Как и прежде уже облака манили меня уйти с ними в чужие страны, когда они высоко проплывали над моей головой, так и теперь я часто нахожусь в опасности, ч..
У меня не было бы ни минуты душевного покоя, если бы он остался без вашего попечения и влияния. Я поговорю с ним перед отъездом о его..
- Да с той стороны. Вам здесь не место. - А вам-то что? - ответил мальчик развязно. - Уж не вы ли оплатили мой билет, мистер Мартин?..
I did not intend in the first instance to depart from the plan
of selection in the case of Dante; but when I considered what an
extraordinary person he was,--how intense is every thing which he
says,--how widely he has re-attracted of late the attention of the
world,--how willingly perhaps his poem might be regarded by the reader
as being itself one continued story (which, in fact, it is), related
personally of the writer,--and lastly, what a combination of
difficulties have prevented his best translators in verse from giving
the public a just idea of his almost Scriptural simplicity,--I began to
think that an abstract of his entire work might possibly be looked upon
as supplying something of a desideratum. I am aware that nothing but
verse can do perfect justice to verse; but besides the imperfections
which are pardonable, because inevitable, in all such metrical
endeavours, the desire to impress a grand and worshipful idea of Dante
has been too apt to lead his translators into a tone and manner the
reverse of his passionate, practical, and creative style--a style which
may be said to write things instead of words; and thus to render every
word that is put out of its place, or brought in for help and filling
up, a misrepresentation. I do not mean to say, that he himself never
does any thing of the sort, or does not occasionally assume too much
of the oracle and the schoolmaster, in manner as well as matter;
but passion, and the absence of the superfluous, are the chief
characteristics of his poetry. Fortunately, this sincerity of purpose
and utterance in Dante render him the least pervertible of poets in a
sincere prose translation; and, since I ventured on attempting one, I
have had the pleasure of meeting with an express recommendation of such
a version in an early number of the _Edinburgh Review_.[1]
The abstract of Dante, therefore, in these volumes (with every
deprecation that becomes me of being supposed to pretend to give a
thorough idea of any poetry whatsoever, especially without its metrical
form) aspires to be regarded as, at all events, not exhibiting a false
idea of the Dantesque spirit in point of feeling and expression...
