LEIGH HUNT'S STORIES FROM THE ITALIAN POETS.
IT is a relief to turn from the unskilful or trading compilations of the day, and from fictions where the artist is sunk hi the craftsman, to a work like this, where a cognate spirit and the voluntary studies of years are ap- plied eon amore to a congenial theme. Leigh Hunt shows, we think, to greater advantage in these Stories front the Italian Poets than he ever did before. Years have mellowed his genius and refined his taste, with- out diminishing his buoyant spirit or his wide sympathies with human- ity. His style is as varied, as easy, and as graceful as ever, but with- out the old affectations, and with greater strength and closeness ; which is the same as saying that his matter is more weighty. Above all, the more mollified spirit of the age is visible in his Lives of the Italian Poets ; upon whose misfortunes his commentary, if not his research, throws a jnster light, whilst he defends their alleged persecutors from the high- sounding abuse that has been heaped upon them. Time and experience, too, have brought a juter though a harder estimate of human things ; and genius is not upheld as an all in all, or an excuse for misdeeds, or even as a necessity for misfortune. " Poor, illustrious Tasso! weak enough to warrant pity from his inferiors— gnat enough to overshadow in death his once-fancied superiors. He has been a by-word for the misfortunes of genius: but genius was not his misfortune; it was his only good, and might have brought him all happiness. It is the want of genius, as far as it goes, and apart from martyrdoms for conscience' sake, which produces misfortunes even to genius itself—the want of as much wit and balance an the common side of things as genius is supposed to confine to the uncoramon." The work consists of two great divisions,—one, the " Stories from the Italian Poets" ; the other, biographical and critical notices of the authors from whom the tales are drawn. These are the great narrative poets of Italy,—Dante, born in 1265 - Pulci, 1431 ; Boiardo, 1434 ; Ariosto, 1474; and Tame, 1544. The weight of Dante's great work has in- duced Mr. Hunt to present an abstract of the whole. With the other writers, the most interesting and presentable stories—in some cases in- cidents rather—are taken from their works, drawn together when the narrative is interrupted by other parts of the poem intervening, and translated into prose. In the case of Dante, Mr. Hunt has omitted his tedious lectures on scholastic divinity, and other lumber of his age; the diffuse and discursive Pulci has often been abridged; some omissions are made in the other poets, to give greater closeness and rapidity to the narrative ; and gross faults of style and taste, such as conceits, are dropped, especially in Tasso ; but nothing is presented to the reader that is not of the original authors. The stories are accompanied by notes, generally of a critical or reflective character ; and some more striking passages are printed in an appendix in the original Italian, so as to furnish a help or stimulus to the tyro and a means of comparison to the advanced student.
As we hold to the impossibility of a poetical translation conveying an exact resemblance of the original, and believe that the best idea of an author is to be obtained by a translation literally faithful however coarse it may be, the design of Mr. Hunt's work will not be objected to by us. Great felicity of language and strength of diction, arising from the genius of the author and :he idiom in which he writes, must be lost in prose : but who can retain them in verse, even though the translator may sometimes soar above his original? Everything else can be presented in prose : structure, disposition, characters, and senti- ments, not only can be exhibited with more accuracy and truth, but are more likely so to be, because the translator is not fettered by the necessi- ties or tempted by some prettinesses of his verse. Language, in fact, with the melody and movement of verse, (which are but forms of language,) are all we lose by a prose translation. In a poetical attempt we do not gain them, (whatever may be substituted,) whilst we are almost certain to lose in more material things.
The Italian writers are more especially adapted for a translation upon the principles of Mr. Leigh Hunt as displayed in these volumes. Whe- ther from their language, their genius, or the circumstances of their country, there is much in them that is better away ; often mere diffuse- ness, often matter which, whatever its temporary interest, attracts no longer, as based upon no system of life or natural possibility, and, unlike the tales of knight-errantry from which it was derived, not believed by the writers themselves. Dante is an exception as regards diffuseness of style; but he had theological and philosophical matter which has long since passed to the limbo of vanity, and constrains him, like his greater competitor on similar occasions, "serpent-like in prose to sweep the ground." A good plan, however, is not of much importance without a corresponding execution. On this ground Mr. Hunt is entitled to great praise. Without any attempt at poetical ornament, or vitiating his prose by a mixed style, he seems to have aimed at transfusing the spirit of his originals,—condensed, stern, lively, garrulous, or as it may be. For these reasons, we think Stories from the Italian Poets in some sense better than the originals unless to those who can read Italian with a relishing comprehension akin to a native's. For those who have slight acquaint- ance with the language, or none at all, the volume offers the shortest and pleasantest cut to a knowledge of the substance and manner of the five great poets of Italy. To the student it will be of use as furnishing him with a broad idea of the poems before he commences their study. As mere tales they are of great interest. No poetical translation we have ever seen approaches in clearness, force, or impressiveness, to the story of Dante's "Journey through Hell."
