&'H t«,j ril'iH'i&WiSfSrX-X -<1' 'l.f >'t!tI>X<^S' '1', l' Presented to the Department of Romance Languages BY T. F. CRANE 1548 PQ 6292?A1Mir'l875' '""'"^ ^*^'mAmmm}lLSS''^°"A '""" ar ber erste, ber ben aerSud^ baju ma&jtt, unb aufSerbent bin ict) .Rein S)eutScl)er. SButbe eS n{(^t lustig Sein; n)enn man einmal ein Sold^cS Sjpctimcnt in franjbgc^ic^er ©pracijc woltc 'i" "£>^ne swetfel refirbe SOtacSart^^ D|ne ben tjorgaug bcutsdjcr 9tact)btlbner bes Ealberon ebenSo reenig borauf ge= Eommen Sein engUSd)e JCSSonanjen gu BfrSud)en/ alS man ol)ne baS ctmun= ternbe ffieiSpiel beutSc^er Sid)ter unb UebevSetjer barauf geJommen Scin murbf/ in UeberSetjungen unb origtnalbict)tun= gen unter reeldjen letjtern wol beSonbetS Congfelloto'S "Evangeline", ju nennen ist, englisc^c i&erameter ju ucrgudjen/ xoai in leister jeit gar nid)t Selten ges= d^eljen ist '. &%ituii'ixDrn fflonlintnlal "^tintias. From " Boh tin de Ferro-Carriles"- Cadiz; 1862. "La novedad que nos comunica de Calderon^s Dramas and Aulas. la, existencia de traduociones tan aca- badas de nuestro grande e inimitable Cal- deron, osteudando, hasta cierto punto, las galas y formas del original, estamos seguros sera acogida con favor, si no con entusiasmo, per los verdaderos a- mantes de las letras espaiiolas. A eUos nos dirijimos, reeomendandoles el ul- timo trabajo del Senor Mae-Carthy, seguros de que participaran del mismo placer que nosotros hemos experimen- tado al examinar su fiel, al par que brillante traduccion ; y en cuanto a la diflcil tentativa de los asonantes in- gleses, nos sorpende que el Sefior Mac- Carthy haya podido sacar tanto par- ido, si se considera la indole peculiar de los dos idiomas". i^tmcts ixam ^dkte abbnsseb to From Henry Wadswerth 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 at- tractive light. "Particularly in the most poetical passages you are excellent ; as, for in- ^sijance, in the fine description of the fe.%J_con and the heron 'in ' El Mayor Encanto'. — 11 J or. " 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., "HenetW. Longfellow. " Denis Florence Mac-Cartliy, Esq.". From, the Same. Nahant, near Boston, August 10, 1867. " My Deak Sib, "Before leaving Cambridge to come down here to the sea- side, I had the pleasure of receiving your precious volume of ' Mysteries of Corpus Chris- ti'; 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 ea- gerness and delight— that peculiar and strange delight which Calderon gives his admirers, as peculiar and distinct as the fiavour 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 Par- nassus' in the Chronicle, which reached me yesterday, are also excellent. " Eor this and all, many and many thanks. "Yours faithfully, " Henky W. Longfellow. *' Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, Esq.". From George Tichnor, Esq., the Hisio^ rian of Spanish Literature, "Boston, leth 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 after- wards, but which they counted upon to shine through, and contribute mate- rially to the grand results tliey pro- duced. So in your translations, the Spanish seems to come through to the surface ; the original air is always per- ceptible 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 percep- tible to the English ear as it is to the Spanish ; our cumbersome consonants make that imnossible. But the wonder Calderon's Dramas and Autos. is, that you have made it perceptible (A all. I think I perceive your asonantes much as I do those of August Schlegel or Gries, and more than I do those of Friederlch Schlegel. But he was the first who tried them, and, besides, I am not a German. Would it not be amu- sing to have the experiment tried in French ?" From the Same. " Boston, March 20, 18G7. " 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 religio^.s painters. April 24, 1867. " I cannot resist the impulse I have of offering you my most grateful thanks for the greatest inteUeotual treat I have ever expei-ienced 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 beau- tiful and true, ever directing the thoughtful reader through the love of " I cannot conceive a nation can re- ceive 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 transla- tions 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 Calde- ron, as the antidote and cure for the trifling literature of the day, that my friend {the) B — made me aware of its being out". [The work especially referred to in the latter part of this interesting letter js the following : " Mysteries of Corpus Christi {Autos acramentales), from the Spanish of Calderon, by Denis Florence Mac-Carthy". Duffy, Dublin and London, 1867.] <£.