PREFACE. Having been informed on excellent Authority that the following little work (the first creation of the immortal mind of Dante) has never been translated into English, and well knowing the high estimation in which his writings are held amongst us, I thought I could not better employ the leisure hours of a winter in Florence than in endeavouring to present it to my countrymen in an English dress. It is a production in every way remarkable; of a kind quite novel at the period when it was composed, replete with beauty both in prose and verse, and the more to be appreciated as being the Basis on which the superstructure of modern Romance has been raised. On this latter point I shall adduce hereafter the authority of Mons" Delécluze the learned French translator of the "Vita nuova." Let not the reader however expect to find, either a Romance or a Biographical Memoir such as are produced in modern times; nothing can be more unlike; it is indeed a work sui generis, simple in its conception and execution, terse and energetic in its language, but occasionally quaint and sometimes mystical; founded on the Platonic theory of b Love, it embraces the astronomical system of Ptolemy together with the belief in the influence of the planets on the various conditions of humanity as calculated by the ancient Astrologers-Dante has been reproached especially in Germany, but also in England, with a want of tenderness, and notwithstanding the exquisite pathos of certain descriptions in the Divina Commedia (too well known to be here singled out), notwithstanding, every possible allowance on account of the nature of the subject on which he treats, many continue to entertain such an opinion; it appears to me, however, impossible to rise up from a perusal of the Vita nuova without feeling, that in proportion as the mind of Dante was more powerful than that of other men, so was his heart susceptible of tender emotions in a degree rarely to be found in others. This little history of his first love, with an analysis of his feelings from the commencement to the tragical conclusion, leaves not a doubt upon the mind, that with a supernatural degree of Intellect he united a heart of the most sensitive materials. In republishing the Italian from the editon of Fraticelli, my object is to make the work serviceable to Italians studying English, as well as to English studying Italian-it seems indeed extraordinary, that whilst the Inferno and Paradiso are extensively read in England, whilst indeed the whole Divina Commedia has been oftener translated, commented upon and edited amongst us than in any other country, except Italy, the vita nuova which was written before it and seems almost a necessary preparation for the well understanding it, should be so little known. I trust then that some may be induced to read it, if only as a stepping stone or explanatory chapter to the greater works of Dante. It has not been my wish to give a servilely literal translation, but still to keep as near the original as my knowledge of the idioms of the two languages would permit. It would have been far from a difficult. task to have modernized in a great degree the whole work, by the omission of certain antiquated phrases too often repeated for modern ears, by reconstructing some of the sentences, and placing Dante's own explanations of his sonnets and ballads in the notes; but such a travestie is the last thing in the world that I have aimed at, although advised so to do; I should indeed as soon think of publishing a portrait of Dante divested of the picturesque Florentine costume of the 13th century, and clad in the very convenient but tasteless modern garb of London or Paris - the clothes might fit, but they would be irreconcileable with the gait and manner of the severe and immortal Poet. In endeavouring to translate (in the extended sense of the word) the Poetry of the Vita nuova, with a rigid attention to the rhymes of the original, I am well aware that I have attempted an impossibility — of the difficulty I say nothing, as the reader is concerned only in the result, but a hint at it may perhaps incline him to patience and mercy to give the grace and spirit of Dante in a translation is not in the power of mortal pen, but if it shall be found that I have embodied the true meaning in the form in which the poet intended it should be, I shall have done the utmost that my rashest hopes could have suggested. |