The most remarkable preface on this shelf, and it is about where a translation was made rather than how. “In the month of August, 1856, I attempted the experiment of translating into terza rima the beautiful story of Francesca of Rimini, in the fifth Canto of the Inferno. I WAS THEN EMPLOYED AS A DISTRICT OFFICER IN THE MADRAS PRESIDENCY, and I continued to occupy my leisure in the translation of the poem, completing the whole of the Inferno early in the following year.” The Inferno was finished in 1857; the volume appeared in 1885. James Innes Minchin spent nearly thirty years on it, and began in a district office in southern India.
The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri
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page 1
;<'/
/6.i^- ^- ^o , prJHS^S
THE
DIYINE COMEDY
OF
DANTE ALIGHIERI
TRANSLATED VERSE FOR VERSE
FROM THE ORIGINAL INTO TERZA RIMA.
JAMES INNES MINOHIN.
p. 1885
PREFACE.
■ Ql
In the month of August, 1856, I attempted the experiment of translating into terza rima the beautifiil story of Francesca of Rimini, in the fifth Canto of .the " Inferno." I was then employed as a district officer in the Madras Presidency, and I continued to occupy my leisure in the translation of the poem, completing the whole of the " Inferno" early in the following year. Throughout the year 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, my family being in England, I was living as the only English officer in charge of a large sub-district, and throughout that year I was absolutely without any English companion, and with the terrible tales of mutiny and massacre that reached me daily through the Press, I lived unarmed and in absolute security amidst a peaceful agricultural community. Such a life was singularly suitable for literary labour, and during my miany hours of solitary leisure in that stirring year I completed in the month of October my translation of the " Divine Comedy." I spent the next year in a carefal revision of my work, and then laid it by, hoping that I might live to publish it in after years. In the year 1866 I returned to England for the first time after an absence of twenty-two years, and at the iv PREFACE. request of the late Professor Brewer, of King's College, who was himself a great student of Dante, I placed in his hands the MS. of my translation, which he had heard from a mutual friend that I had completed.
Mr. Brewer greatly encouraged me by the favourable opinion he kindly formed of my work, but he did much more than pass such an opinion : he compared my whole translation carefully with the original, and marked every passage in the long poem which he considered to stand in need of alteration, and advised me, after again subjecting it to a complete revision, to bring it before the public, telling me that he considered it the best translation of the "Purgatory'' and the "Paradise" that had come under his notice.
On my return to India I devoted the leisure hours of another year to the revision which Mr. Brewer had recommended, and I. in fact re- wrote every passage which had been marked by him as unsatisfactory. So many years had elapsed since I had written it that I could judge my work as fairly as if it had not been my own, and I took a critical pleasure in the justice of Professor Brewer's obelisks of condemnation.
The correction of the marked passages was no light labour, as the alteration of one crabbed line often entailed a new turning of a whole triplet, the exigencies of rhyme in the terza rima being generally the cause of the blots requiring alteration. After another interval of sixteen years I bring my work before the general judgment of Dante students as the result of the honest labour of many years of a stu-
page 1
;<'/
/6.i^- ^- ^o , prJHS^S
THE
DIYINE COMEDY
OF
DANTE ALIGHIERI
TRANSLATED VERSE FOR VERSE
FROM THE ORIGINAL INTO TERZA RIMA.
JAMES INNES MINOHIN.
p. 1885
PREFACE.
■ Ql
In the month of August, 1856, I attempted the experiment of translating into terza rima the beautifiil story of Francesca of Rimini, in the fifth Canto of .the " Inferno." I was then employed as a district officer in the Madras Presidency, and I continued to occupy my leisure in the translation of the poem, completing the whole of the " Inferno" early in the following year. Throughout the year 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, my family being in England, I was living as the only English officer in charge of a large sub-district, and throughout that year I was absolutely without any English companion, and with the terrible tales of mutiny and massacre that reached me daily through the Press, I lived unarmed and in absolute security amidst a peaceful agricultural community. Such a life was singularly suitable for literary labour, and during my miany hours of solitary leisure in that stirring year I completed in the month of October my translation of the " Divine Comedy." I spent the next year in a carefal revision of my work, and then laid it by, hoping that I might live to publish it in after years. In the year 1866 I returned to England for the first time after an absence of twenty-two years, and at the iv PREFACE. request of the late Professor Brewer, of King's College, who was himself a great student of Dante, I placed in his hands the MS. of my translation, which he had heard from a mutual friend that I had completed.
Mr. Brewer greatly encouraged me by the favourable opinion he kindly formed of my work, but he did much more than pass such an opinion : he compared my whole translation carefully with the original, and marked every passage in the long poem which he considered to stand in need of alteration, and advised me, after again subjecting it to a complete revision, to bring it before the public, telling me that he considered it the best translation of the "Purgatory'' and the "Paradise" that had come under his notice.
On my return to India I devoted the leisure hours of another year to the revision which Mr. Brewer had recommended, and I. in fact re- wrote every passage which had been marked by him as unsatisfactory. So many years had elapsed since I had written it that I could judge my work as fairly as if it had not been my own, and I took a critical pleasure in the justice of Professor Brewer's obelisks of condemnation.
The correction of the marked passages was no light labour, as the alteration of one crabbed line often entailed a new turning of a whole triplet, the exigencies of rhyme in the terza rima being generally the cause of the blots requiring alteration. After another interval of sixteen years I bring my work before the general judgment of Dante students as the result of the honest labour of many years of a stu-
And the terza rima is the point of the enterprise: “TRANSLATED VERSE FOR VERSE FROM THE ORIGINAL INTO TERZA RIMA”. Dante’s interlocking rhyme is punishing in English, which has fewer rhymes than Italian, and most Victorian translators abandoned it. Müller argues in the Sacred Books that a metrical translation “is often an excuse only for an inaccurate translation”; Minchin took the opposite bet on the one poem where the form is arguably part of the argument. Both positions are held on this shelf.
contrasts in method with Vedic Hymns, Part I — SBE Vol. 32 (trans. F. Max Müller, 1891)