The Unseen World and Other Essays Part 10

Why are we inclined to laugh as we read this? Because it excites in us an undercurrent of consciousness which, if put into words, might run something like this:--

"Insufflate, insufflate, wind hibernal!

Thou art not so cruel As human ingrat.i.tude.

Thy dent.i.tion is not so penetrating," etc., etc.

No such effect would be produced upon a Frenchman. The translation would strike him as excellent, which it really is. The last line in particular would seem poetical to us, did we not happen to have in our language words closely akin to dent and penetrante, and familiarly employed in senses that are not poetical.

Applying these considerations to Mr. Longfellow's choice of words in his translation of Dante, we see at once the unsoundness of the principle that Italian words should be rendered by their Romanic equivalents in English. Words that are etymologically identical with those in the original are often, for that very reason, the worst words that could be used. They are harsh and foreign to the English ear, however homelike and musical they may be to the ear of an Italian. Their connotations are unlike in the two languages; and the translation which is made literally exact by using them is at the same time made actually inaccurate, or at least inadequate. Dole and dolent are doubtless the exact counterparts of dolore and dolente, so far as mere etymology can go. But when we consider the effect that is to be produced upon the mind of the reader, wretchedness and despairing are fat better equivalents. The former may compel our intellectual a.s.sent, but the latter awaken our emotional sympathy.

Doubtless by long familiarity with the Romanic languages, the scholar becomes to a great degree emanc.i.p.ated from the conditions imposed upon him by the peculiar composition of his native English. The concrete significance of the Romanic words becomes apparent to him, and they acquire energy and vitality. The expression dolent may thus satisfy the student familiar with Italian, because it calls up in his mind, through the medium of its equivalent dolente, the same a.s.sociations which the latter calls up in the mind of the Italian himself. [41] But this power of appreciating thoroughly the beauties of a foreign tongue is in the last degree an acquired taste,--as much so as the taste for olives and kirschenwa.s.ser to the carnal palate. It is only by long and profound study that we can thus temporarily vest ourselves, so to speak, with a French or Italian consciousness in exchange for our English one. The literary epicure may keenly relish such epithets as dolent; but the common English reader, who loves plain fare, can hardly fail to be startled by it. To him it savours of the grotesque; and if there is any one thing especially to be avoided in the interpretation of Dante, it is grotesqueness.

[41] A consummate Italian scholar, the delicacy of whose taste is questioned by no one, and whose knowledge of Dante's diction is probably not inferior to Mr. Longfellow's, has told me that he regards the expression as a n.o.ble and effective one, full of dignity and solemnity.

Those who have read over Dante without reading into him, and those who have derived their impressions of his poem from M. Dore's memorable ill.u.s.trations, will here probably demur. What! Dante not grotesque! That tunnel-shaped structure of the infernal pit; Minos pa.s.sing sentence on the d.a.m.ned by coiling his tail; Charon beating the lagging shades with his oar; Antaios picking up the poets with his fingers and lowering them in the hollow of his hand into the Ninth Circle; Satan crunching in his monstrous jaws the arch-traitors, Judas, Brutus and Ca.s.sius; Ugolino appeasing his famine upon the tough nape of Ruggieri; Bertrand de Born looking (if I may be allowed the expression) at his own dissevered head; the robbers exchanging form with serpents; the whole demoniac troop of Malebolge,--are not all these things grotesque beyond everything else in poetry? To us, nurtured in this scientific nineteenth century, they doubtless seem so; and by Leigh Hunt, who had the eighteenth-century way of appreciating other ages than his own, they were uniformly treated as such. To us they are at first sight grotesque, because they are no longer real to us. We have ceased to believe in such things, and they no longer awaken any feeling akin to terror. But in the thirteenth century, in the minds of Dante and his readers, they were living, terrible realities. That Dante believed literally in all this unearthly world, and described it with such wonderful minuteness because he believed in it, admits of little doubt. As he walked the streets of Verona the people whispered, "See, there is the man who has been in h.e.l.l!" Truly, he had been in h.e.l.l, and described it as he had seen it, with the keen eyes of imagination and faith. With all its weird unearthliness, there is hardly another book in the whole range of human literature which is marked with such unswerving veracity as the "Divine Comedy." Nothing is there set down arbitrarily, out of wanton caprice or for the sake of poetic effect, but because to Dante's imagination it had so imposingly shown itself that he could not but describe it as he saw it. In reading his cantos we forget the poet, and have before us only the veracious traveller in strange realms, from whom the shrewdest cross-examination can elicit but one consistent account. To his mind, and to the mediaeval mind generally, this outer kingdom, with its wards of Despair, Expiation, and Beat.i.tude, was as real as the Holy Roman Empire itself.

