Commentary
Introduction
This is the heading DGR gave in the first edition of the
1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="49-1869">Poems</xref>
to the three Villon translations:
<xref doc="a.38-1869.raw">The Ballad of Dead Ladies</xref>
;
<xref doc="a.39-1869.raw">To Death, of his Lady</xref>
; and
<xref doc="a.25-1870.raw">His Mother's Service to Our Lady</xref>
.
The three translations are central texts in the structure
of DGR's volume. They open the final part of the book's opening section
of
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">Poems</xref>
. This last
sequence is a set of translations
that re-collect from the ancient, the medieval, and the modern world the
same themes DGR pursues in his original poetry. The Villon translations are
especially important, and aptly chosen as a group, since they graphically
emphasize the continuity of sacred and profane love. The interpenetration of
the two, perhaps the most celebrated idea in all of DGR's work, grounds
the (implicit but recurrent) mythic orientation of DGR's work.
As Baum notes,
“Rossetti's versions are faithful without being
literal. He is closest to the original in the rondeau, though he there
introduces a different image in the last line. . . . The
three translations . . . were made in 1869, perhaps partly
under the influence of Swinburne, who several years earlier had translated
three other ballads and begun a prose essay on Villon”
(
<hi rend="i">Poems, Ballads, and Sonnets</hi>
177
). DGR and Swinburne planned, in the early 1860s,
to do a complete translation of Villon's poetry.
Textual History: Composition
WMR (1911) dates the
first two 1869, and the third 1870. In fact the first two must have been written
by August 1869 since they appear in the Penkill Proofs, the first of the prepublication texts DGR prepared for the
eventual publication of his 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">
Poems</xref>
. The third translation seems
to have been made in early March 1870, when he inserted it with the other two
at a very late proof stage for his volume of Poems. The
third Villon translation was made as a substitute for the translation of
<xref doc="a.7-1878.s75.raw">“Francesca da Rimini”</xref>
, which DGR had added in March but then decided to remove (see DGR's letter to Ellis, 4 April 1870,
Fredeman,
<hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi>
, 70. 82
).
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
First published in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="49-1869">Poems</xref>
, again in the New Edition of 1881, and collected thereafter.
Translation
All three translate sections of
Villon's
<xref doc="a.villon001.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Le Testament</hi>
</xref>
: lines 329-356; 978-989; and 873-909. His text for all three translations was Lacroix's 1854
<hi rend="i">Oeuvres Complètes de Francois Villon</hi>
: pages 62-64, 113, and 105-107 respectively.
Bibliographic
Baum,
<hi rend="i">Poems Ballads and Sonnets.</hi>
, 177
Gregory,
<hi rend="i">Life and Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti</hi>
II. 124
Lang,
<xref doc="a." from="183" to="187">
<hi rend="i">New Writings by Swinburne</hi>
</xref>
(1964), 183-187
Lange,
<xref doc="a.arcadia.001.rad" link="dead" workcode="39-1869" from="17" to="30">“Swinburne und Rossetti”</xref>
(1977), 17-30
Sharp,
<hi rend="i">DGR: A Record and a Study</hi>
, 304-305