aucun mérite d'art, et qui peuvent avoir un grand mérite de fidélité, et, par une imitation matérielle et complète, reproduire toutes les formes et les teintes même de la physionomie. J'essaye ainsi de traduire quelques passages du Dante, sans rien ajouter à son style, je tache de rendre les expressions de sa langue forte et jeune, emportée vers les plus grandes hardiesses par la sublimité des choses qu'elle exprime, souvent simple, populaire, mais sans calcul, non pour faire une contraste, mais pour être entendu de tout le monde*.” These remarks of M. Villemain are as just as they are elegantly expressed, and his translations are as faithful and excellent as might be expected. There are English examples too, in Foscolo's essays on Petrarch, of successful prose translations of old Italian lyrical poems. Yet blank verse has been preferred and adopted, as it gives elevation to the diction, presents a resemblance, in form at least, to the original, is a pleasanter exercise of the mind than prose, and opposes no insurmountable obstacle, like rhyme, to perfect fidelity. It is not pretended that this merit *Cours de Litérature, vol. i. p. 420. Paris, 1840. will everywhere be found, but a nearer approach to it has been made than in the version of 1835, and principally through the kindness of Mr. Cary, whose valuable strictures have been attended to and are here acknowledged with pride as well as gratitude. The learned disquisitions of P. J. Fraticelli, in the "Opere Minori di Dante," Firenze, 1834, (a work that every Italian student should possess), have always been consulted; as also the German translation of K. L. Kannegiesser, "Dante Alighieri's Lyrische Gedichte," (Leipzig, 1827,) in rhyme, and corresponding, line by line, with the metre of the original, to which are added notes by the celebrated Italian critic Professor Karl Witte of Breslau. The Translator has only further to observe, that there are few, except the admirers of the obscure poetry of the Middle Ages, who can be interested in his work, and that he cannot better express the limited extent of his hope of success in this endeavour to make the greatest of Italian poets intelligible, than in the concluding words of the preface of Signor Gaetano Polidori to his elegant translation, in versi sciolti, of the "Opere Poetiche di Milton." (Londra, 1841.) "Si vedrà, spero, che nella mia versione, non solo non vi sono idee ed immagini aggiunte, ma neppure (se non forse per fortuito ed involontario accidente), epiteti che non sieno nell'originale; e che, quantunque abbia io avuto cura di scrivere con proprietà di lingua, con chiarezza, con franca ancorché sobria verseggiatura, pure, colla mia traduzione si potrà seguir passo a passo l'originale, ed in essa ravvisarlo. Se vi son degli sbagli, saranno nell' interpretazione d'alcuni pochi passi astrusi: pure, se ho errato, spero almeno di non aver fatto parlare l'altissimo poeta in maniera indegna di lui.” "Onorate l'altissimo poeta." Inferno, 4. "E se il mondo sapesse il cor ch'egli ebbe, Mendicando sua vita a frusto a frusto, Assai lo loda e più lo loderebbe." Paradiso, 6. "Ma tratterò del suo stato gentile, Vita Nuova. |