The title that DGR first projected for this remarkable book tells much about his own conception of it:
His fullest description of the project, outside the notes and commentaries he
wrote for his two published editions, comes in a Vita Nuova
as many of the lyrical poems. . .as will form
a complete history of his love for Beatrice
.”
It was crucial for DGR that the translations should be “in the
original metres.” His programmatic goals in both art and
literature were closely tied to an understanding that the intellectual
importance of these disciplines lay not so much in their content as in their
procedures and (as it were) material practises. To
“translate” the early Italian poets for his
contemporaries DGR had to find a way to execute their work
anew—which meant precisely not to
“translate” it into conceptual terms. An equivalent
physique of the early poety was what was needed, according to DGR. This
approach would later be called either “fleshly” or
“art for art's sake.”
In developing English equivalences for his Italian texts, DGR turned
hendecasyllables into iambic pentameters and septenarii into iambic
trimeters. One of the notable features of DGR's translations, which are best
viewed as poems in their own right, is the success he gained in rendering
the syllabic character of the Italian originals into English. DGR's poems
have been so fashioned as to flatten out their accentual urgencies. He
achieved this result through a careful use of syntax, which is forced in
various ways to loop back upon itself, and by a lexicon dominated by
relatively short words. DGR stayed quite close to the original rhyme
schemes, and certainly remained faithful to their generic forms and
structures; but he often made slight variations, probably in order to
facilitate his primary goal: to produce English poems that would not bring
shame to their Italian models. His rule was “that a good poem
shall not be turned into a bad one” since “the only true
motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh
nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty”
(see DGR's
DGR said that in his translations he strove for
“fidelity” rather than “literality”,
by which he meant “to refer entirely to fidelity of main meaning.
Though adhering to the character of each metre, I did not follow the
individualities of separate sonnets, since some freedom of action was
necessary to my aim at harmonious English; and I think that the student of
the analytic or philological side of the matter must find it worth his while
to tackle the Italian originals” (letter to Richard Burton, 22
December 1880: Correspondence
Vita Nuova
According to from 1845 to 1849
.” The research was
done at the British Museum as well as at home, where he had access to his
father's considerable library as well as his scholarly advice and
assistance. He must have completed a substantial corpus by 1847, since that
year he wrote his
It seems clear from DGR's correspondence that he did not translate
Dante's Vita Nuova
DGR continued to augment and revise the translations for almost thirty years.
He told Millais in 1854 that he did his translations in the evening and
that he had completed “upward of fifty poems” from the
work of the poets before Dante (see Correspondence
Correspondence
The proofs contain
the series of Cavalcanti's poems forming part of my book, the general
title-page to which you will find at the end of them. I do not know
whether you are acquainted with the
”Vita Nuova
DGR seems to have done little more
work on the translations until the very end of 1860—the literary
year having been spent attending to his original poetry and the idea of
publishing a volume of his own verse. At that point he received Aurelio
Saffi's comments on his translations and he was inspired to drive this
fifteen year-old project to final completion. From January until Dec. of
1861 he was deeply involved in seeing his translations through the press. It
was at this point that he completed the various notes and prose commentaries
and had his brother translate Dante's prose “divisions”
for the poems in the Vita Nuova
DGR made a number of revisions to the first edition just before it was
published (see below “Printing History”). The single
most important of these changes—one of the two last that DGR
introduced—involved the cancel of pages 409-410 (signature DD5).
The original text carried DGR's translation of Cecco's Poems
In the early 1870s DGR was again much occupied with the work as he prepared
for the publication of the Dante and his Circle
Besides his family, DGR sought the opinion of a number of people about his
translations: principally, Charles Cayley, Leigh Hunt, Tennyson, Patmore,
Ruskin, Allingham, William Bell Scott, Charles Eliot Norton, Elizabeth
Gaskell, and Aurelio Saffi. Their various judgments led DGR to a long
process of “revising, improving, and suppressing crudities
or quaintnesses
” in the work, as WMR put it (Memoir
bear the marks of a
moral censor at work—perhaps Ruskin
” (see
Cox and Nowell-Smith's note in The Book Collector
A major stage in the revision took place between January and May 1861, when
DGR wrote and/or revised much of the accompanying prose notes and
commentaries (see DGR's letter to his brother of 25 January 1861: Correspondence
correct my translation
throughout, removing inaccuracies and mannerisms
” and
“to translate [Dante's] analyses of the poems (which I
omitted)
” (letter of 18 January 1861, Correspondence
Only a handful of manuscripts of DGR's translations survive. There is an interesting
Although the translations have been subjected to various criticisms,
particularly in the twentieth century, this book is one of the most
important and influential works of translation ever written in English. Its
