18 JULY 1868, Page 18

DANTE'S INFERNO.*

TWENTY-FIVE years ago Mr. Parsons published a translation of the first ten cantos of Dante's Inferno. That work lies before us now, together with this complete version of the" first canticle of the Divine Comedy." Comparing the two books, we do not find a very great difference between them. The plan with which Mr. Parsons started as a translator has been adhered to through the course of a quarter of a century. There has been growth during this time, and assiduous study has elicited new meanings, while labour has given a new polish to many lines. But in celebrating his silver wedding with the Divine Comedy Mr. Parsons can boast that he has been always faithful to his first love. His freedom in depart- ing from the actual words and actual phrases of the original will, no doubt, shock Mr. Longfellow. It was said in the notes to the former work that "it is questionable how far this mole-counting is required of an artist. Perhaps the strict adherence to the triple jingle is about as important to the truth of the likeness as the petty care taken by many translators to tie themselves to the precise number of lines found in the original, and to slow by mar- ginal figures that they are mathematically faithful." When this was written Mr. Parsons could not guess that in the interval between the appearance of his two translations, the chief poet of his country would fall into the very error which he had avoided and exposed. We cannot but think that Mr. Parsons has done more than any other translator to make his countrymen acquainted with Dante. Other versions may reproduce the exact lines and tly exact words, and may succeed better in catching the rugged archia effect of the ancient poem. But Mr. Parsons' translation is made to be read. It is almost impossible to appreciate Dante * The First CanVicle, Infer's°, of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighteri. Translated by Thomas William Parsons. Boston: De Tries, 'barns, and Co.

until one has such a familiarity with his language as to read it fluently. One cannot spell out one's admiration, or let it dawn upon one gradually with the help of grammar and dictionary. Yet most translations seem to be made for the purpose of recalling

our first difficulties. We do not say that fidelity is a fault, or that Pope's Homer is the truest model. We admit, too, that Mr.

Parsons has occasionallysoftened down a phrase of rough grandeur, and filed away the knotted surface of the rock in search of inap- propriate smoothness. But, taking his work for all in all, we consider it most successful. We have read it through with a pleasure which we seldom expect to feel in the case of a transla- tion. There are passages in it that disappoint us, and lines that are faulty either in turn or in meaning. But some of the descrip- tions are brought out as vividly as if Dante himself had superin- tended the translation, and in these cases the slight departure from the original words makes us see the more clearly the original picture. The metre chosen by Mr. Parsons is the rhymed quatrain, "the

stanza of Gray and Dryden," of the Elegy and the Annus In his hands this metre moves with a supple ease that sometimes

rises into a curious felicity. We do not care to give our readers specimens of good single lines, though we might pick out many. The translations of the story of Francesca da Rimini, of the story of Ugolino, of the arrival of the angel at the gate of the city of Die, of the comparison of the pool of Malebolge to pitch boiling in the arsenal of Venice, of the flight of Geryon with Dante and Virgil on his back, are among the most favourable instances of Mr. Parsons' manner, and we hope to find room for some of them. Yet even these are not free from the faults to which we have alluded. At the end of the story of Francesca, Mr. Parsons condenses the four simple and infinitely touching lines of the original into two which are com- paratively nerveless and conventional. Dante has it :—

" Ilentre che rune spirt° qnesto disse L'altro piangeva at che di pietado lo venni meno come s'io morisse,

E caddi, come corpo morto code."

Mr. Parsons merely says:—

"She stopped :

Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took My sense away, and like a cone I dropped."

There is nothing here of the piteous wailing which seems to rim through the whole narrative, and which at last has such an effect on the poet that we feel him faint away, and hear him drop like a dead body. Other places where Mr. Parsons has weakened the original occur in the rendering of the inscription over the gate of Hell, in the judgment passed by Virgil on those who were hateful alike to God and his enemies, in the meeting with the three beasts in the wood, and in Chiron's remark upon the living Dante.

"Power, Love, and Wisdom—heavenly, first, most high, Created me,"

is a very cramped version of

" Fecemi la divina Polestato, La serums Sapienza, e prime Amore."

