These long winter evenings I find myself dedicating some of my time (quite a bit, actually) editing my translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Even as I reread the Comedy I marvel, as does pretty well everyone else who reads his work, at the power of Dante's poetry and at the depth of his vision of human beings. There are moments, though, when Dante frames a thought, or expresses an idea, in such a way that makes us realize that even a “divine” poet is, well, just like one of us in his fallibility.
Here is one of them.
In one of the tercets of Canto XVI of the Paradiso one of Dante's ancestors (Cacciaguida, now among the blessed in Heaven) describes for him the place where he was born. Here is the original tercet:
Li antichi miei e io nacqui nel loco
dove si truova pria l’ultimo sesto
da quei che corre il vostro annual gioco. (40-42)
dove si truova pria l’ultimo sesto
da quei che corre il vostro annual gioco. (40-42)
Translating the first line proved to be a bit of a head scratcher, since its grammar is either deliberately messed up or it follows some arcane medieval rule. The verb “nacqui” (was born) is singular and should agree with a singular subject. Yet the subject here is plural, being made up of “antichi miei” (my ancestors) and “io” (I); so that a literal Friulian tranlation of the first line would have to be “i me antenàs e jò i eri nasùt in tal post...” (My ancestors and I was born in this place...). But this made no sense, so I opted for this translation of the tercet, disregarding whatever mysterious dictate may have been followed by Dante:
Jò e i me antenàs nasùs i èrin tal lòuc
indulà cal scumìnsa il ultin sest
par chèl che ogni àn al còr tal vustri zòuc.
For good measure I consulted several English translations of these same lines. Relief: even the English translators , faced with the same problem, chose to use the same grammatical structure I had chosen, as is clear from Longfellow's translation:
My ancestors and I our birthplace had
Where first is found the last ward of the city
By him who runneth in your annual game.
That's one example. (Fairly trivial, really, since it has to do with a rule (or with the absence of a rule) of grammar, that is hardly likely to upset the grand scheme of things.)
In the same canto of Paradiso, though, we come across another tercet that, though faultless in its medieval and modern grammar, shows us, even so, how much like us (or at least some of us) the divine poet could be. Here is the original tercet:
Sempre la confusion de le persone
principio fu del mal de la cittade,
come del vostro il cibo che s’appone; (67-69)
My translation:
’L inflùs di zens nòvis al crèa cunfušiòn
e chistu al è sempri’un mal pa li contràdis,
com’che mal ghi vèn a un che masa al è mangjòn;
And Longfellow's translation:
Ever the intermingling of the people
Has been the source of malady in cities,
As in the body food it surfeits on;
No head scratching here over grammar or syntax. That's clear. Cacciaguida's attitude in these lines, though (and therefore Dante's), is the sort of attitude that in today's Italy and Europe and, yes, in today's US, would make lots of people nod in approval and an equal number (or more) shake their heads in dismay.
