DANTE
We come now to that great task which Longfellow, after an early
experiment, had dropped for years, and which he resumed after his wife's
death, largely for the sake of an absorbing occupation. Eighteen years
before, November 24, 1843, he had written to Ferdinand Freiligrath that
he had translated sixteen cantos of Dante, and there seems no reason to
suppose that he had done aught farther in that direction until this new
crisis. After resuming the work, he translated for a time a canto as
each day's task, and refers to this habit in his sonnet on the subject,
where he says:--
"I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate."
The work was not fully completed until 1866, and was published in part
during the following year.
The whole picture of the manner in which the work was done has long been
familiar to the literary world, including the pleasing glimpse of the
little circle of cultivated friends, assembled evening after evening, to
compare notes and suggest improvements. For many years this was regarded
by students and critics as having been almost an ideal method for the
production of a great work, and especially of a translation,--a task
where there is always the original text at hand for reference. As time
has gone on, however, the admiration for the completed work has
gradually been mingled with a growing doubt whether this species of
joint production was on the whole an ideal one, and whether, in fact, a
less perfect work coming from a single mind might not surpass in
freshness of quality, and therefore in successful effort, any joint
product. Longfellow had written long before to Freiligrath that making a
translation was "like running a ploughshare through the soil of one's
mind,"{92} and it would be plainly impossible to run ploughshares
simultaneously through half a dozen different minds at precisely the
same angle. The mind to decide on a phrase or an epithet, even in a
translation, must, it would seem, be the mind from which the phrase or
statement originally proceeded; a suggestion from a neighbor might
sometimes be most felicitous, but quite as often more tame and guarded;
and the influence of several neighbors collectively might lie, as often
happens in the outcome of an ordinary committee meeting, rather in the
direction of caution than of vigor. Longfellow's own temperament was of
the gracious and conciliatory type, by no means of the domineering
quality; and it is certainly a noticeable outcome of all this joint
effort at constructing a version of this great world-poem, that one of
the two original delegates, Professor Norton, should ultimately have
published a prose translation of his own. It is also to be observed that
Professor Norton, in the original preface to his version, while praising
several other translators, does not so much as mention the name of
Longfellow; and in his list of "Aids to the Study of the 'Divine
Comedy'" speaks only of Longfellow's notes and illustrations, which he
praises as "admirable." Even Lowell, the other original member of the
conference, while in his "Dante" essay he ranks Longfellow's as "the
best" of the complete translations, applies the word "admirable" only to
those fragmentary early versions, made for Longfellow's college classes
twenty years before,--versions which the completed work was apparently
intended to supersede.
Far be it from me to imply that any disloyalty was shown on the part of
these gentlemen either towards their eminent associate or towards the
work on which they had shared his labors; it is only that they surprise
us a little by what they do not say. It may be that they do not praise
the Longfellow version because they confessedly had a share in it, yet
this reason does not quite satisfy. Nothing has been more noticeable in
the popular reception of the completed work than the general preference
of unsophisticated readers for those earlier translations thus heartily
praised by Lowell. There has been a general complaint that the later
work does not possess for the English-speaking reader the charm exerted
by the original over all who can read Italian, while those earlier and
fragmentary specimens had certainly possessed something of that charm.
Those favorite versions, it must be remembered, were not the result of
any coöperated labor, having been written by Professor Longfellow in an
interleaved copy of Dante which he used in the class room. They were
three in number, all from the "Purgatorio" and entitled by him
respectively, "The Celestial Pilot," "The Terrestrial Paradise," and
"Beatrice." They were first published in "Voices of the Night" (1839),
and twenty-eight years had passed before the later versions appeared.
Those twenty-eight years had undoubtedly enhanced in width and depth Mr.
Longfellow's knowledge of the Italian language; their labors and sorrows
had matured the strength of his mind; but it is not so clear that they
had not in some degree diminished its freshness and vivacity, nor is it
clear that the council of friendly critics would be an influence tending
to replace just those gifts.
