The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - Pedro Calderón de la Barca (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Pedro Calderón de la Barca
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in Spanish 'Versos de arte mayor,' from the greater skill supposed to be required for their composition.
14. The asonante is single here, consisting only of the long accented o, as in "ROme", "glObe", "dOme", etc.
15. Champion, or combater, the name generally given the Cid.
16. The metre changes to an irregular couplet in long and short lines.
17. The metre changes to the double asonante in e-e, which continues to the end of the drama.
18. Baptism by blood and fire through martyrdom. Calderon refers here evidently to the words of St. John the Baptist: "He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire"-St. Matth., c. iii. v. ii. The following passage in the Legend of St. Catherine must also have been present to his mind:
"Et cum dolerent, quod sine baptismo decederent, virgo respondit: Ne timeatis, quia effusio vestri sanguinis vobis baptismus reputabitur et corona". Legenda Aurea, c. 167.
THE SPANISH DRAMA.
CALDERON'S DRAMAS AND AUTOS,
Translated into English Verse BY DENIS FLORENCE MAC-CARTHY.
From Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature. London: 1863.
"Denis Florence M'Carthy published in London (in 1861) translations of two plays, and an auto of Calderon, under the title of 'Love, the greatest Enchantment; the Sorceries of Sin; the Devotion of the Cross, from the Spanish of Calderon, attempted strictly in English Asonante, and other imitative Verse', printing, at the same time, a carefully corrected text of the originals, page by page, opposite to his translations. It is, I think, one of the boldest attempts ever made in English verse. It is, too, as it seems to me, remarkably successful. Not that asonantes can be made fluent or graceful in English, or easily perceptible to an English ear, but that the Spanish air and character of Calderon are so happily preserved. Mr. M'Carthy, in 1853, had published two volumes of translations from Calderon, to which I have already referred; and, besides this, he has rendered excellent service to the cause of Spanish literature in other ways. But in the present volume he has far surpassed all he had previously done; for Calderon is a poet who, whenever he is translated, should have his very excesses, both in thought and manner, fully produced, in order to give a faithful idea of what is grandest and most distinctive in his genius. Mr. M'Carthy has done this, I conceive, to a degree which I had previously considered impossible. Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama; perhaps I ought to say, of what is most characteristic of Spanish poetry generally".-tom. iii. pp. 461, 462.
Extracts from Continental Reviews.
From "Blaeater fuer Literarische Unterhaltung". 1862. Erster Baude, 479 Leipzig, F. A. Brockhans.
"Erwaehnenswerth ist folgender Kuehne versuch einer Rachdildung Calderon' scher stuecke in Englishchen Assonanzen.
"Love, the greatest enchantment; The Sorceries of Sin; The Devotion of the Cross, from the Spanish of Calderon, attempted strictly in English Asonante, and other imitative verse. By Denis Florence Mac-Carthy".
Diese Uebersetzung ist dem Verfasser der "History of Spanish Literature", George Ticknor, zugeeignet, der in einem Schreiber au den Uebersetzer die Arbeit "marvellous" nennt und dam fortfaehrt:
"Richt das sie die Assonanzen dem englischen Ohr so hoerbar gemacht haetten, wie dies mit den Spanischen der Fall ist; unsere widerhaarigen consonanten machen dies unmoeglich; das Wunderbare ist nur, das sie dieselben ueberhaupt hoerbar gemacht haben. Meiner Meinung nach nehme ist Ihre Assonanzen so deutlich wahr, wil die Von August Schlegel oder Gries und mehr als diejenigen Friedrich Schlegel's. Aber dieser war der erste, der den versuch dazu machte, und ausserdem bin ich Kein Deutscher. Wurde es nicht lustig sein, wenn man einmal ein solches Experiment in franzoeschicher Sprache wolte?"
"Ohne zweifel wuerde MacCarthy Ohne den vorgaug deutscher Nachbilder des Calderon ebenso wenig darauf gekommen sein englische Assonanzen zu versuchen, als man ohne das ermunternde Beispiel deutscher Dichter und Uebersetzer darauf gekommen sein wurde, in Uebersetzungen und originaldichtungen unter welchen letztern wol besonders Longfellow's 'Evangeline', zu nennen ist, englische Hexameter zu versuchen, was in letzter zeit gar nicht selten geschehen ist".
