cut their loving plea,
All wars and funs would melt like snow masses, –
With a deep sigh, would flee a spirit trustless,
It’d be the same – to be or not to be..
. В этой дьявольской суматохе некогда почитать... А сейчас так хочется... Что бы такое? Да. Леса и горы. Но не эти проклятые, кавказские...
-- Так. А ты не обижайся, старина, покурю и уйду. Трогать не будем, не до вас пришли, живите себе. Посидел, посидел веселый кожаный картуз, засмеялся и пошел...
"I say, Captain," the first lieutenant whispered into the
ear of the Count, "I hope the deputies will give these
madmen a flat refusal; but, after all, it would do no harm
if they would send us some reinforcement."
In the meanwhile, John de Witt, whom we left climbing the
stairs, after the conversation with the jailer Gryphus and
his daughter Rosa, had reached the door of the cell, where
on a mattress his brother Cornelius was resting, after
having undergone the preparatory degrees of the torture. The
sentence of banishment having been pronounced, there was no
occasion for inflicting the torture extraordinary.
Cornelius was stretched on his couch, with broken wrists and
crushed fingers. He had not confessed a crime of which he
was not guilty; and now, after three days of agony, he once
more breathed freely, on being informed that the judges,
from whom he had expected death, were only condemning him to
exile.
Endowed with an iron frame and a stout heart, how would he
have disappointed his enemies if they could only have seen,
in the dark cell of the Buytenhof, his pale face lit up by
the smile of the martyr, who forgets the dross of this earth
after having obtained a glimpse of the bright glory of
heaven.
The warden, indeed, had already recovered his full strength,
much more owing to the force of his own strong will than to
actual aid; and he was calculating how long the formalities
of the law would still detain him in prison.
This was just at the very moment when the mingled shouts of
the burgher guard and of the mob were raging against the two
brothers, and threatening Captain Tilly, who served as a
rampart to them. This noise, which roared outside of the
walls of the prison, as the surf dashing against the rocks,
now reached the ears of the prisoner.
But, threatening as it sounded, Cornelius appeared not to
deem it worth his while to inquire after its cause; nor did
he get up to look out of the narrow grated window, which
gave access to the light and to the noise of the world
without.
He was so absorbed in his never-ceasing pain that it had
almost become a habit with him. He felt with such delight
the bonds which connected his immortal being with his
perishable frame gradually loosening, that it seemed to him
as if his spirit, freed from the trammels of the body, were
hovering above it, like the expiring flame which rises from
the half-extinguished embers.
He also thought of his brother; and whilst the latter was
thus vividly present to his mind the door opened, and John
entered, hurrying to the bedside of the prisoner, who
stretched out his broken limbs and his hands tied up in
bandages towards that glorious brother, whom he now
excelled, not in services rendered to the country, but in
the hatred which the Dutch bore him.
Cette publication m'a ete conseillee, comme mes autres etudes sur la
_Divine Comedie_ et sur la personne de Dante, par le desir de vulgariser
dans notre pays l'oeuvre du grand Italien, dont le nom a conquis
l'immortalite, tandis que les produits de son genie sont a peine connus
chez nous, en dehors d'un cercle bien restreint de lecteurs et
d'admirateurs.
La _Vita nuova_ est une oeuvre pleine de charme, et suggestive au plus
haut point. C'est une oeuvre humaine, dont l'interet ne se limite pas
aux personnages qu'elle met en scene et a l'epoque ou ils se meuvent.
Restent le coloris du style et l'harmonie des vers, dont le traducteur a
cherche a s'inspirer, mais qu'il ne lui etait pas possible de
s'approprier. Voici cependant ce que dit Dante lui-meme a ce propos:
«Les ecrits poetiques ne sauraient se preter a la transportation dans
une autre langue. Neanmoins, s'il est impossible au traducteur de donner
un equivalent litteral au langage allegorique et aux expressions
mysterieuses de ses vers, et d'en reproduire les beautes, on peut au
moins en penetrer le sens litteral et suivre le poete dans la succession
de ses sentiments et de ses pensees.»[3]
MAX DURAND-FARDEL.
1897.
INTRODUCTION
I
Toute l'histoire de Dante tient entre trois dates precises. Il naquit a
Florence en 1265. Il fut eleve au Priorat, la plus haute magistrature de
son pays, en 1300. Il mourut a Ravenne en 1321, age de 56 ans.
Apres avoir pris part, pendant un temps bien court, au gouvernement de
la Republique florentine, il fut soudain precipite du pouvoir par le jeu
mortel des factions et, victime d'accusations infames, condamne en 1301
a la confiscation de sa modeste fortune, a l'exil, et au bucher s'il
reparaissait dans sa patrie...
