FullReads

[Footnote 23: Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, p. 84.]

[Footnote 24: See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 123.]

A century ago, therefore, a translation of Dante such as Mr. Longfellow’s would have been impossible. The criticism of that time was in no mood for realistic reproductions of the antique. It either superciliously neglected the antique, or else dressed it up to suit its own notions of propriety. It was not like a seven-league boot which could fit everybody, but it was like a Procrustes-bed which everybody must be made to fit. Its great exponent was not a Sainte-Beuve, but a Boileau. Its typical sample of a reproduction of the antique was Pope’s translation of the Iliad. That book, we presume, everybody has read; and many of those who have read it know that, though an excellent and spirited poem, it is no more Homer than the age of Queen Anne was the age of Peisistratos. Of the translations of Dante made during this period, the chief was unquestionably Mr. Cary’s. [25] For a man born and brought up in the most unpoetical of centuries, Mr. Cary certainly made a very good poem, though not so good as Pope’s. But it fell far short of being a reproduction of Dante. The eighteenth-century note rings out loudly on every page of it. Like much other poetry of the time, it is laboured and artificial. Its sentences are often involved and occasionally obscure. Take, for instance, Canto IV. 25-36 of the “Paradiso”:

“These are the questions which they will
Urge equally; and therefore I the first
Of that will treat which hath the more of gall.
Of seraphim he who is most enskied,
Moses, and Samuel, and either John,
Choose which thou wilt, nor even Mary’s self,
Have not in any other heaven their seats,
Than have those spirits which so late thou saw’st;
Nor more or fewer years exist; but all
Make the first circle beauteous, diversely
Partaking of sweet life, as more or less
Afflation of eternal bliss pervades them.”

[Footnote 25:
This work comes at the end of the eighteenth-century period, as Pope’s translation of Homer comes at the beginning.]

Here Mr. Cary not only fails to catch Dante’s grand style; he does not even write a style at all. It is too constrained and awkward to be dignified, and dignity is an indispensable element of style. Without dignity we may write clearly, or nervously, or racily, but we have not attained to a style. This is the second shortcoming of Mr. Cary’s translation. Like Pope’s, it fails to catch the grand style of its original. Unlike Pope’s, it frequently fails to exhibit any style.

It is hardly necessary to spend much time in proving that Mr. Longfellow’s version is far superior to Mr. Cary’s. It is usually easy and flowing, and save in the occasional use of violent inversions, always dignified. Sometimes, as in the episode of Ugolino, it even rises to something like the grandeur of the original:

“When he had said this, with his eyes distorted,
The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth,
Which, as a dog’s, upon the bone were strong.” [26]

[Footnote 26:
“Quand’ ebbe detto cio, eon gli occhi torti
Riprese il teschio misero coi denti,
Che furo all’ osso, come d’un can, forti.”
Inferno, XXXIII. 76.]

That is in the grand style, and so is the following, which describes those sinners locked in the frozen lake below Malebolge:–

“Weeping itself there does not let them weep,
And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes
Turns itself inward to increase the anguish. [27]

[Footnote 27:
“Lo pianto stesso li pianger non lascia,
E il duol, che trova in sugli occhi rintoppo,
Si volve in entro a far crescer l’ ambascia.”
Inferno, XXXIII. 94.]