From "Boletin de Ferro-Carriles". Cadiz: 1862.
"La novedad que nos comunica de la existencia de traducciones tan acabadas de nuestro grande e inimitable Calderon, ostendando, hasta cierto punto, las galas y formas del original, estamos seguros sera acogida con favor, si no con entusiasmo, per los verdaderos amantes de las letras espanolas. A ellos nos dirijimos, recomendandoles el ultimo trabajo del Senor Mac-Carthy, seguros de que participaran del mismo placer que nosotros hemos experimentado al examinar su fiel, al par que brillante traduccion; y en cuanto a la dificil tentativa de los asonantes ingleses, nos sorpende que el Senor Mac-Carthy haya podido sacar tanto parido, si se considera la indole peculiar de los dos idiomas".
Extracts from Letters addressed to the Author.
From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Esq. Cambridge, near Boston, America, April 29, 1862.
"I thank you very much for your new work in the vast and flowery fields of Calderon. It is, I think, admirable; and presents the old Spanish dramatist before the English reader in a very attractive light.
"Particularly in the most poetical passages you are excellent; as, for instance, in the fine description of the gerfalcon and the heron in 'El Mayor Encanto'.-11 Jor.
"Your previous volumes I have long possessed and highly prized; and I hope you mean to add more and more, so as to make the translation as nearly complete as a single life will permit. It seems rather appalling to undertake the whole of so voluminous a writer. Nevertheless, I hope you will do it. Having proved that you can, perhaps you ought to do it. This may be your appointed work. It is a noble one.
"With much regard, I am, etc., "HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
"Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, Esq.".
From the Same. Nahant, near Boston, August 10, 1857.
"MY DEAR SIR,
"Before leaving Cambridge to come down here to the sea-side, I had the pleasure of receiving your precious volume of 'Mysteries of Corpus Christi'; and should have thanked you sooner for your kindness in sending it to me, had I not been very busy at the time in getting out my last volume of Dante.
"I at once read your work, with eagerness and delight-that peculiar and strange delight which Calderon gives his admirers, as peculiar and distinct as the flavour of an olive from that of all other fruits.
"You are doing this work admirably, and seem to gain new strength and sweetness as you go on. It seems as if Calderon himself were behind you whispering and suggesting. And what better work could you do in your bright hours or in your dark hours than just this, which seems to have been put providentially into your hands!
"The extracts from the 'Sacred Parnassus' in the Chronicle, which reached me yesterday, are also excellent.
"For this and all, many and many thanks.
"Yours faithfully, "HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
"Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, Esq.".
From George Ticknor, Esq., the Historian of Spanish Literature. "Boston, 16th December, 1861.
"In this point of view, your volume seems to me little less than marvellous. If I had not read it-indeed, if I had not carefully gone through with the "Devocion de la Cruz", I should not have believed it possible to do what you have done. Titian, they say, and some others of the old masters, laid on colours for their groundwork wholly different from those they used afterwards, but which they counted upon to shine through, and contribute materially to the grand results they produced. So in your translations, the Spanish seems to come through to the surface; the original air is always perceptible in your variations. It is like a family likeness coming out in the next generation, yet with the freshness of originality.
"But the rhyme is as remarkable as the verse and the translation; not that you have made the asonante as perceptible to the English ear as it is to the Spanish; our cumbersome consonants make that impossible. But the wonder is, that you have made it perceptible at all. I think I perceive your asonantes much as I do those of August Schlegel or Gries, and more than I do those of Friederich Schlegel. But he was the first who tried them, and, besides, I am not a German. Would it not be amusing to have the experiment tried in French?"
From the Same. "Boston, March 20, 1867.
"The world has claims on you which you ought not to evade; and, if the path in which you walk of preference, leads to no wide popularity or brilliant profits, it is, at least, one you have much to yourself, and cannot fail to enjoy. You have chosen it from faithful love, and will always love it; I suspect partly because it is your own choice, because it is peculiarly your own".
