- MSG 167844
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Tue, 11 May 2010 00:03:42 +0100
Food is most enjoyed when one is hungry.
- MSG 167898
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Tue, 11 May 2010 22:19:56 +0100
I`m very interested in the culinary arts, mrs. gaga.
- MSG 168074
- logos (190.92.54.221) - Tue, 18 May 2010 03:46:05 +0100
Cooking is one of the most enjoyed daily arts.
- MSG 168174
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Tue, 25 May 2010 00:19:48 +0100
My creativity "depends"on my inspiration.
- MSG 168206
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Fri, 28 May 2010 03:36:36 +0100
Two words: Photnics and Electromagnetism.
- MSG 168207
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Fri, 28 May 2010 03:43:25 +0100
Magnetism atracts light.
- MSG 168223
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Sun, 30 May 2010 03:07:02 +0100
...and that might have something to do with electromagnetism.
- MSG 168238
- logos (200.107.125.131) - Sun, 30 May 2010 15:55:11 +0100
There`s "artificial" electro-magnetism in such devices as electric lights, television monitors, radios(AM/FM frequencies) and cellular-phones.
- MSG 168243
- logos (200.107.125.131) - Sun, 30 May 2010 17:48:58 +0100
What other innovative uses might we find with EM?????.
- MSG 168296
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:45:29 +0100
...and what about protomagnetism, neutromagnetism and electromagnetism?.
- MSG 168336
- logos (200.107.125.131) - Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:40:44 +0100
I am very aware that I have to improve my bodily system`s inputs if I want to continue being healthy in it.
- MSG 168381
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:41:38 +0100
Daily improvements in one`s self make a better day, day by day.
- MSG 168448
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Sat, 12 Jun 2010 02:16:47 +0100
To know is to understand.
- MSG 168515
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:08:51 +0100
TV land is an electromagnetic parallel.
- MSG 168573
- logos (65.167.28.8) - Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:11:47 +0100
Well thought means better outputs form my self.
- MSG 168584
- zero lander (200.107.125.131) - Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:18:59 +0100
The art of cooking has eveolved through out the centuries...
- MSG 168722
- zero lander (65.167.28.8) - Sun, 04 Jul 2010 02:20:41 +0100
Man kinds chemical knowledge is getting better and more complex...
- MSG 168969
- zero lander (65.167.28.8) - Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:42:57 +0100
Our human truth is improving and getting better and better organized and better to grasp and understand..
- MSG 168986
- zero lander (65.167.28.8) - Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:17:13 +0100
The truth might very well be a Cosmic phenomena.
- MSG 168995
- Bill (92.8.254.135) - Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:10:38 +0100
Longfellow
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Blog home Poem of the week: From Longfellow′s translation of the Divine ComedyThis time, a poignant excerpt as Dante meets his muse in Longfellow′s Victorian version of the great medieval allegory
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Detail from Dante Illuminating Florence with his Poem, by Domenico di Michelino. Source: Corbis
"You look like the Wreck of the Hesperus," my mother used to exclaim irritably, when I came in from play looking particularly dishevelled. No, she wasn′t a literary lady: she enjoyed "the flicks" rather more than books, and preferred knitting patterns to poetry. But, like anyone else who had gone to school in the first quarter of the 20th century, she′d been introduced to verse by the venerable Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82). As for me, I loved the swashbuckling sound of "Wreck of the Hesperus", but years passed before I met the poem.
Longfellow′s verse was swept long ago from the school curriculum, but he was once, after Tennyson, the most popular poet in the English-speaking world. He wrote prose as well as poetry, epics as well as lyrics, was a master of metre, and fluent in many languages. Although hardly an iconoclast, he was no less concerned than later American poets with the project of forging a national literary identity. The much-parodied "The Song of Hiawatha" (which Longfellow called "the Indian Edda") is a dull plod to the modern ear, but try instead the rangy dactylic hexameters of Evangeline, still a wonderfully readable "tearjerker" of a romance, set in Nova Scotia. Longfellow sometimes reminds me a little of Charles Dickens (whom he met in London in 1842). He can be sentimental, like Dickens, but he too is a master story-spinner and conjuror of atmosphere.
