THE NEW LIFE

PREFATORY NOTE

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, being theson of an Italian who was greatly immersedin the study of Dante Alighieri, andwho produced a Comment on the Inferno, andother books relating to Dantesque literature, wasfrom his earliest childhood familiar with thename of the stupendous Florentine, and to someextent aware of the range and quality of hiswritings. Nevertheless—or perhaps indeed itmay have been partly on that very account—hedid not in those opening years read Dante to anydegree worth mentioning: he was well versed inShakespeare, Walter Scott, Byron, and some otherwriters, years before he applied himself to Dante.He may have been fourteen years of age, or evenfifteen (May 1843), before he took seriously tothe author of the Divina Commedia. He then readhim eagerly, and with the profoundest admirationand delight; and from the Commedia he proceeded[6]to the lyrical poems and the Vita Nuova. Iquestion whether he ever read—unless in themost cursory way—other and less fascinatingwritings of Alighieri, such as the Convito and theDe Monarchiâ.

From reading, Rossetti went on to translating.He translated at an early age, chiefly between1845 and 1849, a great number of poems by theItalians contemporary with Dante, or precedinghim; and, among other things, he made a versionof the whole Vita Nuova, prose and verse. Thismay possibly have been the first important thingthat he translated from the Italian: if not thefirst, still less was it the last, and it may well bethat his rendering of the book was completedwithin the year 1846, or early in 1847. He didnot, of course, leave his version exactly as it hadcome at first: on the contrary, he took counselwith friends (Alfred Tennyson among the number),toned down crudities and juvenilities, and workedto make the whole thing impressive and artistic—forin such matters he

BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!

Sitemize Üyelik ÜCRETSİZDİR!