The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 43, May, 1861

Thus have been opened to navigation the waters of the Mysterious River.

When the Landers first floated down the stream in their canoe, thirty years since, they found vast forests and little cultivation, and the natives seemed to have no commerce except in slaves and yams for their support. But an officer who accompanied the several steam expeditions was astonished in his last visit to see the change which a few years had produced. New and populous towns had sprung up, extensive groves of palm-trees and gardens lined the banks, and vessels laden with oil, yams, ground-nuts, and ivory indicated the progress of legitimate commerce.

The narrative of Dr. Bairkie, a distinguished German scholar, who has written an account of the voyage of the Pleiad, will be found both interesting and instructive; and we may some day expect another volume, for he has returned to the scene of his adventures.

Another German in the service of Great Britain has given us a vivid picture of Central Africa north of the equator. Dr. Henry Barth has recently published, in four octavo volumes, a narrative of his travels in Africa for five years preceding 1857. During this period, he accompanied the Sheik of Bornou, one of the chief Negro states of Africa, on his march as far south as the Benue, explored the borders of Lake Tsadda, crossed the Niger at Sai, and visited the far-famed city of Timbuctoo. Here he incurred some danger from the fanaticism of the Moslems; but his command of Arabic, his tact and adroitness in distinguishing the Protestant worship of the Deity from the homage paid by Roman Catholics to images of the Virgin and Saints, and in illustrating the points in which his Protestant faith agreed with the Koran, extricated him from his embarrassment.

Dr. Barth found various Negro cities with a population ranging from fifteen to twenty thousand, and observed large fields of rice, cotton, tobacco, and millet. On his way to Timbuctoo, he saw a field of this last-named grain in which the stalks stood twenty-four feet high. Our Patent Office should secure some of the seed which he has doubtless conveyed to Europe. The following prices, which he names, give us an idea of the cheapness of products in Central Africa:—An ox two dollars, a sheep fifty cents, tobacco one to two cents per pound.

From the sketch we have given of the Niger and its branches, and of the countries bordering upon them, it would appear to be the proper policy of Great Britain and other commercial nations to open a way from Sierra Leone to the Niger, and to establish a colony near the confluence of this river with the Benue. From this point, which is easily accessible from the sea and the ports of the British colonies on the western coast of Africa, light steamers may probably ascend to Sego and Djenne, encountering no difficulties except at the rapids near Boussa, and may penetrate into the heart of the Soudan. In this region are mines of lead, copper, gold, and iron, a rich soil, adapted to cotton, rice, indigo, sugar, coffee, and vegetable butter, with very cheap labor. With steamers controlling the rivers, a check could here be given to the slave-trade, and to the conflicts between the Moors and Negroes, and Christianity have a fair prospect of diffusion. Such a colony is strongly recommended by Lieutenant Allen, who accompanied the expeditions of 1833 and 1842; and there can be no doubt that it would attract the caravans from the remote interior, and put an end to the perilous and tedious expeditions across the Desert.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola Illustrato nella Vita e nelle Opere, e di lui Comento Latino sulla Divina Commedia di Dante Allghieri voltalo in Italiano dall' Avvocato GIOVANNI TAMBURINI. Imola. 1855-56. 3 vol. in 8vo. [The Commentary of Benvenuto Rambaldi of Imola on the Divina Commedia, translated from Latin into Italian, by Giovanni Tamburini.]

Almost five centuries have passed since Benvenuto of Imola, one of the most distinguished men of letters of his time, was called by the University of Bologna to read a course of lectures upon the "Divina Commedia" before the students at that famous seat of learning. From that time till the present, a great part of his "Comment" has lain in manuscript, sharing the fate of the other earliest commentaries on the poem of Dante, not one of which, save that of Boccaccio, was given to the press till within a few years. This neglect is the more strange, since it was from the writers of the fourteenth century, almost contemporary as they were with Dante, that the most important illustrations both of the letter and of the sense of the "Divina Commedia" were naturally to be looked for. When they wrote, the lapse of time had not greatly obscured the memory of the events which the poet had recorded, or to which he had referred. The studies with which he had been familiar, the external sources from which he had drawn inspiration, had undergone no essential change in direction or in nature. The same traditions and beliefs possessed the intellects of men. Similar social and political influences moulded their characters. The distance that separated Dante from his first commentators was mainly due to the surpassing nature of his genius, which, in some sort, made him, and still makes him, a stranger to all men, and very little to changes like those which have slowly come about in the passage of centuries, and which divide his modern readers from the poet.

It was the intention of Benvenuto, as he tells us, "to elucidate what was dark in the poem being veiled under figures, and to explain what was involved in its multiplex meanings." But his Comment is more illustrative than analytic, more literal than imaginative, and its chief value lies in the abundance of current legends which it contains, and in the number of stories related in it, which exhibit the manners or illustrate the history of the times. So great, indeed, is the value of this portion of his work, that Muratori, to whom a large debt of gratitude is due from all students of Italian history, published in 1738, in the first volume of his "Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi," a selection of such passages, amounting altogether to about one half of the whole Comment. However satisfactory this incomplete publication might be to the mere historical investigator, the students of the "Divina Commedia" could not but regret that the complete work had not been printed,—and they accordingly welcomed with satisfaction the announcement, a few years since, of the volumes whose title stands at the head of this article, which professed to contain a translation of the whole Comment. It seemed a pity, indeed, that it should have been thought worth while to translate a book addressing itself to a very limited number of readers, most of whom were quite as likely to understand the original Latin as the modern Italian, while also a special value attached to the style and form in which it was first written. But no one could have suspected what "translation" meant in the estimation of the Signor Tamburini, whose name appears on the title-page as that of the translator.

Traduttore—traditore, "Translator—traitor," says the proverb; and of all traitors shielded under the less offensive name, Signor Tamburini is beyond comparison the worst we have ever had the misfortune to encounter. A place is reserved for him in that lowest depth in which, according to Dante's system, traitors are punished.

It appears from his preface that Signor Tamburini is not without distinction in the city of Imola. He has been President of the Literary Academy named that of "The Industrious." To have been President of all Academy in the Roman States implies that the person bearing this honor was either an ecclesiastic or a favorite of ecclesiastics. Hitherto, no one could hold such an office without having his election to it confirmed by a central board of ecclesiastical inspectors (la Sacra Congregazione degli Studj) at Rome. The reason for noticing this fact in connection with Signor Tamburini will soon become apparent.

In his preface, Signor Tamburini declares that in the first division of the poem he has kept his translation close to the original, while in the two later divisions he had been meno legato, "less exact," in his rendering. This acknowledgment, however unsatisfactory to the reader, presented at least an appearance of fairness. But, from a comparison of Signor Tamburini's work with the portions of the original preserved by Muratori, we have satisfied ourselves that his honesty is on a level with his capacity as a translator, and what his capacity is we propose to enable our readers to judge for themselves. For our own part, we have been unable to distinguish any important difference in the methods of translation followed in the three parts of the Comment.

So far as we are aware, this book has not met with its dues in Europe. The well-known Dantophilist, Professor Blanc of Halle, speaks of it in a note to a recent essay (Versuch einer blos philogischen Erklärung der Göttlichen Komödie, von Dr. L.G. Blanc, Halle, 1860, p. 5) as "a miserably unsatisfactory translation," but does not give the grounds of his assertion. We intend to show that a grosser literary imposition has seldom been attempted than in these volumes. It is an outrage on the memory of Dante not less than on that of Benvenuto. The book is worse than worthless to students; for it is not only full of mistakes of carelessness, stupidity, and ignorance, but also of wilful perversions of the meaning of the original by additions, alterations, and omissions. The three large volumes contain few pages which do not afford examples of mutilation or misrepresentation of Benvenuto's words. We will begin our exhibition of the qualities of the Procrustean mistranslator with an instance of his almost incredible carelessness, which is, however, excusable in comparison with his more wilful faults. Opening the first volume at page 397, we find the following sentence,—which we put side by side with the original as given by Muratori. The passage relates to the 33d and succeeding verses of Canto XVI.

TAMBURINI

Qui Dante fa menzione di Guido Guerra, e meravigliano molti della modestia dell' autore, che da costui e dalla di lui moglie tragga l'origine sua, mentre poteva derivarla care di gratitudine affettuosa a quella,—Gualdrada,—stipito suo,—dandole nome e tramandandola quasi all' eternità, mentre per sè stessa sarebbe forse rimasta sconosciuta.

BENVENUTO.

Et primo incepit a digniori, scilicet a Guidone Guerra; et circa istius descriptionem lectori est aliqualiter immorandum, quia multi mirantur, immo truffantur ignoranter, quod Dantes, qui poterat describere istum praeclarum virum a claris progenitoribus et ejus claris gestis, describit eum ab una femina, avita sua, Domna Gualdrada. Sed certe Auctor fecit talem descriptionem tam laudabiliter quam prudenter, ut heic implicite tangeret originem famosae stirpis istius, et ut daret meritam famam et laudem huic mulieri dignissimae.

A literal translation will afford the most telling comment on the nature of the Italian version.

TRANSLATION.

Here Dante makes mention of Guido Guerras, and many marvel at the modesty of the Author, in deriving his own origin from him and from his wife, when he might have derived it from a more noble source. But I find in such modesty the greater merit, in that he did not wish to fail in affectionate gratitude toward her,—Gualdrada,—his ancestress,—giving her name and handing her down as it were to eternity, while she by herself would perhaps have remained unknown.

TRANSLATION.

In the first place he began with the worthiest, namely, Guido Guerra; and in regard to the description of this man it is to be dwelt upon a little by the reader, because scoff at Dante, because, when he might have described this very distinguished man by his distinguished ancestors and his distinguished deeds, he does describe him by a woman, his grandmother, the Lady Gualdrada. But certainly the author did this not less praiseworthily than wisely, that he might here, by implication, touch upon the origin of that famous family, and might give a merited fame and praise to this most worthy woman.

It will be noticed that Signor Tamburini makes Dante derive his own origin from Gualdrada,—a mistake from which the least attention to the original text, or the slightest acquaintance with the biography of the poet, would have saved him.

Another amusing instance of stupidity occurs in the comment on the 135th verse of Canto XXVIII., where, speaking of the young king, son of Henry II. of England, Benvenuto says, "Note here that this youth was like another Titus the son of Vespasian, who, according to Suetonius, was called the love and delight of the human race." This simple sentence is rendered in the following astounding manner: "John [the young king] was, according to Suetonius, another Titus Vespasian, the love and joy of the human race"!

Again, in giving the account of Guido da Montefeltro, (Inferno, Canto XXVII.,) Benvenuto says on the lines,

—e poi fui Cordeliero,Credendomi si cinto fare ammenda,

"And then I became a Cordelier, believing thus girt to make amends,"—"That is, hoping under such a dress of misery and poverty to make amends for my sins; but others did not believe in him [in his repentance]. Wherefore Dominus Malatesta, having learned from one of his household that Dominus Guido had become a Minorite Friar, took precautions that he should not be made the guardian of Rimini." This last sentence is rendered by our translator,—"One of the household of Malatesta related to me (!) that Ser Guido adopted the dress of a Minorite Friar, and sought by every means not to be appointed guardian of Rimini." A little farther on the old commentator says,—"He died and was buried in Ancona, and I have heard many things about him which may afford a sufficient hope of his salvation"; but he is made to say by Signor Tamburini,—"After his death and burial in Ancona many works of power were ascribed to him, and I have a sweet hope that he is saved."

We pass over many instances of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must give here the two texts.

BENVENUTO

Et heic nota, ut videas, si magna nobilitas vigebat paulo ante in Bretenorio, quod tempore istius Guidonis, quando aliquis vir nobilis et honorabilis applicabat ad terram, magna contentio erat inter multos nobiles de Bretenorio, in cujus domum ille talis forensis deberet declinare. Propter quod concorditer convenerunt inter se, quod columna lapidea figeretur in medio plateae cum multis annulis ferreis, et omnis superveniens esset hospes illius ad cujus annulum alligaret equum.

TRANSLATION.

And here take notice, that you may see if great nobility flourished a little before this time in Brettinoro, that, in the days of this Guido, when any noble and honorable man came to the place, there was a great rivalry among the many nobles of Brettinoro, as to which of them should receive the stranger in his house. Wherefore they harmoniously agreed that a column of stone should be set up in the middle of the square, furnished with many iron rings, and any one who arrived should be the guest of him to whose ring he might tie his horse.

TAMBURINI

Al tempo di Guido in Brettinoro anche i nobili aravano le terre; ma insorsero discordie fra essi, e sparve la innocenza di vita, e con essa la liberalità. I brettinoresi determinarono di alzare in piazza una colonna con intorno tanti anelli di ferro, quanto le nobili famiglie di quel castello, e chi fosse arrivato ed avesse legato il cavallo ad uno de' predetti anelli, doveva esser ospite della famiglia, che indicava l' anello cui il cavallo era attaccato.

TRANSLATION.

In the time of Guido in Brettinoro even the nobles ploughed the land; but discords arose among them, and innocence of life disappeared, and with it liberality. The people of Brettinoro determined to erect in the pub lic square a column with as many iron rings upon it as there were noble families in that stronghold, and he who should arrive and tie his horse to one of those rings was to be the guest of the family pointed out by the ring to which the horse was attached.

Surely, Signor Tamburini has fixed the dunce's cap on his own head so that it can never he taken off. The commonest Latin phrases, which the dullest schoolboy could not mistranslate, he misunderstands, turning the pleasant sense of the worthy commentator into the most self-contradictory nonsense.

"Ad confirmandum propositum," says Benvenuto, "oceurrit mihi res jocosa,"5 —"In confirmation of this statement, a laughable matter occurs to me"; and he goes on to relate a story about the famous astrologer Pietro di Abano. But our translator is not content without making him stultify himself, and renders the words we have quoted, "A maggiore conferma referiro un fatto a me accaduto"; that is, he makes Benvenuto say, "I will report an incident that happened to me," and then go on to tell the story of Pietro di Abano, which had no more to do with him than with Signor Tamburini himself.

We might fill page after page with examples such as these of the distortions and corruptions of Benvenuto's meaning which we have noted on the margin of this so-called translation. But we have given more than enough to prove the charge of incompetence against the President of the "Academy of the Industrious," and we pass on to exhibit him now no longer as simply an ignoramus, but as a mean and treacherous rogue.

Among the excellent qualities of Benvenuto there are few more marked than his freedom in speaking his opinion of rulers and ecclesiastics, and in holding up their vices to reproach, while at the same time he shows a due spirit of respect for proper civil and ecclesiastical authority. In this he imitates the temper of the poet upon whose work he comments,—and in so doing he has left many most valuable records of the character and manners especially of the clergy of those days—He loved a good story, and he did not hesitate to tell it even when it went hard against the priests. He knew and he would not hide the corruptions of the Church, and he was not the man to spare the vices which were sapping the foundations not so much of the Church as of religion itself. But his translator is of a different order of men, one of the devout votaries of falsehood and concealment; and he has done his best to remove some of the most characteristic touches of Benvenuto's work, regarding them as unfavorable to the Church, which even now in the nineteenth century cannot well bear to have exposed the sins committed by its rulers and its clergy in the thirteenth or fourteenth. Signor Tamburini has sought the favor of ecclesiastics, and gained the contempt of such honest men as have the ill-luck to meet with his book. Wherever Benvenuto uses a phrase or tells an anecdote which can be regarded as bearing in any way against the Church, we may be sure to find it either omitted or softened down in this Papalistic version. We give a few specimens.

In the comment on Canto III. of the "Inferno," Benvenuto says, speaking of Dante's great enemy, Boniface VIII.,—"Auctor ssepissime dicit de ipso Bonifacio magna mala, qui de rei veritate fuit magnanimus peccator": "Our author very often speaks exceedingly ill of Boniface, who was in very truth a grand sinner." This sentence is omitted in the translation.

Again, on the well-known verse, (Inferno, xix. 53,) "Se' tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?" Benvenuto commenting says,—"Auctor quando ista scripsit, viderat pravam vitam Bonifacii, ct ejus mortem rabidam. Ideo bene judicavit eum damnatum…. Heic dictus Nicolaus improperat Bonifacio duo mala. Primo, quia Sponsam Christ! fraudulenter assumpsit de manu simplicis Pastoris. Secundo, quia etiam earn more meretricis tractavit, simoniacc vendcndo eam, et tyrannice tractando": "The author, when he wrote these things, had witnessed the evil life of Boniface, and his raving death. Therefore he well judged him to be damned…. And here the aforementioned Pope Nicholas charges two crimes upon Boniface: first, that he had taken the Bride of Christ by deceit from the hand of a simple-minded Pastor; second, that he had treated her as a harlot, simoniacally selling her, and tyrannically dealing with her."

These two sentences are omitted by the translator; and the long further account which Benvenuto gives of the election and rule of Boniface is throughout modified by him in favor of this "magnanimus peccator." And so also the vigorous narrative of the old commentator concerning Pope Nicholas III. is deprived of its most telling points: "Nam fuit primus in cujus curia palam committeretur Simonia per suos attinentes. Quapropter multum ditavit eos possessionibus, pecuniis et castellis, super onmes Romanos": "For he was the first at whose court Simony was openly committed in favor of his adherents. Whereby he greatly enriched them with possessions, money, and strongholds, above all the Romans." "Sed quod Clerici capiunt raro dimittunt": "What the clergy have once laid hands on, they rarely give up." Nothing of this is found in the Italian,—and history fails of her dues at the hands of this tender-conscienced modernizer of Benvenuto. The comment on the whole canto is in this matter utterly vitiated.

In the comment on Canto XXIX. of the "Inferno," which is full of historic and biographic material of great interest, but throughout defaced by the license of the translator, occurs a passage in regard to the Romagna, which is curious not only as exhibiting the former condition of that beautiful and long-suffering portion of Italy, but also as applying to its recent state and its modern grievances.

BENVENUTO.

Judicio meo mihi videtur quod quatuor deduxerunt eam nobilem provinciam ad tantam desolationem. Primum est avaritia Pastorum Ecclesiae, qui nunc vendunt unam terram, nunc aliam; et nunc unus favet uni Tyranno, nunc alius alteri, secundum quod saepe mutantur officiales. Secundum est pravitas Tyrannorum suorum, qui semper inter se se lacerant et rodunt, et subditos excoriant. Tertium est fertilitas locorum ipsius provinciae, cujus pinguedo allicit barbaros et externos in praedam. Quartum est invidia, quae viget in cordibus ipsorum incolarum.

TAMBURINI.

Per me ritengo, che quattro fossero le cagioni per cui la Romagna si ridusse a tanta desolazione: l' abuso per avarizia di alcuni ecclesiastici, che alienarono or una, or un' altra terra, e si misero d' accordo coi tiranni,—i tiranni stessi che sempre erano discordi fra loro a danno de' sudditi,—la fertilità de' terreni, che troppo alletta gli strani, ed i barbari,—l' invidia, che regna fra gli stessi roma gnuoli.

"In my judgment," says Benvenuto, who speaks with the authority of long experience and personal observation, "it seems to me that four things have brought that noble province to so great desolation. The first of which is, the avarice of the Pastors of the Church, who now sell one tract of its land, and now another; while one favors one Tyrant, and another another, so that the men in authority are often changed. The second is, the wickedness of the Tyrants themselves, who are always tearing and biting each other, and fleecing their subjects. The third is, the fertility of the province itself, which by its very richness allures barbarians and foreigners to prey upon it. The fourth is, that spirit of jealousy which flourishes in the hearts of the inhabitants themselves." It will be noticed that the translator changes the phrase, "the avarice of the Pastors of the Church," into "the avarice of some ecclesiastics," while throughout the passage, as indeed throughout every page of the work, the vigor of Benvenuto's style and the point of his animated sentences are quite lost in the flatness of a dull and inaccurate paraphrase.

A passage in which the spirit of the poet has fully roused his manly commentator is the noble burst of indignant reproach with which he inveighs against and mourns over Italy in Canto VI. of the "Purgatory":—

Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello,Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta,Non donna di provincie, ma bordello.

"Nota metaphoram pulcram: sicut enim in lupanari venditur caro humana pretio sine pudore, ita meretrix magna, idest Curia Romana, et Curia Imperialis, vendunt libertatem Italicam…. Ad Italiam concurrunt omnes barbarae nationes cum aviditate ad ipsam conculcandam…. Et heic, Lector, me excusabis, qui antequam ulterius procedam, cogor facere invectivam contra Dantem. O utinam, Poeta mirifice, rivivisceres modo! Ubi pax, ubi tranquillitas in Italia?… Nunc autem dicere possim de tola Italia quod Vergilius tuus de una Urbe dixit: