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The Siddal Edition
of
Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Ellis and Elvey
London
1899
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, being the son of an Italian who was greatly
immersed in the study of Dante Alighieri, and who produced a Comment on
the _Inferno_, and other books relating to Dantesque literature, was
from his earliest childhood familiar with the name of the stupendous
Florentine, and to some extent aware of the range and quality of his
writings. Nevertheless—or perhaps indeed it may have been partly on
that very account—he did not in those opening years read Dante to
any degree worth mentioning: he was well versed in Shakespeare, Walter
Scott, Byron, and some other writers, years before he applied himself
to Dante. He may have been fourteen years of age, or even fifteen (May
1843), before he took seriously to the author of the _Divina Commedia_.
He then read him eagerly, and with the profoundest admiration and
delight; and from the _Commedia_ he proceeded to the lyrical poems and
the _Vita Nuova_. I question whether he ever read—unless in the most
cursory way—other and less fascinating writings of Alighieri, such as
the _Convito_ and the _De Monarchiâ_.
From reading, Rossetti went on to translating. He translated at an
early age, chiefly between 1845 and 1849, a great number of poems by
the Italians contemporary with Dante, or preceding him; and, among
other things, he made a version of the whole _Vita Nuova_, prose
and verse. This may possibly have been the first important thing
that he translated from the Italian: if not the first, still less
was it the last, and it may well be that his rendering of the book
was completed within the year 1846, or early in 1847. He did not, of
course, leave his version exactly as it had come at first: on the
contrary, he took counsel with friends (Alfred Tennyson among the
number), toned down crudities and juvenilities, and worked to make the
whole thing impressive and artistic—for in such matters he was much
more chargeable with over-fastidiousness than with laxity. Still, the
work, as we now have it, is essentially the work of those adolescent
years—from time to time reconsidered and improved, but not transmuted.
Some few years after producing his translation of the _Vita Nuova_,
Rossetti was desirous of publishing it, and of illustrating the volume
with etchings from various designs, which he had meanwhile done, of
incidents in the story. This project, however, had to be laid aside,
owing to want of means, and the etchings were never undertaken. It was
only in 1861 that the volume named _The Early Italian Poets_, including
the translated _Vita Nuova_, was brought out: the same volume, with
a change in the arrangement of its contents, was reissued in 1874,
entitled _Dante and his Circle_. This book, in its original form, was
received with favour, and settled the claim of Rossetti to rank as a
poetic translator, or indeed as a poet in his own right.