Its extraordinary phenomena were not to be looked on with critical eyes and called grotesque, but were to be seen with eyes of faith, and to be worshipped, loved, or shuddered at. Rightly viewed, therefore, the poem of Dante is not grotesque, but unspeakably awful and solemn; and the statement is justified that all grotesqueness and bizarrerie in its interpretation is to be sedulously avoided.

Therefore, while acknowledging the accuracy with which Mr. Longfellow has kept pace with his original through line after line, following the "footing of its feet," according to the motto quoted on his t.i.tle-page, I cannot but think that his accuracy would have been of a somewhat higher kind if he had now and then allowed himself a little more liberty of choice between English and Romanic words and idioms.

A few examples will perhaps serve to strengthen as well as to elucidate still further this position.

"Inferno," Canto III., line 22, according to Longfellow:--

"There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star, Whence I at the beginning wept thereat."

According to Cary:--

"Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans Resounded through the air pierced by no star, That e'en I wept at entering."

According to Parsons:--

"Mid sighs, laments, and hollow howls of woe, Which, loud resounding through the starless air, Forced tears of pity from mine eyes at first." [42]

[42] "Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai Risonavan per l' ner senza stelle, Perch' io al cominciar ne lagrimai."

Canto V., line 84:--

LONGFELLOW.--"Fly through the air by their volition borne."

CARY.--"Cleave the air, wafted by their will along."

PARSONS.--"Sped ever onward by their wish alone." [43]

[43] "Volan per l' aer dal voler portate."

Canto XVII., line 42:--

LONGFELLOW.--"That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders."

CARY--"That to us he may vouchsafe The aid of his strong shoulders."

PARSONS.--"And ask for us his shoulders' strong support." [44]

[44] "Che ne conceda i suoi omeri forti."

Canto XVII., line 25:--

LONGFELLOW.-- "His tail was wholly quivering in the void, Contorting upwards the envenomed fork That in the guise of scorpion armed its point."

CARY.-- "In the void Glancing, his tail upturned its venomous fork, With sting like scorpions armed."

PARSONS.--"In the void chasm his trembling tail he showed, As up the envenomed, forked point he swung, Which, as in scorpions, armed its tapering end." [45]

[45] "Nel vano tutta sue coda guizzava, Torcendo in su la venenosa forca, Che, a guisa di scorpion, la punta armava."

Canto V., line 51:--

LONGFELLOW.--"People whom the black air so castigates.

CARY.--"By the black air so scourged." [46]

[46] "Genti che l' aura nera si gastiga."

Line 136:--

LONGFELLOW.--"Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating."

CARY.--"My lips all trembling kissed." [47]

[47] "La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante."

"Purgatorio," Canto XV., line 139:--

LONGFELLOW.-- "We pa.s.sed along, athwart the twilight peering Forward as far as ever eye could stretch Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent." [48]

[48] "Noi andavam per lo vespero attenti Oltre, quanto potean gli occhi allungarsi, Contra i raggi serotini e lucenti."

Mr. Cary's "bright vespertine ray" is only a trifle better; but Mr.

Wright's "splendour of the evening ray" is, in its simplicity, far preferable.

Canto x.x.xI., line 131:--

LONGFELLOW.--"Did the other three advance Singing to their angelic saraband."

CARY.--"To their own carol on they came Dancing, in festive ring angelical "

WRIGHT.--"And songs accompanied their angel dance."

Here Mr. Longfellow has apparently followed the authority of the Crusca, reading

"Cantando al loro angelico carribo,"