The Unseen World, and Other Essays

by John Fiske

  With this brief criticism, we must regretfully take leave of Mr. Motley's work. Much more remains to be said about a historical treatise which is, on the whole, the most valuable and important one yet produced by an American; but we have already exceeded our limits. We trust that our author will be as successful in the future as he has been in the past; and that we shall soon have an opportunity of welcoming the first instalment of his "History of the Thirty Years' War."

  March, 1868.

  [1] History of the United Netherlands: from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce, 1609. By John Lothrop Motley, D. C. L. In four volumes. Vols. III. and IV. New York. 1868. [2] This was written before the deeds of Moltke had eclipsed those of Napoleon.

  XI.

  LONGFELLOW'S DANTE.[1]

  THE task of a translator is a thankless one at best. Be he never so skilful and accurate, be he never so amply endowed with the divine qualifications of the poet, it is still questionable if he can ever succeed in saying satisfactorily with new words that which has once been inimitably said--said for all time--with the old words. Psychologically, there is perhaps nothing more complex than an elaborate poem. The sources of its effect upon our minds may be likened to a system of forces which is in the highest degree unstable; and the slightest displacement of phrases, by disturbing the delicate rhythmical equilibrium of the whole, must inevitably awaken a jarring sensation.[2]" Matthew Arnold has given us an excellent series of lectures upon translating Homer, in which he doubtless succeeds in showing that some methods of translation are preferable to others, but in which he proves nothing so forcibly as that the simplicity and grace, the rapidity, dignity, and fire, of Homer are quite incommunicable, save by the very words in which they first found expression. And what is thus said of Homer will apply to Dante with perhaps even greater force. With nearly all of Homer's grandeur and rapidity, though not with nearly all his simplicity, the poem of Dante manifests a peculiar intensity of subjective feeling which was foreign to the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of unutterable despair sounding in the line

  "Ahi, dura terra, perchè non t' apristi?" can rest satisfied with the interpretation

  "Ah, obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?" yet this rendering is literally exact.

  A second obstacle, hardly less formidable, hardly less fatal to a satisfactory translation, is presented by the highly complicated system of triple rhyme upon which Dante's poem is constructed. This, which must ever be a stumbling-block to the translator, seems rarely to interfere with the free and graceful movement of the original work. The mighty thought of the master felt no impediment from the elaborate artistic panoply which must needs obstruct and harass the interpretation of the disciple. Dante's terza rima is a bow of Odysseus which weaker mortals cannot bend with any amount of tugging, and which Mr. Longfellow has judiciously refrained from trying to bend. Yet no one can fail to remark the prodigious loss entailed by this necessary sacrifice of one of the most striking characteristics of the original poem. Let any one who has duly reflected upon the strange and subtle effect produced on him by the peculiar rhyme of Tennyson's "In Memoriam," endeavour to realize the very different effect which would be produced if the verses were to be alternated or coupled in successive pairs, or if rhyme were to be abandoned for blank verse. The exquisite melody of the poem would be silenced. The rhyme-system of the "Divine Comedy" refuses equally to be tampered with or ignored. Its effect upon the ear and the mind is quite as remarkable as that of the rhyme-system of "In Memoriam"; and the impossibility of reproducing it is one good reason why Dante must always suffer even more from translation than most poets.

  Something, too, must be said of the difficulties inevitably arising from the diverse structure and genius of the Italian and English languages. None will deny that many of them are insurmountable. Take the third line of the first canto,-- "Chè la diritta via era smarrita," which Mr. Longfellow translates "For the straightforward pathway had been lost." Perhaps there is no better word than "lost" by which to translate smarrita in this place; yet the two words are far from equivalent in force. About the word smarrita there is thrown a wide penumbra of meaning which does not belong to the word lost.[3] By its diffuse connotations the word smarrita calls up in our minds an adequate picture of the bewilderment and perplexity of one who is lost in a trackless forest. The high-road with out, beaten hard by incessant overpassing of men and beasts and wheeled vehicles, gradually becomes metamorphosed into the shady lane, where grass sprouts up rankly between the ruts, where bushes encroach upon the roadside, where fallen trunks now and then intercept the traveller; and this in turn is lost in crooked by-ways, amid brambles and underbrush and tangled vines, growing fantastically athwart the path, shooting up on all sides of tile bewildered wanderer, and rendering advance and retreat alike hopeless. No one who in childhood has wandered alone in the woods can help feeling all this suggested by the word smarrita in this passage. How bald in comparison is the word lost, which might equally be applied to a pathway, a reputation, and a pocket-book![4] The English is no doubt the most copious and variously expressive of all living languages, yet I doubt if it can furnish any word capable by itself of calling up the complex images here suggested by smarrita.[5] And this is but one example, out of many that might be cited, in which the lack of exact parallelism between the two languages employed causes every translation to suffer.

  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 constitutional 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 illustration. 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 illustrate 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." [6] Again in Canto X. we find:--

  "Their cemetery have upon this side Wi
th 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." [7] 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." [8] 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 città 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 circumstances of the case. It does not explain why some of the very passages 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 prone 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 associations 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 class that we learn in childhood, and that are associated with our homeliest and deepest emotions; while words of the second class-- 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 homogeneity 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 ingratitude, 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'ingratitude de l'homme. Ta dent n'est pas si pénétrante," etc., etc. 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 ingratitude. Thy dentition 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 pénétrante, 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 assent, but the latter awaken our emotional sympathy.

  Doubtless by long familiarity with the Romanic languages, the scholar becomes to a great degree emancipated from the conditions imposed upon him by the peculiar composition of his native English. The concrete significance of the Romanic words becomes apparrent 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 associations which the latter calls up in the mind of the Italian himself.[9] 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 kirschenwasser 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.