If a comparison is to be made between the earlier and later renderings,
the best way would doubtless be to place them side by side in parallel
columns; and while it would be inappropriate to present such a
comparison here on any large scale, it may be worth while to take a
passage at random to see the effect of the two methods. Let us take, for
instance, a passage from "Purgatorio," canto xxx. lines 22 and 23. They
are thus in the original:--
"Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno
La parte oriental tutta rosata,
E l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno."
The following is Longfellow's translation of 1839, made by the man of
thirty-two:--
"Oft have I seen, at the approach of day,
The orient sky all stained with roseate hues,
And the other heaven with light serene adorned."
The following is the later version, made by the man of sixty, after
ample conference with friendly critics:--
"Ere now have I beheld, as day began,
The eastern hemisphere all tinged with rose,
And the other heaven with fair serene adorned;"
I do not see how any English-speaking reader could hesitate for a moment
in finding a charm far greater in the first version than in the second,
or fail to recognize in it more of that quality which has made the name
of Dante immortal. If this be true, the only question that can be raised
is whether this advantage has been won by a sacrifice of that degree of
literalness which may fairly be demanded of a translation in poetic
form. Perfect and absolute literalness, it must be remembered, can only
be expected of a prose version, and even after the most perfect metrical
translation a prose version may be as needful as ever. Let us consider
for a moment the two examples as given above. It may be conceded at the
outset that the adverb _già_ is more strictly and carefully rendered by
"ere" than by "oft," but the difference is not important, as any one old
enough to describe a daybreak has undoubtedly seen more than one. The
difference between "the approach of day" and "as day began" is
important, since the last moment of the approach coincides with the
first moment of the beginning. In the second line, "la parte oriental"
is both more literally and more tersely rendered by "the orient sky,"
than by the more awkward expression "the eastern hemisphere," unless it
be claimed that "sky" does not sufficiently recognize the earth as seen
in the view; to which it may justly be replied that the word
"hemisphere," if applied only to the earth, equally omits the sky, and
the two defects balance each other. "Tinged with rose" is undoubtedly a
briefer expression for the untranslatable "rosata" than "stained with
roseate hues" would be. The last line of the three finds an identical
rendering in the two versions, and while "bel sereno" is more literally
rendered by "fair serene" than by "light serene," yet the earlier phrase
has the advantage of being better English, serene being there used as an
adjective only, whereas in the later translation it is used as a noun, a
practice generally regarded as obsolete in the dictionaries. Even where
the word is thus employed, they tell us, it does not describe the
morning light, but indicates, like the French word "serein," an evening
dampness; as where Daniel says, "The fogs and the serene offend us."
Summing up the comparison, so far as this one example goes, it would
seem that the revised version of Longfellow has but very slight
advantage over its predecessor, while the loss of vividness and charm is
unquestionable.
To carry the test yet farther, let us compare the three lines, in their
two successive versions, with the prose version of Professor Norton,
which reads as follows: "I have seen ere now at the beginning of the day
the eastern region all rosy, while the rest of heaven was beautiful with
fair, clear sky." Here the prose translator rightly discards the "oft"
of the earlier Longfellow version, but his "at the beginning" is surely
nearer to the "at the approach" of the first version than to the less
literal "as day began" of the second. The prose "the eastern region"
conforms to the second version "the eastern hemisphere," but surely the
Italian "la parte oriental" is more nearly met by "the orient sky" than
by either of these heavier and more geographical substitutes, which have
a flavor of the text-book. Both the Longfellow versions have "the other
heaven," which is a literal rendering of "l'altro ciel," whereas "the
rest of heaven" is a shade looser in expression, and "fair, clear sky"
also forfeits the condensation of "light serene" or "fair serene," of
which two phrases the first seems the better, for reasons already given.
On the whole, if we take Professor Norton's prose translation as the
standard, Longfellow's later version seems to me to gain scarcely
anything upon the earlier in literalness, while it loses greatly in
freshness and triumphant joyousness.
