Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and the translation of Dante's Comedy

Submitted by kyranlucien on Mon, 02/22/2010 at 5:49pm.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and the traduction of Dantes Comedy

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Submitted by kyranlucien on Mon, 02/22/2010 at 5:48pm.

Translation Notes
The seminal translation of The Divine Comedy - and the one presented here - was by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), the famous American poet who wrote such classics as The Song of Hiawatha and The Courtship of Miles Standish. In 1861, after the tragic death of his wife, Longfellow found solace in the task of translating Dante into English.

Longfellow also wrote Six Sonnets on Dante's Divine Comedy during the work of translating the La Divina Commedia. These were published as poetical fly-leaves to the three parts. The first and second prefaced the Inferno. The third and fourth introduced the Purgatorio, and the fifth and sixth the Paradiso.

I respect any writer as much as i respect Longfellow because is not an easy thing to write, but when it comes to translations, i think you should better have a good knowledge of the language youe are translating or you gonna run into many inexactitudes and misinterpretations. A good skill is recommended, not basic understanding, but knowledge. Dante and Homer and Virgil are very dificult to translate because they wrote not in prose but in verse. how knowledgebla you have to be to translate a story written with a very high level of metaphores, linguistic gyres and poetry....?I would not try to translate greek to english even though I love Homer. There was a mexican writer, called Alfonso Reyes, the best mexican writer i have ever read, who dedicate all of his life, like the great english poet and novelist Robert Graves, to learn and understand the greek spirit of language, He, Alfonso Reyes, like Robert Graves, wrote a wonderful body of work about greek culture, in the case of Reyes, he wrote more than 40 volumes of greek matters and literature and translations, but he only took the task of tranlating the Iliad and the Odissey at a very late age, when he was sure of was he was saying, and Alas....! his traduction is regarded as thye best ever made in spanish of the inmortal works, and guess what....He did it in Verse...!!!!! he not only translate the sories, but faithful to the spirit of both works, he made it into verse....he wrote every end of a line in rhyme with the next one and the next one. and another line with a different ending, would sound not like the next one but the one after, you'll see, Homer wrote in Hexameters, a very popular way of writing in the old ages, Dante in Rhyma terza or tercets, and therefore, the importance of final syllables are fundamental for the works themselves, are the most important feature of this art, it provides tempo, music, cadence, poetry, and a sense of harmony to the whole, and too many translations of homer and other masters were made in prose before, but nothing in verse, with which, to read Homer or Dante or Virgil or Hesiod or anybody else, in a different language than the original was half an experience of the ride, till the 20th century in which some scholars decided to try the translation in verse, and from then, everything sounded different. I know that there is no way to be totally accurate, but the Graves and Reyes, they both have made amazing efforts to give Homer and the Dante what they deserve: Respect.

If you think that translate is possible just with grabbing a dictionary and looking for words, you got it wrong.

Dante Wrote:

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,

dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

Longfellow translates:

So bitter is it, death is little more;

But of the good to treat, which there I found,

Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

Good to treat...!!!!???

what's that...?

In this line especifically, the poet says:

so bitter that death is only a bit more

but to speak of what i really saw

speak i must of the other things i found

After reading this you dont feel like you really want to keep going on this translation, but to find another version instead, provided of course that what your looking for is the experience of beauty as well as the understanding of the poet's ideas, in my case, i try to not take a lesser work than the original self....

well, i cant finish this now, my big problem is I can't never finish anything, i dont have solitude or peace, how can you think when everybody is jumping on you like a, like a, like suckers...!