With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make
To him by whom the notes are not distinguished,
So from the lights that there to me appeared
Upgathered through the cross a melody,
Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn."
_Paradiso_: Canto XIV.
"As through the pure and tranquil evening air
There shoots from time to time a sudden fire,
Moving the eyes that steadfast were before,
And seems to be a star that changeth place,
Except that in the part where it is kindled
Nothing is missed, and this endureth little;
So from the horn that to the right extends
Unto that cross's foot there ran a star
Out of the constellation shining there."
_Paradiso_: Canto XV.
"Even as remaineth splendid and serene
The hemisphere of air, when Boreas
Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,
Because is purified and resolved the rack
That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs
With all the beauties of its pageantry;
Thus did I likewise, after that my lady
Had me provided with a clear response,
And like a star in Heaven the truth was seen."
_Paradiso_: Canto XXVIII.
The first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse is, Is
it poetical? Is there, as effect of its introduction, any heightening
of the reader's mood, any cleansing of his vision, any clarification
of the medium through which he is looking? Is there a sudden play of
light that warms, and, through this warmth, illuminates the
object before him? Few of those just quoted, put to such test, could
be called more than conventionally poetical--if this be not a
solecism. To illustrate one sensuous object by another does not
animate the mind enough to fulfill any one of the above conditions.
Such similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness, there is
through them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion. They
may help to make the object ocularly more apparent, but they do not
make the feeling a party to the movement. When this is done,--as in
the examples from Canto XV. of the "Inferno," and Canto VIII. of the
"Purgatorio,"--what an instantaneous vivification of the picture!
But in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright
as in the best of Shakespeare's. As one instance out of many: towards
the end of the great soliloquy of Henry V., after enumerating the
emblems and accompaniments of royalty, the king continues,--
"No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave;
Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind,
Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,
Doth rise _and help Hyperion to his horse_"
What a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image, so
fresh and unexpected, of the rising sun, with its suggestion of beauty
and healthfulness! Then the far-reaching, transfiguring imagination,
that, in a twinkle, transmutes into the squire of Hyperion a stolid
rustic, making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. It is
by this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with
brilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures,
denoting overflow of resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel
after Shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying
more and better,--it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming
fullness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakespeare throws a
farther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does Dante's
page glisten, as Shakespeare's so often does, with metaphor, or
compressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual
sphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but inter-tissued with the
web of thought, upflashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the
surface, as on the calm level of the Atlantic you may see a
circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up
from the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten,--a
sign of life, power, and abundance.
Like his great compeer, Milton, Dante fails of universality from want
of humor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault
(liberally to interpret Can's conduct) that Dante's host, Can Grande
of Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of both poets
(unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were
predominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their
times, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic earnestness, which
is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration
of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,--a great feat,
only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest
manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws
such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom,
and, with the fool in "Lear," forces you, like a child, to smile
through warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy
to tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and
follies of men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough
to sport with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful
delight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter.
Of pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By the
story of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and
awe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to
tenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single
fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is
to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape with a
hundred flashes.
All the personages of Dante's poem (unless we regard himself as one)
are spirits. Shakespeare, throughout his many works, gives only a few
glimpses into the world beyond the grave; but how grandly by these few
is the imagination expanded. Clarence's dream, "lengthened after
life," in which he passes "the melancholy flood," is almost
super-Dantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful
foretaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth. And the
great ghost in "Hamlet," when you read of him, how shadowy real!
Dante's representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too
palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe.
Profound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, thought-breeding
thoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pure, large sensibilities,
and by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion, to be
wrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful,--of
these, which are the test of poetic greatness, Dante, if we may
venture to say so, has not more or brighter examples than Milton, and
not so many as Goethe; while of such passages, compactly embodying as
they do the finer insights of a poetic mind, there are more in a
single one of the greater tragedies of Shakespeare, than in all the
three books of the "Divina Commedia."
Juxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the
superiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any
other great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante so
high as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakespeare; what
though the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the sky, and
the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied
domains. The traveler, even if he come directly from wondering
at Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest
delight before the majesty of the Yungfrau and the Eigher.
But it is time to speak of Dante in English.
"It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might
discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to
transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet."
Thus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his beautiful "Defense of
Poetry." But have we not in modern tongues the creations of Homer, and
of Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet?
