_PREFATORY NOTE_Dante Gabriel Rossetti, being the son of an Italian who was greatlyimmersed in the study of Dante Alighieri, and who produced a Comment onthe _Inferno_, and other books relating to Dantesque literature, wasfrom his earliest childhood familiar with the name of the stupendousFlorentine, and to some extent aware of the range and quality of hiswritings. Nevertheless—or perhaps indeed it may have been partly onthat very account—he did not in those opening years read Dante toany degree worth mentioning: he was well versed in Shakespeare, WalterScott, Byron, and some other writers, years before he applied himselfto Dante. He may have been fourteen years of age, or even fifteen (May1843), before he took seriously to the author of the _Divina Commedia_.He then read him eagerly, and with the profoundest admiration anddelight; and from the _Commedia_ he proceeded to the lyrical poems andthe _Vita Nuova_. I question whether he ever read—unless in the mostcursory way—other and less fascinating writings of Alighieri, such asthe _Convito_ and the _De Monarchiâ_.From reading, Rossetti went on to translating. He translated at anearly age, chiefly between 1845 and 1849, a great number of poems bythe Italians contemporary with Dante, or preceding him; and, amongother things, he made a version of the whole _Vita Nuova_, proseand verse. This may possibly have been the first important thingthat he translated from the Italian: if not the first, still lesswas it the last, and it may well be that his rendering of the bookwas completed within the year 1846, or early in 1847. He did not, ofcourse, leave his version exactly as it had come at first: on thecontrary, he took counsel with friends (Alfred Tennyson among thenumber), toned down crudities and juvenilities, and worked to make thewhole thing impressive and artistic—for in such matters he was muchmore chargeable with over-fastidiousness than with laxity. Still, thework, as we now have it, is essentially the work of those adolescentyears—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 volumewith etchings from various designs, which he had meanwhile done, ofincidents in the story. This project, however, had to be laid aside,owing to want of means, and the etchings were never undertaken. It wasonly in 1861 that the volume named _The Early Italian Poets_, includingthe translated _Vita Nuova_, was brought out: the same volume, witha change in the arrangement of its contents, was reissued in 1874,entitled _Dante and his Circle_. This book, in its original form, wasreceived with favour, and settled the claim of Rossetti to rank as apoetic translator, or indeed as a poet in his own right.For _The Early Italian Poets_ he wrote a Preface, from which a passage,immediately relating to the _Vita Nuova_, is extracted in the presentedition. There are some other passages, affecting the whole of thetranslations in that volume, which deserve to be borne in mind, asshowing the spirit in which he undertook the translating work, and Igive them here:—“The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment—that agood poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true motive forputting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation,as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty. Poetry notbeing an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether secondaryto this chief law. I say _literality_,—not fidelity, which is by nomeans the same thing. When literality can be combined with what is thusthe primary condition of success, the translator is fortunate, and muststrive his utmost to unite them; when such object can only be obtainedby paraphrase, that is his only path. Any merit possessed by thesetranslations is derived from an effort to follow this principle.... Thetask of the translator (and with all humility be it spoken) is one ofsome self-denial. Often would he avail himself of any special grace ofhis own idiom and epoch, if only his will belonged to him: often wouldsome cadence serve him but for his author’s structure—some structurebut for his author’s cadence: often the beautiful turn of a stanza mustbe weakened to adopt some rhyme which will tally, and he sees the poetrevelling in abundance of language where himself is scantily supplied.