The Unseen World and Other Essays Part 9

[35] See Diez, Romance Dictionary, s. v. "Marrir."

[36] On literally retranslating lost into Italian, we should get the quite different word perduta.

[37] The more flexible method of Dr. Parsons leads to a more satisfactory but still inadequate result:--

"Half-way on our life's Journey, in a wood, From the right path I found myself astray."

All these, however, are difficulties which lie in the nature of things,--difficulties for which the translator is not responsible; of which he must try to make the best that can be made, but which he can never expect wholly to surmount. We have now to inquire whether there are not other difficulties, avoidable by one method of translation, though not by another; and in criticizing Mr. Longfellow, we have chiefly to ask whether he has chosen the best method of translation,--that which most surely and readily awakens in the reader's mind the ideas and feelings awakened by the original.

The translator of a poem may proceed upon either of two distinct principles. In the first case, he may render the text of his original into English, line for line and word for word, preserving as far as possible its exact verbal sequences, and translating each individual word into an English word as nearly as possible equivalent in its etymological force. In the second case, disregarding mere syntactic and etymologic equivalence, his aim will be to reproduce the inner meaning and power of the original, so far as the const.i.tutional difference of the two languages will permit him.

It is the first of these methods that Mr. Longfellow has followed in his translation of Dante. Fidelity to the text of the original has been his guiding principle; and every one must admit that, in carrying out that principle, he has achieved a degree of success alike delightful and surprising. The method of literal translation is not likely to receive any more splendid ill.u.s.tration. It is indeed put to the test in such a way that the shortcomings now to be noticed bear not upon Mr.

Longfellow's own style of work so much as upon the method itself with which they are necessarily implicated. These defects are, first, the too frequent use of syntactic inversion, and secondly, the too manifest preference extended to words of Romanic over words of Saxon origin.

To ill.u.s.trate the first point, let me give a few examples. In Canto I.

we have:--

"So bitter is it, death is little more; But of the good to treat which there I found, Speak will I of the other things I saw there";

which is thus rendered by Mr. Cary,--

"Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

Yet to discourse of what there good befell, All else will I relate discovered there";

and by Dr. Parsons,--

"Its very thought is almost death to me; Yet, having found some good there, I will tell Of other things which there I chanced to see." [38]

[38] "Tanto e amara, che poco e piu morte: Ma per trattar del teen ch' i' vi trovai, Diro dell' altre Bose, ch' io v' ho scorte."

Inferno, I. 7-10.

Again in Canto X. we find:--

"Their cemetery have upon this side With Epicurus all his followers, Who with the body mortal make the soul";--

an inversion which is perhaps not more unidiomatic than Mr. Cary's,--

"The cemetery on this part obtain With Epicurus all his followers, Who with the body make the spirit die";

but which is advantageously avoided by Mr. Wright,--

"Here Epicurus hath his fiery tomb, And with him all his followers, who maintain That soul and body share one common doom";

and is still better rendered by Dr. Parsons,--

"Here in their cemetery on this side, With his whole sect, is Epicurus pent, Who thought the spirit with its body died." [39]

[39] "Suo cimitero da questa parte hanno Con Epieuro tutti i suoi seguaci, Che l'anima col corpo morta fanno."

Inferno, X. 13-15.

And here my eyes, reverting to the end of Canto IX.,

fall upon a similar contrast between Mr. Longfellow's lines,--

"For flames between the sepulchres were scattered, By which they so intensely heated were, That iron more so asks not any art,"--

and those of Dr. Parsons,--

"For here mid sepulchres were sprinkled fires, Wherewith the enkindled tombs all-burning gleamed; Metal more fiercely hot no art requires." [40]

[40] "Che tra gli avelli flamme erano sparte, Per le quali eran si del tutto accesi, Che ferro piu non chiede verun' arte."

Inferno, IX. 118-120.

Does it not seem that in all these cases Mr. Longfellow, and to a slightly less extent Mr. Cary, by their strict adherence to the letter, transgress the ordinary rules of English construction; and that Dr.

Parsons, by his comparative freedom of movement, produces better poetry as well as better English? In the last example especially, Mr.

Longfellow's inversions are so violent that to a reader ignorant of the original Italian, his sentence might be hardly intelligible. In Italian such inversions are permissible; in English they are not; and Mr.

Longfellow, by transplanting them into English, sacrifices the spirit to the letter, and creates an obscurity in the translation where all is lucidity in the original. Does not this show that the theory of absolute literality, in the case of two languages so widely different as English and Italian, is not the true one?