Nor is this in any respect an unreasonable criticism. For what does a
translation exist, after all, if not to draw us toward that quality in
the original which the translator, even at his best, can rarely reach?
Goethe says that "the translator is a person who introduces you to a
veiled beauty; he makes you long for the loveliness behind the veil,"
and we have in the notes to his "West-Östliche Divan" the celebrated
analysis of the three forms of translation. He there says, "Translation
is of three kinds: First, the prosaic prose translation, which is useful
in enriching the language of the translator with new ideas, but gives up
all poetic art, and reduces even the poetic enthusiasm to one level
watery plain. Secondly, the re-creation of the poem as a new poem,
rejecting or altering all that seems foreign to the translator's
nationality, producing a paraphrase which might, in the primal sense of
the word, be called a parody. And, thirdly, ... the highest and last,
where one strives to make the translation identical with the original;
so that one is not instead of the other, but in the place of the other.
This sort of translation ... 'approaches the interlinear version, and
makes the understanding of the original a much easier task; thus we are
led into the original,--yes, even driven in; and herein the great merit
of this kind of translation lies.'"{93}
It may be doubted, however, whether Longfellow, in his remarkable paper
"On the Translation of Faust" even if left to himself in making his
version, could ever have reached the highest point attained by Goethe,
from the mere difference between the two languages with which he and his
original had to deal. The charm of Longfellow's earlier versions is,
after all, an English charm, and perhaps the quality of Dante can no
more be truthfully transmuted into this than we can transmute the charms
of a spring morning into those of a summer afternoon, or violets into
roses. Goethe, it is well known, took for his model as to the language
of "Faust" the poetry of Hans Sachs, Longfellow's "cobbler bard;" and
Dante's terse monosyllables were based upon the language of the people,
which he first embodied in art. To mellow its refreshing brevities would
perhaps be to destroy it, and that which Mr. Andrews finely says of the
"Faust" may be still more true of the "Divina Commedia," that it "must
remain, after all, the enchanted palace; and the bodies and the bones of
those who in other days strove to pierce its encircling hedge lie
scattered thickly about it." So Mr. W. C. Lawton, himself an experienced
translator from the Greek, says of Longfellow's work, "His great version
is but a partial success, for it essays the unattainable."{94} But if it
be possible to win this success, it is probably destined to be done by
one translator working singly and not in direct coöperation with others,
however gifted or accomplished. Every great literary work needs
criticism from other eyes during its progress. Nevertheless it will
always remain doubtful whether any such work, even though it be a
translation only, can be satisfactorily done by joint labor.
After all, when others have done their best, it is often necessary to
fall back upon the French Joubert for the final touch of criticism; and
in his unequalled formula for translating Homer, we find something not
absolutely applicable to Dantean translation, yet furnishing much food
for thought. The following is the passage: "There will never be an
endurable translation of Homer, unless its words are chosen with skill
and are full of variety, of freshness, and of charm. It is also
essential that the diction should be as antique, as simple, as are the
manners, the events, and the personages portrayed. With our modern style
everything attitudinizes in Homer, and his heroes seem fantastic figures
which personate the grave and proud."{95}
{92 _Life_, ii. 15.}
{93 I here follow the condensed version of Mr. W. P. Andrews, (_Atlantic
Monthly_, lxvi., 733).}
{94 _The New England Poets_, p. 138.}
{95 Il n'y aura jamais de traduction d'Homère supportable, si tous les
mots n'en sont choisis avec art et pleins de variété, de nouveauté et
d'agrément. Il faut, d'ailleurs, que l'expression soit aussi antique,
aussi nue que les moeurs, les événements et les personnages mis en scène.
Avec notre style moderne, tout grimace dans Homère, et ses héros
semblent des grotesques qui font les graves et les fiers.--_Pensées de
J. Joubert_, p. 342.}