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."
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."
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."
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.
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The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske, 1876