The Stories, however, are not the only feature of the book. The bio- graphical notices are equally interesting, and of course exhibit more of Mr. Hunt's own characteristics, improved, as we have already intimated. In every life, the leading incidents of the man's career, the personal traits which distinguished him, and the literary characteristics of his works and genius, are presented with brevity, vivacity, and pleasantness. The principal events are distinctly marked, but there is nothing of dry and formal narrative : the essence of preceding authorities has been distilled, and impregnated with the spirit of Leigh Hunt's genius, more sensible than we ever met it, yet not a whit less tolerant or less animated. Sometimes he may pursue his critical instances of faults into a too great minuteness ; and Ariosto seems to die suddenly and before his time, from the biographer having aimed too much at exhibiting the general spirit of the life, and neglected to let the epochs carry their date. One and all, however' are admirable notices of the great Italian poetic constellation ; pith and marrow endowed with vitality.
This is particularly the case with the two most elaborate, Dante and Tasso; upon whose lives a new light is shed, somewhat destructive of wonder and romance. The repulsive and unamiable traits of Dante, his ferocity of disposition, his party hatreds, and his indulgent self-will, are put forward in justice to the world, and in explanation of the life of exile and unhappiness which he endured : yet the poet's humanity is never lost sight of by the reader in a merely critical indictment; nor the influence of the age in its effect upon the forms in which Dante's bitter- ness found vent ; for the bitterness itself; our author holds, was there in "Therein a sketch of his countenance, in his younger days, from the immature but sweet pencil of Giotto; and it is a refreshment to look at it, though pride and discontent, I think, are discernible in its lineaments. It is idle, and no true com- pliment to his nature, to pretend, as his mere worshipers do, that his face owe all its subsequent gloom and exacerbation to external causes and that he was in every respect the poor victim of events—the infant changed at nurse by the wicked. What came out of him he must have had in him, at least in the germ; and so inconsistent was his nature altogether, or, at any rate, such an epitome of all the graver passions that are capable of coexisting, both sweet and bitter thoughtful and outrageous, that one is sometimes tempted to think he must have had an angel for one parent, and—I shall leave his own toleration to say what— for the other."
If not equal in force, the Life of Tasso is superior in delicate discrimi- nation. The restlessness—the endless suspicions, especially of his friends —the exaction of attentions, which if not granted offended him, and when given raised in him the idea that he was flouted under the forms of respect—the mobility of disposition, which drove him to quit places not only without motive but against his interest—and his crowning Nio- lence of language—are all marked with great nicety; the author not only penetrating to the core of his authorities, but his imagination grasp- ing results beyond the mere letter,—as in this account of the poet's Journey to visit his sister, after making his escape from a sort of surveil- lance to which he had been subjected at Ferrara.
"The unhappy poet selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was afraid of pur- suit; he probably had little money; and, considering his ill health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as he feared even his sister at first, from doubting whether she still loved him, his interview with her was in all its circumstances painfully dramatic. Cornelia Tasso, now a widow, with two sons, was still residing at Sor- rento; where the poet, casting his eyes around him as he proceeded towards the house, must have beheld with singular feelings of wretchedness the lovely spots in which he had been a happy little boy. He did not announce himself at once. He brought letters, he said, from the lady's brother; and it is affecting to think, that whether his sister might or might not have retained otherwise any personal recol- lection of him since that time, (for he had not seen her in the interval,) his dis- guise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his appearance. For, at all events, she did not know him. She saw in him nothing but a haggard stranger who was acquainted with: the writer of the letters, and to whom they referred for particulars of the risk which her brother ran unless she could afford him her protection. These particulars were given by the stranger with all the pathos of the real man, and the loving sister fainted away. On her recovery, the -miter said what he could to reassure her, and then by degrees discovered him elf. Cornelia welcomed him in the tenderest manner. She did all that he desired; and gave out to her friends that the gentleman was a cousin from Bergamo, who had come to Naples on family affairs."
