The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867

LONGFELLOW'S TRANSLATION OF DANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA

In the North American Review for March, 1809, we read of Cary's Dante: "This we can pronounce, with confidence, to be the most literal translation in poetry in our language."

"As to Cary," writes Prescott in 1824, "I think Dante would have given him a place in his ninth heaven, if he could have foreseen his translation. It is most astonishing, giving not only the literal corresponding phrase, but the spirit of the original, the true Dantesque manner. It should be cited as an evidence of the compactness, the pliability, the sweetness of the English tongue."

If we turn to English scholars, we shall find them holding the same language, and equally ready to assure you that you may confidently accept Cary's version as a faithful transcript of the spirit and letter of the original. And this was the theory of translation throughout almost the first half of the present century. Cary's position in 1839 was higher even than it was in 1824. With many other claims to respect, he was still best known as the translator of Dante.

In 1839 Mr. Longfellow published five passages from the Purgatorio, translated with a rigorous adhesion to the words and idioms of the original. Coming out in connection with translations from the Spanish and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great problems of literature,—Can poetry pass from one language into another without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and expression? Dryden, Pope, Cowper, Sotheby, had answered no for Greek and Latin, Coleridge for German, Fairfax and Rose and Cary for Italian. But if Mr. Longfellow could translate the whole of the Divina Commedia as he had translated these five passages, great as some of these names were, it was evident that the lovers of poetry would call for new translations of all the great poets. This he has now done. The whole poem is before us, with its fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy-eight lines, the English answering line for line and word for word to the original Italian. We purpose to show, by a careful comparison of test-passages with corresponding passages of Cary, what the American poet has done for the true theory of translation.

It is evident that, while both translators have nominally the same object in view, they follow different paths in their endeavors to reach it; or, in other words, that they come to their task with very different theories of translation, and very different ideas of the true meaning of faithful rendering. Translation, according to Mr. Cary, consists in rendering the author's idea without a strict adherence to the author's words. According to Mr. Longfellow, the author's words form a necessary accompaniment of his idea, and must, wherever the idioms of the two languages admit of it, be rendered by their exact equivalents. The following passage, from the twenty-eighth canto of the Purgatorio, will illustrate our meaning:—

"In questa altezza che tutta è disciolta
Nell'aer vivo, tal moto percuote,
E fa sonar la selva perch' è folta."

Literally,

In this height which is all detached
In the living air, such motion strikes,
And makes the wood resound because it is thick.

Such are the words of Dante line by line. Let us now see how Cary renders them:—

"Upon the summit, which on every side
To visitation of the impassive air
Is open, doth that motion strike, and makes
Beneath its sway the umbrageous wood resound."

The fundamental idea of this passage is the explanation of the sound of the forest, and this idea Cary has preserved. But has he preserved it in its force and simplicity and Dantesque directness? We will not dwell upon the rendering of altezza by summit, although a little more care would have preserved the exact word of the original. But we may with good reason object to the expansion of Dante's three lines into four. We may with equal reason object to

"which on every side
To visitation of the impassive air
Is open,"

as a correct rendering of

"che tutta è disciolta
Nell'aer vivo,"—
which is all detached
In the living air.
"To visitation of the impassive air,"

is a sonorous verse; but it is not Dante's verse, unless all detached means on every side is open to visitation, and impassive air means living air. Beneath its sway, also, is not Dante's; nor can we accept umbrageous wood, with its unmeaning epithet, for the wood because it is thick, an explanation of the phenomenon which had excited Dante's wonder.

Here, then, we have Cary's theory, the preservation of the fundamental idea, but the free introduction of such accessory ideas as convenience may suggest, whether in the form of epithet or of paraphrase.

Mr. Longfellow's translation of this passage may also be accepted as the exposition of his theory:—

"Upon this height that all is disengaged
In living ether, doth this motion strike,
And make the forest sound, for it is dense."

We have here the three lines of the original, and in the order of the original; we have the exact words of the original, disciolta meaning disengaged as well as detached, and therefore the ideas of the original without modification or change. The passage is not a remarkable one in form, although a very important one in the description of which it forms a part. The sonorous second line of Mr. Cary's version is singularly false to the movement, as well as to the thought, of the original. Mr. Longfellow's lines have the metric character of Dante's precise and direct description.

The next triplet brings out the difference between the two theories even more distinctly:—

"E la percossa pianta tanto puote
Che della sua virtute l'aura impregna,
E quella poi girando intorno scuote."

And the stricken plant has so much power
That with its virtue it impregnates the air,
And that then revolving shakes around.

Thus far Dante.

"And in the shaken plant such power resides,
That it impregnates with its efficacy
The voyaging breeze, upon whose subtle plume
That, wafted, flies abroad."

Thus far Cary.

Cary's first line is a tolerably near approach to the original, although a distinction might be made between the force of power resides in, and power possessed by. The second line falls short of the conciseness of the original by transposing the object of impregnates into the third. This, however, though a blemish, might also be passed over. But what shall we say to the expansion of aura into a full line, and that line so Elizabethan and un-Dantesque as

"The voyaging breeze upon whose subtle plume"?

In this, too, Mr. Cary is faithful to his theory. Mr. Longfellow is equally faithful to his:—

"And so much power the stricken plant possesses,
That with its virtue it impregns the air,
And this, revolving, scatters it around."

We have seen how Cary's theory permits the insertion of a new line, or, more correctly speaking, the expansion of a single word into a full line. But it admits also of the opposite extreme,—the suppression of an entire line.

"Ch'io vidi, e anche udi'parlar lo rostro,
E sonar nella voce ed io e mio,
Quand'era nel concetto noi e nostro."

For I saw and also heard speak the beak,
And sound in its voice and I and my,
When it was in the conception we and our.

    Paradiso, XIX. 10.
There is doubtless something quaint and peculiar in these lines, but it is the quaintness and peculiarity of Dante. The I and my, the we and our, are traits of that direct and positive mode of expression which is one of the distinctive characteristics of his style. Do we find it in Cary?

"For I beheld and heard
The beak discourse; and what intention formed
Of many, singly as of one express."