by John Fiske
Those who have read over Dante without reading into him, and those who have derived their impressions of his poem from M. Doré's memorable illustrations, will here probably demur. What! Dante not grotesque! That tunnel-shaped structure of the infernal pit; Minos passing sentence on the damned 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 Cassius; 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 hell!" Truly, he had been in hell, 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 mediæval mind generally, this outer kingdom, with its wards of Despair, Expiation, and Beatitude, 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 title- 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."[10] 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." [11] 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." [12] 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." [13] Canto V., line 51:--
LONGFELLOW.--"People whom the black air so castigates. CARY.--"By the black air so scourged." [14] Line 136:--
LONGFELLOW.--"Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating." CARY.--"My lips all trembling kissed." [15] "Purgatorio," Canto XV., line 139:--
LONGFELLOW.--"We passed along, athwart the twilight peering Forward as far as ever eye could stretch Against the sunbeams serotine and lucent." [16] 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 XXXI., 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," and translating carribo by saraband, a kind of Moorish dance. The best manuscripts, 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 passage will have been best rendered by Mr. Cary.[17]
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 nobility, 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 Cæsar, 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." [18] 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." [19] 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."[20] 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.[21] 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." [22] 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." [23] This passage 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 Eclog
ue, 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 surpass 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!" [24] 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 passively reproducing the diction of his original, who constitutes 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 Italican 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 pushing 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 assumed 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, pourtrays 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-fashioned thinking and behaviour was in its way just as natural and sensible as that which is now new-fashioned. 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 Cæsar 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 passage from Voltaire, cited by Mr. Longfellow, failed utterly to understand Dante. To the minds of Voltaire and his contemporaries the great mediæval poet was little else than a Titanic 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."[25] 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 pronounced the scholastic philosophy an unmeaning jargon; just as they considered mediæval 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 Abélard has added precision to modern thinking.[26] 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 ent
ranced in the sublime cathedrals of York or Rouen, awakens in our breasts 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.
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.[27] 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":