So, too, we have only to compare the following quatrain with Dante's triplet, in order to see that Mr. Parsons is not as felicitous as usual in a place which demands the very greatest effort :—

Again, the lion, in Mr. Parsons' version, seems to shake the air. a phrase which has been used so often as to be worse than hackneyed, and which, moreover, does not reproduce the sort of shrinking dread in the air itself that Dante must have had in view when he wrote " si che parea che l'aer ne temesse." This too metaphorical shaking is repeated more appropriately when Mr. Parsons makes Chiron say "the one behind in walking shakes the road." In the original, Chiron's wonder is more naive and much more forcible. He remarks that the living man moves whatever he touches.

Mr. Parsons must not think that we are hypercritical in dwelling on these small defects. We wish to give him all the praise he deserves, and 10 encourage him to persevere in his

." The world their hateful memory doth contemn ; Mercy herself would scorn for them to plead ; Justice disdains them—we'll not speak of them: Give them a glance, one only, and proceed."

"Fame di lor it mondo esser non lassa :

Misericordia, e Ginstizia gli sdegna,

Non ragionar di lor, ma guards, e passe." translation of the Divine Comedy. Our readers will best judge of his success by comparing these few extracts with the original, or with any other translation. First, let us take the passage of the angel over the Stygian pool in the ninth canto :— " As frogs before their enemy, the snake, Quick scattering through the pool in timid shoals,

On the dank ooze a huddling cluster make, I saw above a thousand ruined souls Flying from one who passed the Stygian bog, With feet untnoistoned by the sludgy wave ; Oft from his face his left hand brushed the fog Whose weight alone, it seemed, annoyance gave.

At once the messenger of Heaven I keened,

And toward my master turned, who made a sign That hushed I should remain and lowly bend.

Al me, how full he looked of scorn divine !"

As a companion picture to this we select the descent of Geryon in the seventeenth canto

"Like a small vessel from its moorage went

That monster, backing, backing from the brink.

And when he found that he could freely wheel, Ho turned about his outstretched tail to where His breast had been, moving it like an eel, And with his great paws gathered in the air."

If there are not other passages which bear quotation as well as these, it is rather because Mr. Parsons maintains an easy regular level, than on account of imperfections in his style. We should scarcely do him justice if we were to pick out more fragments from a translation which ought to be judged as a whole. It is true that we have not taken exception to all his faults. We might fairly have observed that fidelity has sometimes been sacrificed to a rhyme, and that disputed meanings have been treated with an utter disregard of all interpreters. In one place at least the old version has been changed without being bettered. " L'aer perso "is more aptly translated"lurid" than" crimson air." In the old version the curious line at the beginning of canto seven, "Pape Satan, pape Satan, aleppe!" was rendered "Here Satan, Alpha! Prince and Pontiff, here !" It now wears the more doubtful look of, "Ho! Satan ! Popes—more Popes—head Satan ! here !" We do not pretend to suggest a true meaning for the phrase, which baffles all the commentators, nor do we take the phrase heard by Benvenuto Cellini in the French Courts as settling the dispute. But the demand for more Popes coining from Plutus does not seem happy. There were enough already under his.special pro- tection. One more complaint and we have done. Why has not Mr. Parsons reprinted the noble lines on a bust of Dante that formed a prelude to the earlier translation? We shall not be so chary of our apace, and we will set him a better example:—

" See, from this counterfeit of him Whom Arno shall remember long, How stern of lineament, how grim The father was of Tuscan song. There but the burning sense of wrong, Perpetual care and scorn abide; Small friendship for the lordly throng ; Distrust of all the world beside.

"Faithful if this wan image he, No dream his life was—but a fight ; Could any Beatrice see A lover in that anchorite ?

To that cold Ghibeline's gloomy sight Who could have guessed the visions came Of Beauty, veiled with henv'nly light, In circles of eternal flame ?

"The lips, as Cumao's cavern close, The chocks, with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose, But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course bath been Unsullied still, though still severe, Which, through the wavering days of sin, Kept itself icy-chabte and clear.

"Not wholly such his haggard look

When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed, With no companion save his book,

To Corvo's hushed monastic shade; Where, as the Benedictine laid His palm upon the pilgrim guest, The single boon for which he prayed The convent's charity was root.

"0 Time ! whose verdicts mock our own, The only righteous judge art thou ; That poor, old exile, sad and lone, Is Latium's other Virgil now : Before his name the nations bow : His words are parcel of mankind, Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow, The marks have sunk of Dante's mind."