Far be it from me to imply that any disloyalty was shown on the part of these gentlemen either towards their eminent associate or towards the work on which they had shared his labors; it is only that they surprise us a little by what they do not say. It may be that they do not praise the Longfellow version because they confessedly had a share in it, yet this reason does not quite satisfy. Nothing has been more noticeable in the popular reception of the completed work than the general preference of unsophisticated readers for those earlier translations thus heartily praised by Lowell. There has been a general complaint that the later work does not possess for the English-speaking reader the charm exerted by the original over all who can read Italian, while those earlier and fragmentary specimens had certainly possessed something of that charm.
Those favorite versions, it must be remembered, were not the result of any coöperated labor, having been written by Professor Longfellow in an interleaved copy of Dante which he used in the class room. They were three in number, all from the “Purgatorio” and entitled by him respectively, “The Celestial Pilot,” “The Terrestrial Paradise,” and “Beatrice.” They were first published in “Voices of the Night” (1839), and twenty-eight years had passed before the later versions appeared. Those twenty-eight years had undoubtedly enhanced in width and depth Mr. Longfellow’s knowledge of the Italian language; their labors and sorrows had matured the strength of his mind; but it is not so clear that they had not in some degree diminished its freshness and vivacity, nor is it clear that the council of friendly critics would be an influence tending to replace just those gifts.
If a comparison is to be made between the earlier and later renderings, the best way would doubtless be to place them side by side in parallel columns; and while it would be inappropriate to present such a comparison here on any large scale, it may be worth while to take a passage at random to see the effect of the two methods. Let us take, for instance, a passage from “Purgatorio,” canto xxx. lines 22 and 23. They are thus in the original: —
“Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno La parte oriental tutta rosata, E l’altro ciel di bel sereno adorno.”
The following is Longfellow’s translation of 1839, made by the man of thirty-two: —
“Oft have I seen, at the approach of day, The orient sky all stained with roseate hues, And the other heaven with light serene adorned.”
The following is the later version, made by the man of sixty, after ample conference with friendly critics: —
“Ere now have I beheld, as day began, The eastern hemisphere all tinged with rose, And the other heaven with fair serene adorned;”
I do not see how any English-speaking reader could hesitate for a moment in finding a charm far greater in the first version than in the second, or fail to recognize in it more of that quality which has made the name of Dante immortal. If this be true, the only question that can be raised is whether this advantage has been won by a sacrifice of that degree of literalness which may fairly be demanded of a translation in poetic form. Perfect and absolute literalness, it must be remembered, can only be expected of a prose version, and even after the most perfect metrical translation a prose version may be as needful as ever. Let us consider for a moment the two examples as given above. It may be conceded at the outset that the adverb già is more strictly and carefully rendered by “ere” than by “oft,” but the difference is not important, as any one old enough to describe a daybreak has undoubtedly seen more than one. The difference between “the approach of day” and “as day began” is important, since the last moment of the approach coincides with the first moment of the beginning. In the second line, “la parte oriental” is both more literally and more tersely rendered by “the orient sky,” than by the more awkward expression “the eastern hemisphere,” unless it be claimed that “sky” does not sufficiently recognize the earth as seen in the view; to which it may justly be replied that the word “hemisphere,” if applied only to the earth, equally omits the sky, and the two defects balance each other. “Tinged with rose” is undoubtedly a briefer expression for the untranslatable “rosata” than “stained with roseate hues” would be. The last line of the three finds an identical rendering in the two versions, and while “bel sereno” is more literally rendered by “fair serene” than by “light serene,” yet the earlier phrase has the advantage of being better English, serene being there used as an adjective only, whereas in the later translation it is used as a noun, a practice generally regarded as obsolete in the dictionaries. Even where the word is thus employed, they tell us, it does not describe the morning light, but indicates, like the French word “serein,” an evening dampness; as where Daniel says, “The fogs and the serene offend us.” Summing up the comparison, so far as this one example goes, it would seem that the revised version of Longfellow has but very slight advantage over its predecessor, while the loss of vividness and charm is unquestionable.
To carry the test yet farther, let us compare the three lines, in their two successive versions, with the prose version of Professor Norton, which reads as follows: “I have seen ere now at the beginning of the day the eastern region all rosy, while the rest of heaven was beautiful with fair, clear sky.” Here the prose translator rightly discards the “oft” of the earlier Longfellow version, but his “at the beginning” is surely nearer to the “at the approach” of the first version than to the less literal “as day began” of the second. The prose “the eastern region” conforms to the second version “the eastern hemisphere,” but surely the Italian “la parte oriental” is more nearly met by “the orient sky” than by either of these heavier and more geographical substitutes, which have a flavor of the text-book. Both the Longfellow versions have “the other heaven,” which is a literal rendering of “l’altro ciel,” whereas “the rest of heaven” is a shade looser in expression, and “fair, clear sky” also forfeits the condensation of “light serene” or “fair serene,” of which two phrases the first seems the better, for reasons already given. On the whole, if we take Professor Norton’s prose translation as the standard, Longfellow’s later version seems to me to gain scarcely anything upon the earlier in literalness, while it loses greatly in freshness and triumphant joyousness.