%kutiz from %mnum. anb daita- bimt lauitiHls. From an eloquent article in the " Boston Courier" , March 18, i8ti2, written by George Stillman Millard, Esq., the author of " Six Months in Ilali/" — a delightjul book, worthy of the beauti- ful country it so beautijullg 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 name in the universal realm of letters, though out of Spain he is little more than a great name, except in Germany, that land so hospitable to famous wits, and where, to readers and critics of a mystical and transcendental turn, his peculiar genius strongly commended him. To form a notion of what manner of man Calde- ron was, we must imagine a writer hardly inferior to Shakespeare in fer- tility of invention and dramatic insight, inspired by a religious fervour like that of Doune or Crashaw, and endowed with the wild and ethereal imagination of Shelley. But the religious fervour is Catholic, not Protestant, Southern, not Northern : it is intense, mystical, and ecstatic : like a tongue of upward- darting flame, it bums and trembles with impassioned impulse to mingle with empyrean fire. The imagination, too, is not merely southern, but with an oriental element shining through it, like the ruddy heart of an opal". . . Calderoris Dramas and Autos. " But our purpose is not to speak of Calderon, but of his translator Mr. MacCarthy ; and to make our readers acquainted with his very successful effort to reproduce in English some of the most characteristic productions of the genius of Spain, retaining even one of the peculiarities in the structure of the Terse which has hardly ever been transplanted from the soE of the pe- ninsula", . . . " Mr. MacCarthy's translations strike us as among the most successful experi- ments which have been made to repre- sent in our language the characteristic beauties of the finest productions of other nations. They are sufficiently faithful, as may be readily seen by the Spanish scholar, as the translator has the courage to print the original and his version side by side. The rich, imaginative passages of Calderon are reproduced in language of such grace and flexibility as shows in Mr. Mac- Carthy no inconsiderable amount of poetical power. The measures of Cal- deron are retained; the rhymed pas- sages are translated into rhyme, and what is more noticeable stiU, Mr. Mac- Carthy has done what no writer in Eng- lish has ever before essayed, except to a very limited extent— he has copied the asonanies of the original". . . . "We take leave of Mr. MacCarthy with hearty acknowledgments for the pleasure we have had in reading his excellent translations, which have given us a sense of Calderon's various and brilliant genius such as we never before had, and no analysis of his dramas, however full and careful, could be- stow"- From a Review of " Love the Oreaiest JUnchantinent", etc., in the " New York Tahlet'\ Juli/ 19, 1 862, Written by the gifted and ill-fated Hon. Th'imas IfArcy M'Gte, of Montreal. " This beautiful volume before us — like virtue's self, fair within and with- out — is Mr. Mac-Carthy's second con- tribution to the Herculean task which Longfellow cheers him on to continue — the translation into English of the complete works of Calderon. Two experimental volumes, containing six dramas of the same author, appeared n 1853, winning the well-merited en- comium of every person of true taste into whose hands they happened to fall. The Translator was encouraged, if not by the general chorus of popular applause, by the precious and emphatic approbation of those best entitled by knowledge and accomplishments to pronounce judgment. So here, after an interval of seven years, we have right worthily presented to us three of those famous Autos, which for two centuries drew together all the multi- tude of the Madrilenos, on the annual return of the great feast of Corpus Christi. On that same self-same festi- val, in a northern land, under a gray and clouded sky, in the heart of a city most unlike gay, garden-hued, out-of- door Madrid, we have spent the long hours over these resurrected dramas, and the spell of both the poets is still upon us, as we unite together, in dutiful juxtaposition, the names of Calderon and Mac-Carthy. " How richly gifted was this Spanish priest-poet ! this pious playwright ! this moral mechanist ! this devout drama- tist ! How rare his experience ! how broad the contrasts of his career, and of his observation Happy poet ! blessed with such fecundity ! Happy Christian! blessed with such fidelity to the divine teachings of the Cross. . . . " Very highly do we reverence Cal- deron, and very highly value his trans- lator ; yet, if it be not presumptuous to say so, we venture to suggest that Mac-Carthy might find nearer home another work still worthier of his ge- nius than these translations. Now that he has got the imperial ear by bringing his costly wares from afar, are there not laurels to be gathered as well in Ireland as in Spain? The author of 'The Bell-Eounder', of 'St, Brendan's Voyage', of ' The Foray of Con O'Don- neir, and 'The Pillar Towers', needs no prompting to discern what abundant materials for a new department of En- glish poetry are to be found almost unused on Irish ground. May we not hope that in that field or forest he may find his appointed work, adding to the glory of first worthily introducing Calderon to the English readers of this century, the still higher glory of doing for the neglected history of his fatherland what he has chivah'ously done for the illustrious Spaniard''- fto.