From the Same. "Boston, July 3, 1867.
"Considered from this point of view, I think that in your present volume ["Mysteries of Corpus Christi", or "Autos Sacramentales" of Calderon] you are always as successful as you were in your previous publications of the same sort, and sometimes more so; easier, I mean, freer, and more happily expressive. If I were to pick out my first preference, I should take your fragment of the 'Veneno y Triaca', at the end; but I think the whole volume is more fluent, pleasing, and attractive than even its predecessors".
From the first of English religious painters.
"I cannot resist the impulse I have of offering you my most grateful thanks for the greatest intellectual treat I have ever experienced in my life, and which you have afforded me in the magnificent translations of the divine Calderon; for, surely, of all the poets the world ever saw, he alone is worthy of standing beside the author of the Book of Job and of the Psalms, and entrusted, like them, with the noble mission of commending to the hearts of others all that belongs to the beautiful and true, ever directing the thoughtful reader through the love of the beautiful veil, to the great Author of all perfection.
"I cannot conceive a nation can receive a greater boon than being helped to a love of such works as the religious dramas of this Prince of Poets. I have for years felt this, and as your translations appeared, have read them with the greatest possible interest. I knew not of the publication of the last, and it was to an accidental, yet, with me, habitual outburst of praise of Calderon, as the antidote and cure for the trifling literature of the day, that my friend (the) D-- made me aware of its being out".
[The work especially referred to in the latter part of this interesting letter is the following: "Mysteries of Corpus Christi (Autos Sacramentales), from the Spanish of Calderon, by Denis Florence Mac-Carthy". Duffy, Dublin and London, 1867.]
Extracts from American and Canadian Journals.
From an eloquent article in the "Boston Courier", March 18, 1862, written by George Stillman Hillard, Esq., the author of "Six Months in Italy"-a delightful book, worthy of the beautiful country it so beautifully describes.
"Calderon is one of the three greatest names in Spanish literature, Lope de Vega and Cervantes being the other two. He is also a great
14. The asonante is single here, consisting only of the long accented o, as in "ROme", "glObe", "dOme", etc.
15. Champion, or combater, the name generally given the Cid.
16. The metre changes to an irregular couplet in long and short lines.
17. The metre changes to the double asonante in e-e, which continues to the end of the drama.
18. Baptism by blood and fire through martyrdom. Calderon refers here evidently to the words of St. John the Baptist: "He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire"-St. Matth., c. iii. v. ii. The following passage in the Legend of St. Catherine must also have been present to his mind:
"Et cum dolerent, quod sine baptismo decederent, virgo respondit: Ne timeatis, quia effusio vestri sanguinis vobis baptismus reputabitur et corona". Legenda Aurea, c. 167.
THE SPANISH DRAMA.
CALDERON'S DRAMAS AND AUTOS,
Translated into English Verse BY DENIS FLORENCE MAC-CARTHY.
From Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature. London: 1863.
"Denis Florence M'Carthy published in London (in 1861) translations of two plays, and an auto of Calderon, under the title of 'Love, the greatest Enchantment; the Sorceries of Sin; the Devotion of the Cross, from the Spanish of Calderon, attempted strictly in English Asonante, and other imitative Verse', printing, at the same time, a carefully corrected text of the originals, page by page, opposite to his translations. It is, I think, one of the boldest attempts ever made in English verse. It is, too, as it seems to me, remarkably successful. Not that asonantes can be made fluent or graceful in English, or easily perceptible to an English ear, but that the Spanish air and character of Calderon are so happily preserved. Mr. M'Carthy, in 1853, had published two volumes of translations from Calderon, to which I have already referred; and, besides this, he has rendered excellent service to the cause of Spanish literature in other ways. But in the present volume he has far surpassed all he had previously done; for Calderon is a poet who, whenever he is translated, should have his very excesses, both in thought and manner, fully produced, in order to give a faithful idea of what is grandest and most distinctive in his genius. Mr. M'Carthy has done this, I conceive, to a degree which I had previously considered impossible. Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama; perhaps I ought to say, of what is most characteristic of Spanish poetry generally".-tom. iii. pp. 461, 462.
Extracts from Continental Reviews.
From "Blaeater fuer Literarische Unterhaltung". 1862. Erster Baude, 479 Leipzig, F. A. Brockhans.
"Erwaehnenswerth ist folgender Kuehne versuch einer Rachdildung Calderon' scher stuecke in Englishchen Assonanzen.
"Love, the greatest enchantment; The Sorceries of Sin; The Devotion of the Cross, from the Spanish of Calderon, attempted strictly in English Asonante, and other imitative verse. By Denis Florence Mac-Carthy".
Diese Uebersetzung ist dem Verfasser der "History of Spanish Literature", George Ticknor, zugeeignet, der in einem Schreiber au den Uebersetzer die Arbeit "marvellous" nennt und dam fortfaehrt:
"Richt das sie die Assonanzen dem englischen Ohr so hoerbar gemacht haetten, wie dies mit den Spanischen der Fall ist; unsere widerhaarigen consonanten machen dies unmoeglich; das Wunderbare ist nur, das sie dieselben ueberhaupt hoerbar gemacht haben. Meiner Meinung nach nehme ist Ihre Assonanzen so deutlich wahr, wil die Von August Schlegel oder Gries und mehr als diejenigen Friedrich Schlegel's. Aber dieser war der erste, der den versuch dazu machte, und ausserdem bin ich Kein Deutscher. Wurde es nicht lustig sein, wenn man einmal ein solches Experiment in franzoeschicher Sprache wolte?"
"Ohne zweifel wuerde MacCarthy Ohne den vorgaug deutscher Nachbilder des Calderon ebenso wenig darauf gekommen sein englische Assonanzen zu versuchen, als man ohne das ermunternde Beispiel deutscher Dichter und Uebersetzer darauf gekommen sein wurde, in Uebersetzungen und originaldichtungen unter welchen letztern wol besonders Longfellow's 'Evangeline', zu nennen ist, englische Hexameter zu versuchen, was in letzter zeit gar nicht selten geschehen ist".
From "Boletin de Ferro-Carriles". Cadiz: 1862.
"La novedad que nos comunica de la existencia de traducciones tan acabadas de nuestro grande e inimitable Calderon, ostendando, hasta cierto punto, las galas y formas del original, estamos seguros sera acogida con favor, si no con entusiasmo, per los verdaderos amantes de las letras espanolas. A ellos nos dirijimos, recomendandoles el ultimo trabajo del Senor Mac-Carthy, seguros de que participaran del mismo placer que nosotros hemos experimentado al examinar su fiel, al par que brillante traduccion; y en cuanto a la dificil tentativa de los asonantes ingleses, nos sorpende que el Senor Mac-Carthy haya podido sacar tanto parido, si se considera la indole peculiar de los dos idiomas".
Extracts from Letters addressed to the Author.
From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Esq. Cambridge, near Boston, America, April 29, 1862.
"I thank you very much for your new work in the vast and flowery fields of Calderon. It is, I think, admirable; and presents the old Spanish dramatist before the English reader in a very attractive light.
"Particularly in the most poetical passages you are excellent; as, for instance, in the fine description of the gerfalcon and the heron in 'El Mayor Encanto'.-11 Jor.
"Your previous volumes I have long possessed and highly prized; and I hope you mean to add more and more, so as to make the translation as nearly complete as a single life will permit. It seems rather appalling to undertake the whole of so voluminous a writer. Nevertheless, I hope you will do it. Having proved that you can, perhaps you ought to do it. This may be your appointed work. It is a noble one.
"With much regard, I am, etc., "HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
"Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, Esq.".
From the Same. Nahant, near Boston, August 10, 1857.
"MY DEAR SIR,
"Before leaving Cambridge to come down here to the sea-side, I had the pleasure of receiving your precious volume of 'Mysteries of Corpus Christi'; and should have thanked you sooner for your kindness in sending it to me, had I not been very busy at the time in getting out my last volume of Dante.
"I at once read your work, with eagerness and delight-that peculiar and strange delight which Calderon gives his admirers, as peculiar and distinct as the flavour of an olive from that of all other fruits.
"You are doing this work admirably, and seem to gain new strength and sweetness as you go on. It seems as if Calderon himself were behind you whispering and suggesting. And what better work could you do in your bright hours or in your dark hours than just this, which seems to have been put providentially into your hands!
"The extracts from the 'Sacred Parnassus' in the Chronicle, which reached me yesterday, are also excellent.
"For this and all, many and many thanks.
"Yours faithfully, "HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
"Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, Esq.".
From George Ticknor, Esq., the Historian of Spanish Literature. "Boston, 16th December, 1861.
"In this point of view, your volume seems to me little less than marvellous. If I had not read it-indeed, if I had not carefully gone through with the "Devocion de la Cruz", I should not have believed it possible to do what you have done. Titian, they say, and some others of the old masters, laid on colours for their groundwork wholly different from those they used afterwards, but which they counted upon to shine through, and contribute materially to the grand results they produced. So in your translations, the Spanish seems to come through to the surface; the original air is always perceptible in your variations. It is like a family likeness coming out in the next generation, yet with the freshness of originality.
"But the rhyme is as remarkable as the verse and the translation; not that you have made the asonante as perceptible to the English ear as it is to the Spanish; our cumbersome consonants make that impossible. But the wonder is, that you have made it perceptible at all. I think I perceive your asonantes much as I do those of August Schlegel or Gries, and more than I do those of Friederich Schlegel. But he was the first who tried them, and, besides, I am not a German. Would it not be amusing to have the experiment tried in French?"
From the Same. "Boston, March 20, 1867.
"The world has claims on you which you ought not to evade; and, if the path in which you walk of preference, leads to no wide popularity or brilliant profits, it is, at least, one you have much to yourself, and cannot fail to enjoy. You have chosen it from faithful love, and will always love it; I suspect partly because it is your own choice, because it is peculiarly your own".
From the Same. "Boston, July 3, 1867.
"Considered from this point of view, I think that in your present volume ["Mysteries of Corpus Christi", or "Autos Sacramentales" of Calderon] you are always as successful as you were in your previous publications of the same sort, and sometimes more so; easier, I mean, freer, and more happily expressive. If I were to pick out my first preference, I should take your fragment of the 'Veneno y Triaca', at the end; but I think the whole volume is more fluent, pleasing, and attractive than even its predecessors".
From the first of English religious painters.
"I cannot resist the impulse I have of offering you my most grateful thanks for the greatest intellectual treat I have ever experienced in my life, and which you have afforded me in the magnificent translations of the divine Calderon; for, surely, of all the poets the world ever saw, he alone is worthy of standing beside the author of the Book of Job and of the Psalms, and entrusted, like them, with the noble mission of commending to the hearts of others all that belongs to the beautiful and true, ever directing the thoughtful reader through the love of the beautiful veil, to the great Author of all perfection.
"I cannot conceive a nation can receive a greater boon than being helped to a love of such works as the religious dramas of this Prince of Poets. I have for years felt this, and as your translations appeared, have read them with the greatest possible interest. I knew not of the publication of the last, and it was to an accidental, yet, with me, habitual outburst of praise of Calderon, as the antidote and cure for the trifling literature of the day, that my friend (the) D-- made me aware of its being out".
[The work especially referred to in the latter part of this interesting letter is the following: "Mysteries of Corpus Christi (Autos Sacramentales), from the Spanish of Calderon, by Denis Florence Mac-Carthy". Duffy, Dublin and London, 1867.]
Extracts from American and Canadian Journals.
From an eloquent article in the "Boston Courier", March 18, 1862, written by George Stillman Hillard, Esq., the author of "Six Months in Italy"-a delightful book, worthy of the beautiful country it so beautifully describes.
"Calderon is one of the three greatest names in Spanish literature, Lope de Vega and Cervantes being the other two. He is also a great
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