers than Pope; for, although he failed to make a good poem, he did not attempt to pass it for Homer.
The greatest difficulty of the translator arises from his personality. He cannot forget himself, cannot guard, as he ought, against those subtle insinuations of self-esteem which are constantly leading him to improve upon his author. His own habits of thought would have suggested a different turn to the verse, a different coloring to the image. He finds it as hard to forget his own style, as to forget his identity. It demands a vigorous imagination, combined with deep poetic sympathies, to go out of yourself and enter for a time wholly into the heart and mind, the thoughts and feelings, of another; and it is not to all that such an imagination and such sympathies are given. There is scarcely a great failure in poetical translation, which may not be traced to the want of this power.
It may seem like the grave enunciation of a truism to say that another indispensable qualification of the translator is perfect familiarity with the language from which he translates, and a full command of his own. It is not by mere reading that such a familiarity can be acquired. You must have learnt to think in a language, and made it the spontaneous expression of your wants and feelings, if you would find in it the true interpretation of the wants and feelings of others. Its words and idioms must awaken in you the same sensations which the words and idioms of your own language awaken; giving pleasure as music, or a picture, or a statue, or a fine building gives pleasure, not by an act of reflection under the control of the will, but by an intuitive perception under the inspiration of a sense of the beautiful. The enjoyment of a thought is partly an intellectual enjoyment; you may even reason yourself into it; but the enjoyment of style and language is purely an æsthetic enjoyment, susceptible, indeed, of culture, but springing from an inborn sense of harmony. To extend this enjoyment to a foreign language, you must bring that language close to you, and form with it those intimate relations between thought and word which you have formed in your own. The word must not only suggest the thought, but become a part of it, as the painting becomes a part of the canvas. It must strike your ear with a familiar sound, awakening pleasant memories of actual life and real scenes. Idioms are often interpreters of national life, giving you sudden glimpses, and even deep revelations, of manners and customs, and the circumstances whence they sprang. They are often, too, brief formulas, condensing thought into its briefest expression, with a force and energy which the full expression could not give. To mistake them, is to mistake the whole passage. Not to feel them, is not to feel the most characteristic form of thought.
The preposition da is one of the most versatile words in Italian. Its literal meaning is from; it is daily used to express to. Da me may mean from me: it may also mean to me. Fit or deserving to be done is a common meaning of it; and it is in this sense that Dante uses it in the following passage from the fourth canto of Paradiso, fifty-fifth line:—
"Con intenzion da non esser derisa,"—
With intention not (deserving to be) to be derided.