influence was enormous, not least of all on Pound, Eliot, and other
modernists who were not always as candid, or generous, in acknowledhing
DGR's pioneering work as they perhaps should have been. The extent of its
influence is not reflected in the initial sales of the first (1861) edition,
of which only 600 or so copies were bought in the first eight years. When
DGR's volume of 1870 Poems
As early as the summer of 1851 DGR was enquiring after a possible publisher
for his translations (see Family Letters
I am still
hoping to get them out as soon as possible,
” he wrote
Allingham in July 1854 (see Correspondence
Smith and Elder to shell
out something for them in a lump, which arrangement, if possible, I
should prefer to any other, especially as it would spur me on to a
speedy completion of the book
” (letter to Allingham,
23 January 1855: Correspondence
Though still without a publisher, DGR began having the translations set in
type in June 1858. The work was done at the Chiswick Press by Whittingham. At
this time he opened a correspondence with Macmillan about publishing the
work but again nothing materialized. He sent the newly printed proofs, which
comprised a series of Cavalcanti translations, to Charles Eliot Norton (see
his letter to Norton of July in Ruskin, Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelitism
The printing process at that point hung fire until January 1861, when DGR
wrote his brother that he was “pushing at last with my
”
because he wants “Italian Poets at the printer'sto get my own poems out at the same time
as the translations
”. At the same time he engaged his
sister Christina to prepare of fair printer's copy of the whole book (see
Correspondence
a preface or introductory essay. . .to enrich my book,
& which will add incalculably to its value in every
way
”, as he wrote to Sir John Simeon in March 1859 (see
Fredeman's essay in The Book Collector
A culminant stage of the proof printing was finished around 10 May 1861 in a
volume, as DGR told Allingham, of “nearly 500
pages
” (see Correspondence
The tradition descending from WMR speaks of six copies of this proof volume
having been printed off for DGR. But certainly more were printed and they
appear to represent two states. The located copies are as follows: 1.
Fitzwilliam Museum copy, a presentation copy to William Bell Scott from DGR
dated 1861 with a woodcut of DGR's illustrated title-page, not finally
published with the book, tipped in; 2. The Wrenn Library copy (U. of Texas),
the only known copy in the paper wrappers that WMR described for the book in
his manuscript note on the flyleaf verso of this copy; 3. The
Princeton/Troxell copy, an inscribed presentation copy from DGR to George
Meredith (formerly in the collection of William Harris Arnold); 4. Mrs. M.
C. N. Munro's copy (this copy, which remains in the Rossetti family, was
given by DGR to the sculptor Alexander Munro); 5. A copy briefly described
in 1976 by Charles Cox and Simon Nowell-Smith in The Book Collector
As Charles Cox pointed out in his catalogue entry for the book, the uncancelled pages in the Nowell-Smith copy
“preserve (as well as a few misprints) words, phrases, lines, and
in one case an entire poem which Rossetti (or more likely his publisher)
thought fit to alter or suppress” (Catalogue 45, no. 159 page 24).
The poem—Cecco Angiolieri's sonnet
Additional proof copies can be found at the libraries of Brigham Young
University, the University of Arizona (Tempe), and Yale University. Copies
were sent to William Allingham, Coventry Patmore, Alexander Macmillan, and
John Ruskin. A copy would have been sent to Chapman and Hall and to Smith,
Elder and Co. Some of the copies in this list undoubtedly represent
duplications, the same copy having been sent to more than one person.
Neverthless, it seems clear that more than six copies existed, as Fredeman
points out in his Book Collector
The most important copy, however, DGR's own, is at present untraced. This copy was owned by Jerome Kern and was sold at the famous Kern sale in 1929 (lot 1004). It is there described as having in it “the suppressed frontispiece and title page”.
Cancels appear in all of these copies, though copy 5 above seems the only one carrying a full complement of the cancels made before the book went into its final print run. Proof copy cancels were made for B2 (pp. 3/4), B6 (pp. 11/12), E6 (pp. 59/60), F2 (pp. 67/68), H1 (pp. 97/98), H4 (pp. 103/104), DD5 (pp. 409/410). Two of these cancels were made for the first edition (B2 and DD5). To the proof volume were added, for the first edition, the prelims, the final gathering (GG, the index), and a final (unnumbered) page (the last leaf of Errata and advertisement). The errata list cites errors on pages 208, 270, 317, and 444. Some of the published copies show the misprint “252” on page 352.
DGR talked with Macmillan, Chapman & Hall, and Smith & Elder
about publishing the book. Eventually the last of these three, Ruskin's
publisher, undertook the job, as DGR told Alexander Gilchrist on 26 June
1861 (see Correspondence
DGR's plan in early 1861 was to bring out two books at approximately the same
time: this volume of translations as well as a volume of original poetry
that was to be titled Dante at Verona, and Other Poems
The elegant The Rose Garden
The Princeton/Troxell collection has
DGR executed numerous pictures in various media relating to Dante, his works,
and the works of the other writers that appear in this volume. The core of
this body of pictorial material centers in subjects related to The Vita Nuova
One other drawing should be noted: the
DGR gives his principal sources for the translation at the end of his Poeti del primo secolo della Lingua Italiana
The Book Collector
Early Italian Poets
Early Italian Poets
The Ashley Library