If any doubt is felt as to the completeness of the Life of Tasso, it is that Mr. Hunt's conclusions scarcely equal his premises. One half of his nar- rative suffices to show that the poet's intellect was deranged; yet he seems at the last to shrink from the obvious conclusions, of madness, and that the Duke's conduct and the alleged mysteries are all intelligible enough. Full justice, too, seems hardly done to the Prince. Mr. Hunt indeed defends him from the exaggerated charges of poets and sentimentalists ; but the case, like all such cases, was exceedingly difficult to treat. The Duke seems to have borne a good deal of fretfulness and violent language, as well as want of ingenuousness, or more truly the cunning of the deranged : his order to confine Tasso seems to have been a last resource to keep him out of mischief. One main offence appears to have been not answering Tasso's letters ; which, under the circumstances, would have been an endless task.
And when we consider the treatment of the insane in those days, or for that matter within the last half. century in this country, that of Tasso ap-
pears to have been highly considerate. His friends visited him e • he wrote enough to fill several volumes ; and beyond the confinement and his own delusions, drenching with medicine seems to have been the great grievance. The Duke may have acted without much tenderness or sufficient con- sideration, and he would doubtless have shown more of both could he have placed himself in the position of posterity : but this was of course impossible, and posterity, should allow for the fact.
Many points and passages full of character and matter, and interesting from the subjects to which they relate, tempt us ; but we must confine ourselves to one—a condensed view of the misfortunes, temper, and acts .of Dante after his sentence of banishment.
"From that day forth, Dante never beheld again his home or his wife. Her relations obtained possession of power, but no use was made of it except to keep him in exile. He had not accorded with them; and perhaps half the secret of his conjugal discomfort was owing to politics. It is the opinion of some, that the married couple were not sorry to part; others think that the wife remained behind, solely to scrape together what property she could, and bring up the children. All that is known is, that she never lived with him more. "Dante now certainly did what his enemies had accused him of wishing to do: he joined the old exiles whom he had helped to make such, the party of the Ghibellines. He alleges, that he was never really of any party but his own; a naive confession, probably true in one sense, considering his scorn of other people, his great intellectual superiority, and the large views he had for the whole Italian people. And, indeed, he soon quarrelled in private with the individuals composing his new party, however stanch he apparently remained to their cause. His former associates he had learnt to hate for their differences with him, and for their self- seeking; he hated the Pope for deceiving him; he hated the Pope's French allies for being his allies, and interfering with Florence; and he had come to love the Emperor for being hated by them all, and for holding out (as he fancied) the only chance of reuniting Italy to their confusion, and making her the restorer of him- self and the mistress of the world.
"With these feelings in his heart, no money in his purse, and no place in which to lay his head, except such as chance-patrons afforded him, he now began to wander over Italy, e some lonely lion of a man, grudging in hisgreat disdain:
At one moment he was conspiring and hoping; at another, despairing and endea- vouring to conciliate his beautiful Florence: now again catching hope from some new movement of the Emperor's; and then, not very handsomely threatening and reabusing her; but always pondering and grieving, or trying to appease his thoughts with some composition, chiefly of his great work. It is conjectured,
that whenever anything particularly affected him, whether with joy or sorrow, he put it, hot with the impression, into his 'sacred poem.' Everybody who jarred against his sense of right or his prejudices he sent to the infernal regions, friend or foe: the strangest people who sided with them (but certainly no personal foe) he exalted to heaven. He encouraged, if not personally assisted, two ineffectual attempts of the Ghibellines against Florence; wrote besides his great work a book of mixed prose and poetry on 'Love and Virtue' wrote, Ccmvito, or Banquet); a Latin treatise on Monarchy (de Monarehia), recommending the divine right' of the Emperor; another in two parts, and in the same language on the vernacular Tongue (de Vulgari Eloquio); and learnt to know meanwhili, as he affectingly tells us, 'how hard it was to climb other people's stairs, and how salt the taste of bread is that is not our own.' It is even thought not improbable, from one awful passage of his poem, that he may have himself in some public way,' and ‘-stripping his visage of all shame and trembling in his very vitals, have stretched out his hand for charity'—an image of suffering, which, proud as he was, yet considering how great a man, is almost enough to make one's common nature stoop down for pardon at his feet; and yet he should first prostrate himself at the feet of that nature for his outrages on God and man."
Previous page