-W^ ^ULk , U7 2^ €^xtt ^xumm of Caltr^rott, jFrom t!)C Spanisfi. LOVE THE GREATEST ENCHANTMENT, THE SORCERIES OF SIN, AND THE DEVOTION OF THE CROSS. BY DENIS FLOEENCE MAC-CAKTHY, DUBLIN: W. B. KELLY, 8 GRAFTON STREET. 1870. WIVt ki;t'i Y I { . I. i I. \f Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027516701 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, M.R.I. A. WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO EACH DRAMA, AND NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR, AND THE SPANISH TEXT FROM THE EDITIONS OF HARTZENBUSCH, KEIL, AND APONTES. LONDON: LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN AND ROBERTS. 1861. TO GEORGE TICKNOR, ESQ, THE HISTORIAN OF SPANISH LITERATURE, C$ts 5Eol«me IS INSCRIBED IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF INFORMATION LIBERALLY COMMUNICATED, AND PRAISE GENEROUSLY BESTOWED. PREFACE. |N 1853 I publiflied two volumes of tranflations from the SpaniQi of Calderon, which contained the firft (as it ftill continues to be the only) complete verfion of any of his plays that has ever been prefented to the Englifh reader.* This attempt met with as much fuccefs as I could have reafonably anticipated for it, confidering the circumftances under which the work grew up, as detailed in the preface, and the timidity with which I fhrunk from the whole metrical diiEculties of my tafk — dif- ficulties which then appeared to me to be fo infurmountable, that, had I the time, I fcarcely would have had the courage to try and overcome. A forced leifure, however, of many months, occurring at irregular intervals, but extending through the whole of the intervening period, * The dramas contained in thofe volumes are the following : — The Purgatory of Saint Patrick, The Conftant Prince, The Scarf and the Plainer, The Phyfician of his oivn Honour, The Secret in Words, and Lome after Death. The remark in the text is by no means meant to difparage Mr. Fitzgerald's Six Plays of Calderon freely tranf- lated, London, 1853, the nervous blank verfe of which, though I think unfuited to Calderon, I greatly admire ; but furely a tranflator who confeffes that he has " funk, reduced, altered, and replaced" whatever did not feem to him particularly "fine" in his author, can fcarcely be taken as a fatisfaftory interpreter of a poet whofe very de- fefts and extravagances are as charafleriftic of his genius as are his beauties. viii PREFACE. having again induced me to refume my labours upon Calderon, I felt the very difficulties, which before I had left unattempted, an attraftion and an incentive, as fupplying a more laborious occupation, and a more engroffing diftraflion. I felt, too, a fincere artiftic conviftion that I was bound to do mybeft for a poet whom I had been, to feme extent, mftru- mental in introducing to a foreign audience, and a determination that he fhould not fufFer in their eftimation by any wilful omiffion or negled on the part of him at whofe invitation he had appeared before them. Two things I fet before me at the beginning of my renewed tafk, which, I truft, I have pretty faithfully obferved to the end ; namely, in the firft place, to give the meaning of my author exaftly, and in its integrity, neither departing from it through diffufenefs, nor cramping it through condenfation j and, fecondly, to exprefs it ftriftly in the form of the original, or not to exprefs it at all. It is by no means my intention to enter into the oft-debated queftion as to the principles which fhould guide or coerce the tranflator in his tafk. As far as the tranflator is concerned, it is a much eafier thing to produce a popular and flowing verfion of any foreign poem or play, than a faithful and exa6l one ; and the efFeft to be produced will fo depend upon the capacity and culture of the reader,— whether, in a word, he will have his German or Spanifh fo thoroughly " done into Englifh," as to have every particle of its original nature eliminated out of it, or will have it faithfully prefented to him, with all its native peculiarities pre- ferved, — is fo much a matter of tafte, that no definite rule can ever be arrived at in the matter. What Mr. Newman has faid upon this fubjedt fo entirely agrees with my own imprefllons, that I print his ob- fervations here, the more readily, that I have been adluated independently by the fame conviftions long before I was aware that they were fhared by him. Mr. Newman, alluding to fome of his own critics, who had laid down, as