The Unseen World and Other Essays Part 11

and translating carribo by saraband, a kind of Moorish dance. The best ma.n.u.scripts, however, sanction M. Witte's reading:--

"Danzando al loro angelico carribo."

If this be correct, carribo cannot signify "a dance," but rather "the song which accompanies the dance"; and the true sense of the pa.s.sage will have been best rendered by Mr. Cary. [49]

[49] See Blanc, Vocabolario Dantesco, s. v. "caribo."

Whenever Mr. Longfellow's translation is kept free from oddities of diction and construction, it is very animated and vigorous. Nothing can be finer than his rendering of "Purgatorio," Canto VI., lines 97-117:--

"O German Albert! who abandonest Her that has grown recalcitrant and savage, And oughtest to bestride her saddle-bow,

May a just judgment from the stars down fall Upon thy blood, and be it new and open, That thy successor may have fear thereof:

Because thy father and thyself have suffered, By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, The garden of the empire to be waste.

Come and behold Montecchi and Cappelletti, Monaldi and Filippeschi, careless man!

Those sad already, and these doubt-depressed!

Come, cruel one! come and behold the oppression Of thy n.o.bility, and cure their wounds, And thou shalt see how safe [?] is Santafiore.

Come and behold thy Rome that is lamenting, Widowed, alone, and day and night exclaims 'My Caesar, why hast thou forsaken me?'

Come and behold how loving are the people; And if for us no pity moveth thee, Come and be made ashamed of thy renown." [50]

[50] "O Alberto Tedesco, che abbandoni Costei ch' e fatta indomita e selvaggia, E dovresti inforcar li suoi arcioni,

Giusto gindizio dalle stelle caggia Sopra il tuo sangue, e sia nuovo ed aperto, Tal che il tuo successor temenza n' aggia: Cheavete tu e il tuo padre sofferto, Per cupidigia di costa distretti, Che il giardin dell' imperio sia diserto.

Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti, Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom senza cura: Color gia tristi, e questi con sospetti.

Vien, crudel, vieni, e vedi la pressura De' tuoi gentili, e cure lor magagne, E vedrai Santafior com' e oscura [secura?].

Vieni a veder la tua Roma che piagne, Vedova e sola, e di e notte chiama: Cesare mio, perche non m' accompagne?

Vieni a veder la gente quanto s' ama; E se nulla di noi pieta ti move, A vergognar ti vien della tua fama."

So, too, Canto III., lines 79-84:--

"As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold By ones, and twos, and threes, and the others stand Timidly holding down their eyes and nostrils,

And what the foremost does the others do Huddling themselves against her if she stop, Simple and quiet, and the wherefore know not." [51]

[51] "Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso Ad una, a due, a tre, e l' altre stanno Timidette atterrando l' occhio e il muso;

E cio che fa la prima, e l' altre sanno, Addossandosi a lei s' ella s' arresta, Semplici e quete, e lo 'mperche non sanno."

Francesca's exclamation to Dante is thus rendered by Mr. Longfellow:--

"And she to me: There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery." [52]

[52] "Ed ella a me: Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria."

Inferno, V. 121-123.

This is admirable,--full of the true poetic glow, which would have been utterly quenched if some Romanic equivalent of dolore had been used instead of our good Saxon sorrow. [53] So, too, the "Paradiso," Canto I., line 100:--

"Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, Her eyes directed toward me with that look A mother casts on a delirious child." [54]

[53] Yet admirable as it is, I am not quite sure that Dr.

Parsons, by taking further liberty with the original, has not surpa.s.sed it:--

"And she to me: The mightiest of all woes Is in the midst of misery to be cursed With bliss remembered."

[54] "Ond' ella, appresso d'un pio sospiro, Gli occhi drizzo ver me con quel sembiante, Che madre fa sopra figlinol deliro."

And, finally, the beginning of the eighth canto of the "Purgatorio":--

"'T was now the hour that turneth back desire In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart, The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell; And the new pilgrim penetrates with love, If he doth hear from far away a bell That seemeth to deplore the dying day." [55]

[55] "Era gia l' ora che volge il disio Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il core Lo di ch' hen detto ai dolci amici addio; E che lo nuovo peregrin d' amore Punge, se ode squilla di lontano, Che paia il giorno pianger che si more."

This pa.s.sage affords an excellent example of what the method of literal translation can do at its best. Except in the second line, where "those who sail the sea" is wisely preferred to any Romanic equivalent of naviganti the version is utterly literal; as literal as the one the school-boy makes, when he opens his Virgil at the Fourth Eclogue, and lumberingly reads, "Sicilian Muses, let us sing things a little greater." But there is nothing clumsy, nothing which smacks of the recitation-room, in these lines of Mr. Longfellow. For easy grace and exquisite beauty it would be difficult to surpa.s.s them. They may well bear comparison with the beautiful lines into which Lord Byron has rendered the same thought:--

"Soft hour which wakes the wish, and melts the heart, Of those who sail the seas, on the first day When they from their sweet friends are torn apart; Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way, As the far bell of vesper makes him start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay.

Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?

Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns!" [56]

[56] Don Juan, III. 108.

Setting aside the concluding sentimental generalization,--which is much more Byronic than Dantesque,--one hardly knows which version to call more truly poetical; but for a faithful rendering of the original conception one can hardly hesitate to give the palm to Mr. Longfellow.

Thus we see what may be achieved by the most highly gifted of translators who contents himself with pa.s.sively reproducing the diction of his original, who const.i.tutes himself, as it were, a conduit through which the meaning of the original may flow. Where the differences inherent in the languages employed do not intervene to alloy the result, the stream of the original may, as in the verses just cited, come out pure and unweakened. Too often, however, such is the subtle chemistry of thought, it will come out diminished in its integrity, or will appear, bereft of its primitive properties as a mere element in some new combination. Our channel is a trifle too alkaline perhaps; and that the transferred material may preserve its pleasant sharpness, we may need to throw in a little extra acid. Too often the mere differences between English and Italian prevent Dante's expressions from coming out in Mr.

Longfellow's version so pure and unimpaired as in the instance just cited. But these differences cannot be ignored. They lie deep in the very structure of human speech, and are narrowly implicated with equally profound nuances in the composition of human thought. The causes which make dolente a solemn word to the Italian ear, and dolent a queer word to the English ear, are causes which have been slowly operating ever since the Italian and the Teuton parted company on their way from Central Asia. They have brought about a state of things which no cunning of the translator can essentially alter, but to the emergencies of which he must graciously conform his proceedings. Here, then, is the sole point on which we disagree with Mr. Longfellow, the sole reason we have for thinking that he has not attained the fullest possible measure of success. Not that he has made a "realistic" translation,--so far we conceive him to be entirely right; but that, by dint of pus.h.i.+ng sheer literalism beyond its proper limits, he has too often failed to be truly realistic. Let us here explain what is meant by realistic translation.

Every thoroughly conceived and adequately executed translation of an ancient author must be founded upon some conscious theory or some unconscious instinct of literary criticism. As is the critical spirit of an age, so among other things will be its translations. Now the critical spirit of every age previous to our own has been characterized by its inability to appreciate sympathetically the spirit of past and bygone times. In the seventeenth century criticism made idols of its ancient models; it acknowledged no serious imperfections in them; it set them up as exemplars for the present and all future times to copy. Let the genial Epicurean henceforth write like Horace, let the epic narrator imitate the supreme elegance of Virgil,--that was the conspicuous idea, the conspicuous error, of seventeenth-century criticism. It overlooked the differences between one age and another. Conversely, when it brought Roman patricians and Greek oligarchs on to the stage, it made them behave like French courtiers or Castilian grandees or English peers.

When it had to deal with ancient heroes, it clothed them in the garb and imputed to them the sentiments of knights-errant. Then came the revolutionary criticism of the eighteenth century, which a.s.sumed that everything old was wrong, while everything new was right. It recognized crudely the differences between one age and another, but it had a way of looking down upon all ages except the present. This intolerance shown toward the past was indeed a measure of the crudeness with which it was comprehended. Because Mohammed, if he had done what he did, in France and in the eighteenth century, would have been called an impostor, Voltaire, the great mouthpiece and representative of this style of criticism, portrays him as an impostor. Recognition of the fact that different ages are different, together with inability to perceive that they ought to be different, that their differences lie in the nature of progress,--this was the prominent characteristic of eighteenth-century criticism. Of all the great men of that century, Lessing was perhaps the only one who outgrew this narrow critical habit.

Now nineteenth-century criticism not only knows that in no preceding age have men thought and behaved as they now think and behave, but it also understands that old-fas.h.i.+oned thinking and behaviour was in its way just as natural and sensible as that which is now new-fas.h.i.+oned. It does not flippantly sneer at an ancient custom because we no longer cherish it; but with an enlightened regard for everything human, it inquires into its origin, traces its effects, and endeavours to explain its decay. It is slow to characterize Mohammed as an impostor, because it has come to feel that Arabia in the seventh century is one thing and Europe in the nineteenth another. It is scrupulous about branding Caesar as an usurper, because it has discovered that what Mr. Mill calls republican liberty and what Cicero called republican liberty are widely different notions. It does not tell us to bow down before Lucretius and Virgil as unapproachable models, while lamenting our own hopeless inferiority; nor does it tell us to set them down as half-skilled apprentices, while congratulating ourselves on our own comfortable superiority; but it tells us to study them as the exponents of an age forever gone, from which we have still many lessons to learn, though we no longer think as it thought or feel as it felt. The eighteenth century, as represented by the characteristic pa.s.sage from Voltaire, cited by Mr. Longfellow, failed utterly to understand Dante. To the minds of Voltaire and his contemporaries the great mediaeval poet was little else than a t.i.tanic monstrosity,--a maniac, whose ravings found rhythmical expression; his poem a grotesque medley, wherein a few beautiful verses were buried under the weight of whole cantos of nonsensical scholastic quibbling. This view, somewhat softened, we find also in Leigh Hunt, whose whole account of Dante is an excellent specimen of this sort of criticism. Mr. Hunt's fine moral nature was shocked and horrified by the terrible punishments described in the "Inferno." He did not duly consider that in Dante's time these fearful things were an indispensable part of every man's theory of the world; and, blinded by his kindly prejudices, he does not seem to have perceived that Dante, in accepting eternal torments as part and parcel of the system of nature, was nevertheless, in describing them, inspired with that ineffable tenderness of pity which, in the episodes of Francesca and of Brunetto Latini, has melted the hearts of men in past times, and will continue to do so in times to come. "Infinite pity, yet infinite rigour of law! It is so Nature is made: it is so Dante discerned that she was made." [57] This remark of the great seer of our time is what the eighteenth century could in no wise comprehend. The men of that day failed to appreciate Dante, just as they were oppressed or disgusted at the sight of Gothic architecture; just as they p.r.o.nounced the scholastic philosophy an unmeaning jargon; just as they considered mediaeval Christianity a gigantic system of charlatanry, and were wont unreservedly to characterize the Papacy as a blighting despotism. In our time cultivated men think differently. We have learned that the interminable hair-splitting of Aquinas and Abelard has added precision to modern thinking. [58] We do not curse Gregory VII. and Innocent III.

as enemies of the human race, but revere them as benefactors. We can spare a morsel of hearty admiration for Becket, however strongly we may sympathize with the stalwart king who did penance for his foul murder; and we can appreciate Dante's poor opinion of Philip the Fair no less than his denunciation of Boniface VIII. The contemplation of Gothic architecture, as we stand entranced in the sublime cathedrals of York or Rouen, awakens in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s a genuine response to the mighty aspirations which thus became incarnate in enduring stone. And the poem of Dante--which has been well likened to a great cathedral--we reverently accept, with all its quaint carvings and hieroglyphic symbols, as the authentic utterance of feelings which still exist, though they no longer choose the same form of expression.

[57] Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Wors.h.i.+p, p. 84.

[58] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 123.

A century ago, therefore, a translation of Dante such as Mr.