Nor is this in any respect an unreasonable criticism. For what does a translation exist, after all, if not to draw us toward that quality in the original which the translator, even at his best, can rarely reach? Goethe says that “the translator is a person who introduces you to a veiled beauty; he makes you long for the loveliness behind the veil,” and we have in the notes to his “West-Östliche Divan” the celebrated analysis of the three forms of translation. He there says, “Translation is of three kinds: First, the prosaic prose translation, which is useful in enriching the language of the translator with new ideas, but gives up all poetic art, and reduces even the poetic enthusiasm to one level watery plain. Secondly, the re-creation of the poem as a new poem, rejecting or altering all that seems foreign to the translator’s nationality, producing a paraphrase which might, in the primal sense of the word, be called a parody. And, thirdly, ... the highest and last, where one strives to make the translation identical with the original; so that one is not instead of the other, but in the place of the other. This sort of translation ... ‘approaches the interlinear version, and makes the understanding of the original a much easier task; thus we are led into the original, — yes, even driven in; and herein the great merit of this kind of translation lies.’”
It may be doubted, however, whether Longfellow, in his remarkable paper “On the Translation of Faust” even if left to himself in making his version, could ever have reached the highest point attained by Goethe, from the mere difference between the two languages with which he and his original had to deal. The charm of Longfellow’s earlier versions is, after all, an English charm, and perhaps the quality of Dante can no more be truthfully transmuted into this than we can transmute the charms of a spring morning into those of a summer afternoon, or violets into roses.
Goethe, it is well known, took for his model as to the language of “Faust” the poetry of Hans Sachs, Longfellow’s “cobbler bard;” and Dante’s terse monosyllables were based upon the language of the people, which he first embodied in art. To mellow its refreshing brevities would perhaps be to destroy it, and that which Mr. Andrews finely says of the “Faust” may be still more true of the “Divina Commedia,” that it “must remain, after all, the enchanted palace; and the bodies and the bones of those who in other days strove to pierce its encircling hedge lie scattered thickly about it.” So Mr. W. C. Lawton, himself an experienced translator from the Greek, says of Longfellow’s work, “His great version is but a partial success, for it essays the unattainable.” But if it be possible to win this success, it is probably destined to be done by one translator working singly and not in direct coöperation with others, however gifted or accomplished. Every great literary work needs criticism from other eyes during its progress. Nevertheless it will always remain doubtful whether any such work, even though it be a translation only, can be satisfactorily done by joint labor.
After all, when others have done their best, it is often necessary to fall back upon the French Joubert for the final touch of criticism; and in his unequalled formula for translating Homer, we find something not absolutely applicable to Dantean translation, yet furnishing much food for thought. The following is the passage: “There will never be an endurable translation of Homer, unless its words are chosen with skill and are full of variety, of freshness, and of charm. It is also essential that the diction should be as antique, as simple, as are the manners, the events, and the personages portrayed. With our modern style everything attitudinizes in Homer, and his heroes seem fantastic figures which personate the grave and proud.”
CHAPTER XXI. THE LOFTIER STRAIN: CHRISTUS
After all, no translation, even taken at its best, can wholly satisfy an essentially original mind. Longfellow wrote in his diary, November 19, 1849, as follows: “And now I long to try a loftier strain, the sublimer Song whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through my soul in the better hours of life, and which I trust and believe will ere long unite themselves into a symphony not all unworthy the sublime theme, but furnishing ‘some equivalent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery.’”
This of course refers to the great poetic design of his life, “Christus, a Mystery,” of which he wrote again on December 10, 1849, “A bleak and dismal day. Wrote in the morning ‘The Challenge of Thor’ as prologue or ‘Introïtus’ to the second part of ‘Christus.’” This he laid aside; just a month from that time he records in his diary, “In the evening, pondered and meditated the sundry scenes of ‘Christus.’” Later, he wrote some half dozen scenes or more of “The Golden Legend” which is Part Second of “Christus,” representing the mediæval period. He afterwards wished, on reading Kingsley’s “Saint’s Tragedy,” that he had chosen the theme of Elizabeth of Hungary in place of the minor one employed (Der Arme Heinrich), although if we are to judge by the comparative interest inspired by the two books, there is no reason for regret. At any rate his poem was published — the precursor by more than twenty years of any other portion of the trilogy of “Christus.” The public, and even his friends, knew but little of his larger project, but “The Golden Legend” on its publication in 1851 showed more of the dramatic quality than anything else he had printed, and Ruskin gave to it the strong praise of saying, “Longfellow in his ‘Golden Legend’ has entered more closely into the temper of the monk, for good or for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life’s labor to the analysis.” It is to be noted that the passage in the book most criticised as unjust is taken from a sermon of an actual Italian preacher of the fifteenth century. But its accuracy or depth in this respect was probably less to the general public than its quality of readableness or that which G. P. R. James, the novelist, described as “its resemblance to an old ruin with the ivy and the rich blue mould upon it.” If the rest of the long planned book could have been as successful as for the time being was the “Golden Legend,” the dream of Longfellow’s poetic life would have been fulfilled.