Secondly, Mr. Longfellow's theory of translation leads him in most cases to choose words of Romanic origin in preference to those of Saxon descent, and in many cases to choose an unfamiliar instead of a familiar Romanic word, because the former happens to be etymologically identical with the word in the original. Let me cite as an example the opening of Canto III.:--

"Per me si va nella eitti dolente, Per me si va nell' eterno dolore, Per me si va tra la perduta gente."

Here are three lines which, in their matchless simplicity and grandeur, might well excite despair in the breast of any translator. Let us contrast Mr. Longfellow's version.--

"Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole; Through me the way among the people lost,"--

with that of Dr. Parsons,--,

"Through me you reach the city of despair; Through me eternal wretchedness ye find; Through me among perdition's race ye fare."

I do not think any one will deny that Dr. Parsons's version, while far more remote than Mr. Longfellow's from the diction of the original, is somewhat nearer its spirit. It remains to seek the explanation of this phenomenon. It remains to be seen why words the exact counterpart of Dante's are unfit to call up in our minds the feelings which Dante's own words call up in the mind of an Italian. And this inquiry leads to some general considerations respecting the relation of English to other European languages.

Every one is aware that French poetry, as compared with German poetry, seems to the English reader very tame and insipid; but the cause of this fact is by no means so apparent as the fact itself. That the poetry of Germany is actually and intrinsically superior to that of France, may readily be admitted; but this is not enough to account for all the circ.u.mstances of the case. It does not explain why some of the very pa.s.sages in Corneille and Racine, which to us appear dull and prosaic, are to the Frenchman's apprehension instinct with poetic fervour. It does not explain the undoubted fact that we, who speak English, are p.r.o.ne to underrate French poetry, while we are equally disposed to render to German poetry even more than its due share of merit. The reason is to be sought in the verbal a.s.sociations established in our minds by the peculiar composition of the English language. Our vocabulary is chiefly made up on the one hand of indigenous Saxon words, and on the other hand of words derived from Latin or French. It is mostly words of the first cla.s.s that we learn in childhood, and that are a.s.sociated with our homeliest and deepest emotions; while words of the second cla.s.s--usually acquired somewhat later in life and employed in sedate abstract discourse--have an intellectual rather than an emotional function to fulfil. Their original significations, the physical metaphors involved in them, which are perhaps still somewhat apparent to the Frenchman, are to us wholly non-existent. Nothing but the derivative or metaphysical signification remains. No physical image of a man stepping over a boundary is presented to our minds by the word transgress, nor in using the word comprehension do we picture to ourselves any manual act of grasping. It is to this double structure of the English language that it owes its superiority over every other tongue, ancient or modern, for philosophical and scientific purposes.

Albeit there are numerous exceptions, it may still be safely said, in a general way, that we possess and habitually use two kinds of language,--one that is physical, for our ordinary purposes, and one that is metaphysical, for purposes of abstract reasoning and discussion. We do not say like the Germans, that we "begripe" (begreifen) an idea, but we say that we "conceive" it. We use a word which once had the very same material meaning as begreifen, but which has in our language utterly lost it. We are accordingly able to carry on philosophical inquiries by means of words which are nearly or quite free from those shadows of original concrete meaning which, in German, too often obscure the acquired abstract signification. Whoever has dealt in English and German metaphysics will not fail to recognize the prodigious superiority of English in force and perspicuity, arising mainly from the causes here stated. But while this h.o.m.ogeneity of structure in German injures it for philosophical purposes, it is the very thing which makes it so excellent as an organ for poetical expression, in the opinion of those who speak English. German being nearly allied to Anglo-Saxon, not only do its simple words strike us with all the force of our own homely Saxon terms, but its compounds also, preserving their physical significations almost unimpaired, call up in our minds concrete images of the greatest definiteness and liveliness. It is thus that German seems to us pre-eminently a poetical language, and it is thus that we are naturally inclined to overrate rather than to depreciate the poetry that is written in it.

With regard to French, the case is just the reverse. The Frenchman has no Saxon words, but he has, on the other hand, an indigenous stock of Latin words, which he learns in early childhood, which give outlet to his most intimate feelings, and which retain to some extent their primitive concrete picturesqueness. They are to him just as good as our Saxon words are to us. Though cold and merely intellectual to us, they are to him warm with emotion; and this is one reason why we cannot do justice to his poetry, or appreciate it as he appreciates it. To make this perfectly clear, let us take two or three lines from Shakespeare:--

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind!

Thou art not so unkind As man's ingrat.i.tude, Thy tooth is not so keen," etc., etc.;

which I have somewhere seen thus rendered into French:

"Souffle, souffle, vent d'hiver!

Tu n'es pas si cruel Que l'ingrat.i.tude de l'homme.

Ta dent n'est pas si penetrante," etc., etc.