And can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by
deprivation of them in translated form? Pope's Homer--still Homer
though so Popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture
of thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and
Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through
which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would
incidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derby's Iliad has gone
through many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what should we
have done without them in English? Translations are the
telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in
other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from
their words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth
and wisdom forever. The flash on which the message was first launched
has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the
message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is
freighted, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat oranges,
because on being translated from Cuba to our palates they have lost
somewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poem we wish to have
as much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the
poetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation
of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological
exposition,--a poem, only in another dress. Thence a work in verse,
that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made
to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth
every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that.
A prose translation of a poem is an æsthetic impertinence,
Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent
in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him
in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much
telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such
touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even
in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic
sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were
the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the
deflowering of many delicate stems. Forty years ago, Mr. Hay ward
translated the "Faust" of Goethe into prose; but let any one compare
the Hymn of the Archangels and other of the more highly-wrought
passages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in
verse,--with that of Mr. Brooks for example,--to perceive at once the
insufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally
faithful a prose version. The effect on "Faust," or on any high
passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what
would be the effect on an exquisite _bas-relief_ of reducing its
projection one half by a persevering application of pumice. In all
genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so
inwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely
disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the
verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by
the transplanting of it into another soil.
The translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just
to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the
page into his own language. He must brace himself into an active
state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, then
transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he
would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt. To get
into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the
words, embracing them from within, not merely seizing them from
without. Having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the
original, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key. Such
surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original,
and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his
verse; for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and
to see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled
by himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which
he had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that
of his own first inspirations.
A poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity.
"Paradise Lost," conceived in Milton's brain, could not utter itself
in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our
language a new music. It could not have been written in the Spenserian
stanza. What would the "Fairy Queen" be in blank verse? For his theme
and mood Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which
enlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration. Rhyme was then a new
element in verse, a modern æsthetic creation; and it is a help and an
added beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it
be not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to
freedom of movement, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are
offensive both to sense and to ear. Like buds that lie half-hidden in
leaves, rhymes should peep out, sparkling but modest, from the cover
of words, falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible
strokes of a melodious pulse at the heart of the verse.
The _terza rima_--already in use--Dante adopted as suitable to
continuous narrative. With his feeling and æsthetic want
rhymed verse harmonized, the triple repetition offering no obstacle,
Italian being copious in endings of like sound. His measure is iambic,
free iambic, and every line consists, not of ten syllables, but of
eleven, his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes. And
this weakness is so inherent in Italian speech, that every line even
of the blank verse in all the twenty-two tragedies of Alfieri ends
femininely, that is, with an unaccented eleventh syllable. In all
Italian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme, the final syllable,
moreover, invariably ending with a vowel. This, besides being too much
rhyme and too much vowel, is, in iambic lines, metrically a defect,
the eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable.
In these two prominent features English verse is different from
Italian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes are
masculine; and it has fewer than Italian. This second characteristic,
the comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one of its sources of
strength: it denotes musical richness and not poverty, as at first
aspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying
variety in its sounds. It has all the vocalic syllables and
endings it needs for softness, and incloses them mostly in consonants
for condensation, vigor, and emphasis.
Primarily the translator has to consider the resources and
individualities of his own tongue. In the case of Dante the rhythmical
basis is the same in both languages; for the iambic measure is our
chief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by Shakespeare and Milton.
There only remains, then, rhyme and the division into stanzas. Can the
_terza rima_, as used by Dante, be called a stanza? The lines are not
separated into trios, but run into one another, clinging very properly
to the rhymes, which, interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the
echo still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our
Spenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines. Whether
stanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly
about the _terza rima_? To us it seems not deserving of admiration
_for its own sake_; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by
Dante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it for original
poems. We are not aware that Dante's example has been followed by any
poet of note in Italy. _Terza rima_ keeps the attention suspended too
long, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to
come, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the
last rhyme. The rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and
running ahead. It looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the
first rhymers of an uncultivated age. But Dante used it for his great
song; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the "Divina
Commedia."
Now, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it essential,--in
order to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation,--to
preserve the triple rhyme? Not having in English a corresponding
number of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to
transpositions, substitutions, forcings, indirections, in order to
compass the meaning and the poetry? Place the passages already cited
from Mr. Dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised
to see how direct and literal, how faithful at once to the Italian
thought and to English idiom in expressing it, Mr. Dayman is. His
harness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement, so
skillfully does he wear it. If we confront him with the spirited
version in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited
from the "Inferno," or with those from the "Paradiso," in Mr.
Longfellow's less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility
of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again
manifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations with the
original and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the
three versions, of the latter part of the Francesca story, from Canto
V. of the "Inferno:"--
"Poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io,
E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri
A lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio.
Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri,
A che, e come concedette Amore
Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri?
Ed ella a me: nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria, e ciò sa 'l tuo dottore.
Ma se a conoscer la prima radice
Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,
Farò come colui che piange, e dice.
Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto
Di Lancilotto, come Amor lo strinse.
Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto.
Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso:
Ma solo un punto fu quel, che ci vinse.
Qando leggemmo il disiato riso
Esser baciato da cotanto amante,
Questi, che mai da me non sia diviso,
La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante.
Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse:
Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.
Mentre che l'uno spirito queste disse,
L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
Io venni meno come s'io morisse,
E caddi, come corpo morto cade."
Mr. Dayman:--
"Then toward them turned again: 'Thy racking woe,'
I said, 'Francesca, wrings from out mine eyes
The pious drops that sadden as they flow.
But tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs,
By whom and how love pitying broke the spell,
And in your doubtful longings made too wise.'
And she to me: 'No keener pang hath hell,
Than to recall, amid some deep distress,
Our happier time: thy teacher knows it well.
Yet if desire so strong thy soul possess
To trace the root from whence our love was bred,
His part be mine, who tells and weeps no less.
'T was on a day when we for pastime read
Of Lancillot, how love snared him to ruin:
We were alone, nor knew suspicious dread.
Oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing
Their glance; and from our cheeks the color started;
But one sole moment wrought for our undoing:
When that we read of lover so kind-hearted
Kissing the smile so coveted before,
He that from me shall never more be parted
Kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all o'er.
The broker of our vows, it was the lay,
And he who wrote--that day we read no more.'
The other spirit, while the first did say
These words, so moanèd, that with soft remorse
As death had stricken me, I swooned away,
And down I fell, heavily as falls a corse."
Mr. Longfellow:--
"Then unto them I turned me, and I spake,
And I began: 'Thine agonies, Francesca,
Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.
But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,
By what and in what manner Love conceded
That you should know your dubious desires?'
And she to me: 'There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.
But if to recognize the earliest root
Of love in us thou hast so great desire,
I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.
One day we reading were for our delight
Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthrall.
Alone we were, and without any fear.
Full many a time our eyes together drew
That reading, and drove the color from our faces;
But one point was it that o'ercame us.
Whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile
Being by such a noble lover kissed,
This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided,
Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.
Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.
That day no farther did we read therein.'
And all the while one spirit uttered this,
The other one did weep so, that, for pity,
I swooned away as if I had been dying,
And fell even as a dead body falls."
Dr. Parsons:--
"Then, turning round to them, I thus began:
'Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes:
My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman;
But tell me,--in the time of happy sighs,
Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?"
And she to me: "The mightiest of all woes
Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed
With bliss remembered,--this thy teacher knows.
Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head,
As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim,
So will I speak. Together once we read
The tale of Lancelot,--how Love bound him.
Alone we were without suspecting aught:
Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue,
And oft our eyes each other's glances caught;
But one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew.
At reading of the longed-for smile,--to be
By such a lover's kissing so much blest,
This dearest--never shalt thou part from me!
His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed.
The writer was our Galeot with his book:--
That day we read no further on." She stopped:
Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took
My sense away, and like a corse I dropped.
Observe that Dr. Parsons has put Dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven
syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without
losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour. But why
does he make Francesca address her companion personally, instead of
saying, "who shall never part from me?" And why does Mr. Dayman say,
"pious drops," instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Longfellow fill
up the twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there
any strain or wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them
Lord Byron and Carey, mistranslate this passage,--
"Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
Quella lettura."
All these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read,
their eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that passage over
more than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or
passage drew to it their eyes. To restore the meaning of the original
adds to the refinement of the scene.
Why does Mr. Longfellow use such long words as _compassionate_ instead
of _pitiful_ or _piteous_, _recognize_ for _know_, _palpitating_ for
_trembling_, _conceded that you should know_ for _gave you to know_?
By the resolution to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his
poetic hands. The first effect of this self-binding is, to oblige him
to use often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words,
that is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to
poetic expression. Mr. Dayman, not translating line for line, is free
from this prosaic incumbrance; but as he makes it a rule to himself
that every English canto shall contain the same number of lines as its
original, he is obliged, much more often than Mr. Longfellow,
to throw in epithets or words not in the Italian. And Dr. Parsons,
who, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, in
several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than
the Italian, and the XXXI. into nine lines less, might with advantage
have curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines.