Orval, or The Fool of Time | ||
FRANCESCA DA RIMINO.
PARAPHRASE.
Of those renownèd knights of other days,
And theirs, the former time's most famous dames,
Lost in sad wonder, after mute amaze,
To parley with yon twain that, where I gaze,
Seem coming, borne so light upon the wind.”
Then, by the love that moves them, thus entwined,
Charge them, and they will come.” No sooner smote
Did simultaneous to our sight upfloat,
Than, moved to utterance, “Come! O come,” I cried,
Deny discourse, if by nought else denied,”
As doves, solicited by fond desiring,
Through air are wafted by the sweet inspiring
Of their own wishes swift; so, parting there
In such wise speeding through that evil air;
So much my cry compassionate prevail'd.
Through this obscure comest, visiting,” they wail'd,
“Us that have earth embrued with bloody stain,
Since thou hast pity on our pitiless pain,
Prayers to Him we for thy peace would send.
To tell or hear, thy bidding we attend,
What time, as now, the wind is whist. The land
Down, with his sequent waters, to his rest.
Love, that in gentle heart scant kindling breeds,
This spirit once (and yet indignant bleeds
Sharp memory of its taking off!) possest;
Me too well pleased with pleasing him, so well
That, as thou seest, he hath not left me yet:
Waits him that spilt our lives.” Such response met
My sense, from such resentful sorrowing sent,
My countenance in such dejection bent,
The Poet cried, “What musest thou?” “Alas!”
Have brought them to this miserable pass!”
Then, yet once more returning to the two,
“For thy deep woes I weep. Yet tell me how
To him and thee did Love the means provide,
Your yet uncertain wishes?” She replied,
“There is no greater pang than to recall
And that thy Teacher knows. Yet I, if all
So deep be thy desire to see laid bare
Will speak as one that weeping tells his care.
For pleasant passing of the time, one day,
We were alone: all danger far away
From our suspecting: though the colour fled
Into each other's eyes that reading led.
One point alone o'ercame us. We the while
When as we read of that so long'd-for smile
That such deep love did, with such dear endeavour,
He that from me shall be disparted never
Me on the mouth all trembling kist. Accurst
That day we read no more.
While thus the first,
The other spirit made moan so miserable
Down, as to earth a dead corpse falls, I fell.”
Those commentators who affirm that the Galeotto of this line is the proper name of Galahad are probably right. They have, at least, ample warrant for their opinion in the sixty-sixth chapter of the Italian Romance of Lancilotto, relating “Come la Reina conobbe Lancilotto . . . e come la prima congiunzione fu fatta fra Lancilotto e Ginevra per lo mezzo di Galeotto.” The obvious sense of the passage is that both the book and its author were go-betweens. But, although the go-between of the Italian Romance is called Galahad,—a name which probably was to Dante's Italian contemporaries (as that of Shakespeare's Pandarus was, and is, to Englishmen) a synonym for pimp, yet, in any case, the force of Dante's supposed allusion to him would be lost upon English readers who cannot associate the memory of the “Virgin Knight” with the ignoble character and functions ascribed to the Galahad of the Italian tale. For this reason I am content to take the simple common meaning of the word galeotto, viz., a felon— a scoundrel—the French galérien. Mr. Cary, indeed, translates the line thus—
“The book and writer both were love's purveyors;”but this euphuistic paraphrase appears to me to convey no sense of the denunciatory intensity of Francesca's abrupt and startling exclamation. There is a dramatic effect in the angry suddenness with which the narrator of the tragedy breaks off her narration by an implied curse, just at the point where the situation she is describing was broken into, and abruptly ended, by a crime: and I think it little matters how you translate this word galeotto, so long as you retain unimpaired the imprecatory force which it gives to the whole passage.
O. M. Orval, or The Fool of Time | ||