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PREFACE

I suppose that a very great majority of English-speaking people, if they were asked to name the greatest epic poet of the Christian era in Western Europe, would answer Dante, and that this answer would be given as decisively by those who would speak with an expert knowledge of European literature as by the larger number who would be repeating a received opinion.

Yet those who can read him in the medieval Italian must be a very small and still decreasing minority, and when all that is possible has been said in support of any existing translation, it remains a fact that there is no English rendering of the Divine Comedy, even including the tepid competence of Cary, which has won a genuine popularity.

For this, there are three reasons.

First, there is the general and almost insuperable difficulty of translating poetry of any kind from or into any language whatever.

Next, there is a special obstacle arising from the form in which the Divine Comedy was composed, which cannot be successfully imitated in English.

Third, there is the fact that a student of Dante is confronted by such a massed accretion of commentary that his approach to the poem is almost forced toward the pedantic rather than the poetic. He is inclined to regard the obscure or halting line, the obvious padding, the enforced rhyme, which must occur at times in the greatest epic, as too sacred to be altered, and too important to be ignored. Here I am tempted to say that my first qualification for this undertaking is that, while I have some knowledge of European poetry, and some practice in its composition, I make no claim whatever to Italian scholarship!

The first of these—the inherent difficulty of all translation of poetry—may be briefly stated in this way. A great poem must have beauty both of form and of content. Soul and body must both be admirable. Having his subject under control, the poet represents it in such a way as is most suitable to the rhythms and verbal beauties of which his language is capable. If a bilingual poet were to attempt composition of the same epic in two languages, without the feeling of obligation to himself which a translator must feel, I have no doubt that he would deviate very widely in details of expression, and often in the actual thoughts expressed, as he would be led by different felicities of expression or the suggestion or absence of a rhyming word.

A translator, feeling an inferior liberty, faces alternate pitfalls. He may hammer out a verbal repetition of the original, phrase by phrase, which cannot result otherwise than in a doggerel imitation of poetry. He will labour diligently, and, in the end, he will not merely have failed to translate a poem: he will have produced a malignant libel. Alternately, he may be tempted to follow the lure of his own constructions, or to omit or insert as the exigencies of the verse may lead him.

How can the narrow path be held successfully between these pitfalls—or, if one must be taken, on which side should the descent be made?

In confronting these perils, there is a first and vital question to be decided. In what metrical form shall the translation be made? Naturally, the first thought, and the first preference, is for that of the original poem. The rhythm and structure of a poem are not accidental. They are parts of its individuality. But the two languages concerned may differ too widely in their accentuations, in their dominant rhythms in their grammatical and syllabic constructions, for such a repetition to be possible.

In face of this (which is a usual) difficulty, the translator may wisely consider what form the poet would most probably have chosen had he composed the poem in the language into which it is intended to render it.

Asking myself this question, I conclude that Dante would certainly not have selected for an English poem the terza rima in which the Divine Comedy is written, and that he would, with equal certainty, have selected the decasyllabic line, which is the finest and most flexible of which our language is capable.

Coming to the question of rhyme, a greater doubt arises. The decasyllabic line can be used with equal success for blank and for rhymed verse. Dante used rhyme, which is a reason for adopting it, if possible. But the use of rhyme certainly increases the difficulty of a translation which is to be (if possible) both accurate and well constructed. My decision (which must be justified, if at all, by result) was to introduce rhyme with an irregular freedom, but to endeavour to reach a quality of verse which would be so far independent of this subordinate feature that its irregularity, or even occasional absence, would be unobtrusive to the reader’s mind.

Having selected a form in which I hoped to be able to move with sufficient freedom, and which, in English, is best adapted to the spirit of the poem, I had to face the larger questions of formal and spiritual fidelity. In regard to these I recognize two primary obligations: first, I regard it as inexcusable to introduce any word or phrase which discolours the meaning of the original, or deviates from it; second, I am bound to present the substance of the poem with such verbal beauty as I am capable of constructing, even though an adjective be omitted or added in the process, or some non-essential order of narration be changed to obtain it. This last freedom of rendering is not merely a translator’s right, it is a clear duty, because the directness and vigour of the original cannot be reproduced by any verbal literality, and it is of the first importance that he should inspire the poem with a new vitality.

My own approach to the poem having been poetic rather than pedantic, I have concerned myself very little with the subtleties of disputed words unless some fundamental question of spiritual interpretation be dependent thereto. Desiring to introduce it to English readers from the same standpoint, I have reduced the inevitable notes to the barest minimum, and have placed them at the end of the volume.

Some knowledge of the conditions of Europe, social, political, and intellectual, as Dante knew them, some knowledge of the corruptions of Church and State, and of the civil discords which distracted his native Florence, and which prevailed in most of the cities of Northern Italy, may be essential to an understanding of the poem; a more detailed knowledge will add greatly to the enjoyment of many passages in it; but, finally, the Divine Comedy must stand or fall by its internal vitality, and it may gain more than it loses by being presented independently of the almost unbelievable accretions of disputation and commentary which have been piled upon it.

The cosmographical idea on which the poem is founded is extremely simple. The earth is a fixed point in the centre of the Universe. The northern hemisphere is inhabited by the race of Adam. Purgatory is an isolated mountain in the seas of the southern hemisphere, which was unexplored at the time at which the poem was written. The seven Heavens extend, one beyond another, above the earth on every side, the seventh being infinite in extent. Hell is a central core of evil in the earth’s interior.

Metaphorically, Dante represents himself as being entangled in the corruption of Florentine politics, and restrained from their temptations by his love of literature (Virgil) and by his memory of Beatrice, by which influences he is led through and out of this central Hell to the ultimate Heaven.

It would be absurd to suppose that Dante believed in this Hell of his imagination as a physical fact. It would have been contrary to the logic of his intellect to suppose that he could discover its locality, or that of a material Purgatory, by his own intuition; nor, had he intended his readers to regard it otherwise than allegorically, would he have peopled it with fabled monsters such as Minos, Cerberus, and the Minotaur; or with demons of Persian, and centaurs of Greek, mythology.

He drew widely and impartially, from every source of human imagination. He faced the mystery of evil without flinching. He saw that good and evil are inevitable and everlasting, as long as life be free-willed and finite: and, recognizing this, he asserted confidently the divine supremacy of love, and its continual conquest, so that the whole conception becomes one magnificent metaphor of the preponderance of good and its eternal triumph, the residuum of evil being continually chased down and pressed into its central core, while the surrounding Heavens extend upwards, each of a larger orbit, and of a greater holiness than the one below, till the ultimate bliss of the seventh Heaven extends into infinity, so that even the vast extent of the six Heavens below is a triviality in this comparison.

Even in the narrow confines of the ever-conquered evil, we are to understand that Love is absolute in its supremacy. It enters Hell, and Hell ceases to exist around it.

So we find that Hell has no power over those of pre-Christian times whose own lives were blameless. These are in a place of green lawns and quiet waters:

for there,

Intolerant of itself was Hell made fair

To accord with its containing.

And even the verdict of Hell has no finality, for Virgil tells how he had witnessed the time when—

“Through the shrunk hells there came a Great One, crowned

And garmented with conquest,”

and how Christ had rescued a host of lost souls—

“unnumbered, whom he had led

Triumphant from the dark abodes, to be

Among the blest forever.”

And we are shown that Hell has no power to disturb the serenity of Beatrice. For such as she, she explains to Virgil—

“There is no fear nor any hurt in Hell.”

Yet there is one respect in which Dante’s attitude is too Christ-like to be in sympathy with the vague compromises of modern Christianity. He teaches that sin is sin, and that its consequences are logical, and inevitable. Those who have distorted the Founder of Christianity till “mild” appears to be an appropriate descriptive adjective, will have little sympathy with the attitude of Dante, whose tears for Francesca do not condone her guilt. She is in one of the outer circles of Hell, and she has the companionship of the one she loved, but she is in Hell, no less, without even the hope of Purgatory. Her husband, who killed her, is thrown into the lowest depth of damnation. There are no tears for him. Yet his condemnation is not her acquittal. She made a contract of marriage, and she broke it in an act of adultery with her husband’s brother. Contracts should be kept. There is no more to be said, though there may be tears of pity.

So, when he sees the degradation of some of the finest intellects of the human race, he tells us how he was moved by their grief until—

I, whose eyes with equal tears were wet,

Bowed down upon the cold stone parapet

And wept beyond controlling.

But his pity is powerless to move them from the Hell which their deeds have earned.

There is the same impartiality, the same remorseless justice, in the way in which friends or foes, whether with pity or contempt, are consigned to their appropriate places. He has no preference for those of his own city: none for his own Florentine faction. His dearest friend—his bitterest enemy—his closest relative—are equally likely to be found either in the lowest Hell or in the highest Heaven.

Concerning one only, his wife, Gemma Donati, whose alliance drew him into the slough of Florentine politics, is he always and entirely silent.

More than once his laments over the spiritual ruin of the city he loved reach an emotional intensity which is unrivalled on such a theme in any literature, with the exception of Christ’s lament over Jerusalem, yet his love for Florence does not silence the bitter comment:

Five thieves, and every thief a Florentine!

For the Divine Comedy is the great epic of Christianity. Milton attempted the same path, and brought an almost equal poetic genius, and an almost equal ability to enforce the contributions of alien mythologies to support his purpose. But he lacked the passionate hatred of evil, the passionate sympathy with human weakness, the almost God-like impartiality, the serene and confident faith of the earlier poet. It is of the deepest significance that where Dante prosecutes, Milton’s brief is endorsed for the defence. He is concerned “to justify the ways of God to man.” Dante’s God is unapproachable in the ultimate Heaven, and humanity is on trial, but the God of Milton is in the dock; and though he defends his client with stubborn loyalty, and great forensic skill, and claims that he has secured an acquittal, he leaves us with a sense of bewilderment, and a feeling that the result is due rather to clever advocacy than to the solid merits of the case itself. It would have been possible to put the same facts so very differently!

Dante’s attitude to the organization and doctrines of the Christian church of his own day is of extreme interest, and presents questions of some complexity.

He saw clearly that the greed of the Church for temporal power was a cause of spiritual weakness, and he was uncompromising in condemnation. He did not hesitate to assert that it was beyond the power of the papacy to excommunicate any man from the Divine forgiveness, giving on this point a direct challenge to the Church’s teaching (Purgatorio, Canto V) at that time, as he did when he consigned the Franciscan to Hell for a sin for which he had received absolution in advance (Inferno, Canto XXVII). The very passion of his love for the Church is the measure of his bitterness against a pope who could use his office to betray it. Yet how did he distinguish these freedoms of opinion from the heresies which he condemned? I think a careful consideration of the character and teachings of those whom he variously placed in Hell or Purgatory will solve this apparent inconsistency, and show that there was no confusion in his own mind. He saw the sin of heresy as something which aims to divide rather than to unite, to destroy rather than to build. If he saw the body of the church of Christ to be diseased, he would not call it healthy, but he strove for its cure, not for its destruction. He directed the whole passion of his soul, the whole force of his intellect, to arousing the Church to consciousness of the corruptions which it contained and tolerated; and, had he succeeded, had he been able to inspire it with his own spirit, it is not too much to say that there would have been no Reformation, or, at the least, that the Reformation would have taken a very different form.

The present volume contains the first of the three parts of which the Divine Comedy consists. Should its reception justify further publication, I hope to follow it with the Purgatorio and the Paradiso at short intervals, as they are already at an advanced stage of preparation.

It has been said that the latter parts of the poem are of less general interest than the first, the Purgatorio being encumbered with a dead philosophy, and the Paradiso rendered monotonous by the fact that Dante had nothing but light and colour with which to build the Heavens of his imagination.

I venture to challenge these opinions. To me, the power and the imagination of the poem rise as it proceeds. I hope to justify this assertion, when I follow this volume with the later sections; and, should I fail, I should still hold that the fault is mine, and not that of the greater poet.

Certainly, he would not himself have given the place of honour to the Inferno, and if we consider it separately, we should not forget that the path through Hell is only a means of approach to a clearer atmosphere where his art—

Reviving from that depth where beauty dies

(Purgatorio, Canto I)

can occupy itself with better things, till it culminates in the vision of the ultimate triumph of the Divine Love: (Paradiso, Canto XXIII):

For all the earth

That yearned for Heaven, and all the Heaven that bent

Toward it, separate by the gulf of sin,

Love bridges at last, and ye behold herein

The bridal joys of their so long desire.

Ye see the path God’s suffering paved with fire;

And Christ comes down it.