Part 27 (1/2)
From the Same.
Nahant, near Boston, August 10, 1857.
”MY DEAR SIR,
”Before leaving Cambridge to come down here to the sea-side, I had the pleasure of receiving your precious volume of 'Mysteries of Corpus Christi'; 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 eagerness and delight--that peculiar and strange delight which Calderon gives his admirers, as peculiar and distinct as the flavour 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 Parna.s.sus' in the Chronicle, which reached me yesterday, are also excellent.
”For this and all, many and many thanks.
”Yours faithfully, ”HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
”Denis Florence Mac-Carthy, Esq.”.
From George Ticknor, Esq., the Historian of Spanish Literature.
”Boston, 16th 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. t.i.tian, they say, and some others of the old masters, laid on colours for their groundwork wholly different from those they used afterwards, but which they counted upon to s.h.i.+ne through, and contribute materially to the grand results they produced.
So in your translations, the Spanish seems to come through to the surface; the original air is always perceptible 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 perceptible to the English ear as it is to the Spanish; our c.u.mbersome consonants make that impossible. But the wonder is, that you have made it perceptible at all. I think I perceive your asonantes much as I do those of August Schlegel or Gries, and more than I do those of Friederich Schlegel. But he was the first who tried them, and, besides, I am not a German. Would it not be amusing to have the experiment tried in French?”
From the Same.
”Boston, March 20, 1867.
”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 religious painters.
”I cannot resist the impulse I have of offering you my most grateful thanks for the greatest intellectual treat I have ever experienced 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 n.o.ble mission of commending to the hearts of others all that belongs to the beautiful and true, ever directing the thoughtful reader through the love of the beautiful veil, to the great Author of all perfection.
”I cannot conceive a nation can receive a greater boon than being helped to a love of such works as the religious dramas of this Prince of Poets.