Longfellow began translating Dante′s La Divina Commedia at a sombre point in his life, after the death of his second wife in a fire. Instead of attempting hendecasyllables, the American poet uses blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). He follows Dante′s syntax when he can, and writes compactly in unrhymed tercets (the "Mountain"/"fountain" rhyme here would appear to be accidental). The effect is nothing like Dante′s sinuous tide of terza rima, but Longfellow′s verse flows not un-melodiously, the cadence of the line pleasantly varied with both feminine and masculine endings. In general, the style is plain rather than florid.
I′ve chosen as this week′s "poem" an extract from Canto XXX of the Purgatorio. It describes an intensely emotional moment. Dante has reached the Earthly Paradise at the summit of Mount Purgatory. Having witnessed the Pageant of the Sacrament, he at last sees Beatrice: almost simultaneously, he discovers, to his dismay, that his guide, Virgil, "sweetest of all fathers," is no longer at his side. For the first time in the whole Commedia, Dante′s name is used – and by Beatrice herself. But Beatrice′s address is stern and even a little sarcastic, her purpose not yet to welcome the poet but admonish him.
Subsequently, the Angels′ song reduces Dante, the pilgrim, to sobs. But Dante, the narrator, never loses control of pace or structure, and Longfellow′s style, too, is economical, though not always wholly natural-sounding.
Most, if not all, of the ellipses ("e′en") and Latinate inversions ("continued she") are inevitable for a translation of the period (the first edition appeared in 1867). The archaisms, in Beatrice′s speech, for example, would have seemed fitting in so deeply sacred a context. Today, translation′s "rules" are more flexible. And we prefer our English Dante in an earthier language, one which is perhaps closer, in spirit at least, to the poet′s Tuscan dialect. However, for a faithful translator of the Commedia, some formality is still unavoidable; Dante′s sentences are frequently complex, demanding, for instance, a spectrum of conjunctions not wholly natural to the terser poetic styles we use today.
Perhaps you prefer a different translation of the Purgatorio: you may even have worked on your own. Be copyright-conscious, but, otherwise, bring them on!
from Canto XXX, Purgatorio
"Dante, because Virgilius has departed
Do not weep yet, do not weep yet awhile;
For by another sword thou need′st must weep."
E′en as an admiral, who on poop and prow
Comes to behold the people that are working
In other ships, and cheers them to well-doing,
Upon the left hand border of the car,
When at the sound I turned of my own name,
Which of necessity is here recorded,
I saw the Lady, who erewhile appeared
Veiled underneath the angelic festival,
Direct her eyes to me across the river.
Although the veil, that from her head descended,
Encircled with the foliage of Minerva,
Did not permit her to appear distinctly,
In attitude still royally majestic
Continued she, like unto one who speaks,
And keeps his warmest utterance in reserve:
"Look at me well; in sooth I′m Beatrice!
How dids′t thou deign to come unto the Mountain?
Dids′t thou not know that man is happy here?"
Mine eyes fell downwards into the clear fountain,
But, seeing myself therein, I sought the grass,
So great a shame did weigh my forehead down.
As to the son the mother seems superb,
So she appeared to me, for somewhat bitter
Tasteth the savour of severe compassion.
Silent became she, and the Angels sang
Suddenly, "In te, Domine, speravi:"
But beyond "pedes meos" did not pass.
Even as the snow among the living rafters
Upon the back of Italy congeals,
Blown on and drifted by Sclavonian winds,
And then, dissolving, trickles through itself
Whene′er the land that loses shadow breathes,
So that it seems a fire that melts a taper;
E′en thus was I without a tear or sigh,
Before the song of those who sing for ever
After the music of the eternal spheres.
But when I heard in their sweet melodies
Compassion for me, more than had they said,
"O wherefore, lady, dost thou thus upbraid him?"
The ice, that was about my heart congealed,
To air and water changed, and in my anguish
Through mouth and eyes came gushing from my breast.