In view of such praise as Ruskin’s, the question of anachronism more or less is of course quite secondary. Errors of a few centuries doubtless occur in it. Longfellow himself states the period at which he aims as 1230. But the spire of Strassburg Cathedral of which he speaks was not built until the fifteenth century, though the church was begun in the twelfth, when Walter the Minnesinger flourished. “The Lily of Medicine,” which Prince Henry is reading when Lucifer drops in, was not written until after 1300, nor was St. John Nepomuck canonized until after that date. The Algerine piracies did not begin until the sixteenth century. There were other such errors; yet these do not impair the merit of the book. Some curious modifications also appear in later editions. In the passage where the monk Felix is described in the first edition as pondering over a volume of St. Augustine, this saint disappears in later editions, while the Scriptures are substituted and the passage reads: —
“Wherein amazed he read A thousand years in thy sight Are but as yesterday when it is past And as a watch in the night;”
and in the next line “downcast” is substituted for “cast down,” in order to preserve the rhyme. A very curious modification of a whole scene is to be found where the author ventured in the original edition (1851) to introduce a young girl at the midnight gaudiolum or carnival of the monks, she being apparently disguised as a monk, like Lucifer himself. This whole passage or series of passages was left out in the later editions, whether because it was considered too daring by his critics or perhaps not quite daring enough to give full spirit to the scene.
Turning now to “The New England Tragedies,” we find that as far back as 1839, before he had conceived of “Christus,” he had thought of a drama on Cotton Mather. Then a suggestion came to him in 1856 from his German friend, Emanuel Vitalis Scherb, of whom he writes on March 16, 1856: “Scherb wants me to write a poem on the Puritans and the Quakers. A good subject for a tragedy.” On March 25 and 26 we find him looking over books on the subject, especially Besse’s “Sufferings of the Quakers;” on April 2 he writes a scene of the play; on May 1 and 2 he is pondering and writing notes, and says: “It is delightful to revolve in one’s mind a new conception.” He also works upon it in a fragmentary way in July and in November, and remarks, in the midst of it, that he has lying on his table more than sixty requests for autographs. As a background to all of this lie the peculiar excitements of that stormy summer of 1856, when his friend Sumner was struck down in the United States Senate and he himself, meeting with an accident, was lamed for weeks and was unable to go to Europe with his children as he had intended. The first rough draft of “Wenlock Christison,” whose title was afterwards changed to “John Endicott,” and which was the first of “The New England Tragedies,” was not finished till August 27, 1857, and the work alternated for a time with that done on “Miles Standish;” but it was more than ten years (October 10, 1868) before it was published, having first been written in prose, and only ten copies printed and afterwards rewritten in verse. With it was associated the second New England Tragedy, “Giles Corey” of the Salem farms, written rapidly in February of that same year. The volume never made a marked impression; even the sympathetic Mr. Fields, the publisher, receiving it rather coldly. It never satisfied even its author, and the new poetic idea which occurred to him on April 11, 1871, and which was to harmonize the discord of “The New England Tragedies” was destined never to be fulfilled. In the mean time, however, he carried them to Europe with him, and seems to have found their only admirer in John Forster, who wrote to him in London: “Your tragedies are very beautiful — beauty everywhere subduing and chastening the sadness; the pictures of nature in delightful contrast to the sorrowful and tragic violence of the laws; truth and unaffectedness everywhere. I hardly know which I like best; but there are things in ‘Gi
les Corey’ that have a strange attractiveness for me.” Longfellow writes to Fields from Vevey, September 5, 1868: “I do not like your idea of calling the ‘Tragedies’ sketches. They are not sketches, and only seem so at first because I have studiously left out all that could impede the action. I have purposely made them simple and direct.” He later adds: “As to anybody’s ‘adapting’ these ‘Tragedies’ for the stage, I do not like the idea of it at all. Prevent this if possible. I should, however, like to have the opinion of some good actor — not a sensational actor — on that point. I should like to have Booth look at them.” Six weeks later, having gone over to London to secure the copyright on these poems, he writes: “I saw also Bandmann, the tragedian, who expressed the liveliest interest in what I told him of the ‘Tragedies.’” Finally he says, two days later, “Bandmann writes me a nice letter about the ‘Tragedies,’ but says they are not adapted to the stage. So we will say no more about that, for the present.”
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 218