axioms, certain principles which he confiders to be utterly PREFACE. falfe and ruinous to tranflation, thus proceeds :— " One of thefe is, that the reader ought, if poffible, to forget that it is a tranflation at all, and be lulled into the illufion that he is reading an original work. Of courfe, a neceflary inference from fuch a dogma is, that whatever has a foreign colour is undefirable, and is even a grave defed. The tranflator, it feems, muft carefully obliterate all that is charafteriftic of the original, unlefs it happens to be identical in fpirit to fomething already familiar in Englifli. From fuch a notion I cannot too flrrongly exprefs my intenfe diflent. I aim at precifely the oppofite ; — to retain every peculiarity of the ongmal, as far as I am able, with the greater care, the more foreign it may happen to be, whether it be matter of tafte, of intelleft, or of morals."* On this principle I have a£ted throughout the entire of this volume, with what fuccefs, however, of courfe remains to be feen. The peculiar feature, then, of this Tranflation is its rigid adherence to the metres of the original, and particularly to that efpecial Spanifli one, the afonante vowel rhyme, of which but a few fcattered fpecimens exift in Englifh, and thefe rather as famples of what our language was incapable of producing to any confiderable extent, than of what it could achieve. This metre is fo very pecuUar, and fo oppofed to anything that bears the femblance of rhyme in Englifh, that I have known feveral perfons, who were able to read in the original a romance, or a fcene from a Spanifh play, and who, notwithflanding, never perceived the delicate and moft elaborate form of verfification they had been enjoying, until their attention was drawn to it ; when once feen or heard, however, the difcovery is hailed with delight, and we look or liften for the ever- recurring fimilarity of cadence or conftruftion, " the manifold wild chimes" of the Spanifh afonance, with pleafure and furprife. The numerous examples of it throughout this volume will fhow the reader * The Iliad of Homer, faithfully tranjlated into unrhymed Englifh Metre, by F. W. Newman. (London, 1856.) Preface, p. xv. PREFACE. what it is more clearly, perhaps, than any explanation ; and yet fome definition of it may not be inappropriate in this place. " The Spanifh afonante"* fays the late Lord Holland, " is a word which refembles another in the vowel on which the laft accent falls, as well as the vowel, or vowels, that follow it ; but every confonant after the accented vowel muft be different from that in the correfponding fyllable. Thus : tos and anibr^ orilla and delira, alamo and paxaro, are all afonantes." f This definition, though, perhaps, a little too limited for the boundlefs variety and freedom of the afonance, may be confidered tolerably fatisfaftory. The rhyme, fuch as it is, is not confined, as in all other languages, to a few repetitions, of which thofe in the odlave ftanza are, perhaps, the moft frequent ; but in Spanifli, the fame afonance, that is, the fame recurring fimilarity of vowel, or vowels, in the laft accented fyllable, or fyllables, of every fecond line is kept up unchanged, however long may be the ballad or the fcene in which it is commenced. In Spanifli, from the open found of the vowels, and from the copioufnefs of the language, this is eafy. In fa£t, it is faid that the difficulty lies not in producing the afonante where it is required, but in avoiding it in the intermediate lines, where it is fuperfluous. But in Englifti the cafe is very different; from the comparative weaknefs of the vowel founds,^ from the rare poffibility of combining them, and, what is ftill more, from their per- * This word is generally written ajfonant in Englifti. For a thing fo entirely Spanifli, perhaps the Spanifti form is the more appropriate one, and I have therefore followed Lord Holland and Mr. Ticknor in calling it by its original name. f Life of Lope de Vega, vol. ii. p. 215. % Mr. Newman has a remark, in the Preface from which I have already quoted, which feems to be applicable here, efpecially in reference to the general objeftion made againft the introduflion of the afonance into northern languages, namely, its infuffici- ency and incompletenefs oi found. " An accentual metre," he fays, " in a language loaded with confonants, cannot have the fame fort of founding beauty, as a quantitative metre in a highly vocalized language. It is not audible famenefs of metre, but a like- nefs oi moral genius which is to be arrived at." P. xvii. PREFACE. petual variation in quantity, anything like producing the fame efFe£t as in the Spanifh is impoflible. Yet this " ghoft of a rhyme," as Dean Trench calls it,* is better than none at all ; and I have found, from my owfn experience, that an inflexible determination to reproduce it, at whatever trouble, even though with imperfe6i: fuccefs, enables the tranf- lator more clofely to render the meaning of the original, and faves him from the danger of being tempted into difFufenefs by the facilities of expanfion which even the unrhymed trochaic, without the afonante, too readily fupplies. Tranflators who have felt the weight of too much liberty might find within the reftriifted limits of the afonance the fame falutary reftraints which Wordfworth difcovered " Within the fonnet's fcanty plot of ground" — it is to be hoped with fome flight portion of the fame fuccefs. With regard to the dramas and auto felefted for tranflation in this * In his charming little book on Calderon {Life's a Dream, &c. London, 1856), Dean Trench has the merit of being the firft to attempt the tranflation of any portion of Calderon into equivalent Englifh afonantes : his tranflations having been made, as I infer from his preface, about eighteen years before they were publiftied. I may fupply here an omiffion in the Preface to my Dramas from Calderon, when noticing the contributions to a knowledge of the Spanifli Drama which our early Englifli literature fupplies, an omiffion alfo noticeable in that part of Dean Trench's Effay which goes over the fame ground. I was not aware at the time that Preface was written that Sir Richard Fanftiaw, the tranflator of Guarini and Camoens, had given, in 164.9, ^ ^^''X pleafing verfion in (hort lyrical lines, almoft Spanifli in their fe- licity and grace, of Antonio de Mendoza's long and Angular drama, Sluerer for S.0I0 Sluerer (" To Love for Love's Sake"). This is the drama which took Charles Lamb three " well-wafted hours" to read, and, according to him, nine days to reprefent. (See the ExtraBs from the Garrick Plays in his Sped?nens of Englijh Dramatic Poets, Bohn's Ed. 1854., p. 476.) " Five or fix mortal hours," however, are the limits which Don Ramon de Mefoneros Romanos in the Apuntes Biograficos prefixed to his Dra- maticos Contemporaneos de Lope de Vega, t. ii. p. 28, puts to the patience of the audience in liftening to the fix thoufand four hundred verfes of whch the original drama confifts. PREFACE. volume, little requires to be faid in this place, as I have prefixed to each of them fuch introductory remarks as feemed neceflary for the proper underftanding of the time and circumftances of their produftion. They all may be confidered reprefentative pieces — pieces that convey a fair idea of the clafs of drama, whether Fiejla, Comedla, or Juto, to which they belong. The firft. Love the Greateji Enchantment, which is the ftory of Circe and Ulyfles, is a favourable fpecimen of the dramas which Calderon founded upon claffical or mythological fubje£ls. Of thefe he wrote altogether eighteen, and though they have been greatly admired, not alone in Germany, but in England, for the freedom with which the poet entered into pofleflion of thefe ancient fables, ufing them for his own purpofes with a freflinefs of invention ever new and ever delightful, but one only out of the eighteen has ever been even analyfed in Englifh with anything like completenefs or precifion.* The next piece. The Sorceries of Sin, is even ftill more interefting and more wonderful. It is an auto, and therefore, though dealing with the fame ftory as its foundation, is as different from the preceding play as fpirit is to matter, or the foul to the body. In fadt, the long dramatic fpeftacle in which the ancient Hellenic fable ftarts into new life, in an- other climate, and at a different era, beneath the power of a new creator, feems to be worthlefs in the poet's eyes, unlefs he can deduce from it its moral, namely, the power of Man to refift, or, at leaft, to triumph over temptation, if he will only liften to the voice of his own foul, and the filent whifperings of repentance and of grace. This he has done in The Sorceries of Sin. In the iritrodudtory remarks which I have pre- fixed to it the reader will find fome moft interefting and valuable biblio- graphical notes by Mr. Ticknor, relative to the firft publication of the * The drama alluded to is Los Tres Mayores Prodigios, on which there is a good paper in Frazer's Magazine for Auguft 1849. Ecoy Narcifo is referred to with great praife In the Weflminfler Re'vie'w for January 1851, pp. 295-307. PREFACE. autos, taken from communications which he has had the kindnefs to addrefs to me upon the fubje6t. Upon the general charadter of the autos I cannot do better than refer the reader to the third part of Dean Trench's eflay, to which I have previoufly made allufion. The celebrity of the third piece which this volume contains, The Devotion of the Crofs^ and the mifconceptions which exift as to its real charafter, will be, I truft, fufficient excufe for my having tranflated it. As in the other cafes, I refer the reader to the introdu6tory remarks prefixed to this tragedy, which Dean Trench chara