Mary Arms Edmonds

“ THE life of Giosue Carducci, the foremost of living Italian poets, spans an epic period. He was born in 1835, when Italy was indeed little more than a "geographical expression," an aggregation of states separated from each other by wide differences in customs and even language, united only by common suffering under foreign tyranny. ”

“ It would hardly be possible for any man of strong feeling and quick imagination to have lived through such a struggle as that for Italian unity without having his character deeply influenced thereby. Carducci, moreover, was brought up in an environment and amid circumstances that still further tended to breed in him a peculiarly passionate love of country and hatred of foreign domination. ”

“ Carducci, who, when Vittorio Emanuele first flung down the gauntlet of defiance before Austria had hailed the Piedmontese king as the hero-liberator of his country, watched with small patience the dallyings and pettiness displayed by the monarchical party after its accession to power. The transference of the capital from Turin to Florence, with the implied abandonment of Rome, was the first blow to his loyalty. ”

“ Because, in the early days, Vittorio Emanuele presents himself as the symbol of Italy's salvation, he sings the Cross of Savoy; the monarchy, triumphant, grows careless of its ideals, and Carducci passes to the Republicans with "After Aspromonte;" the great personalities that had been the glory of the Republican party disappear, the standard is lowered, and he draws near once more to the throne that has been sanctioned by the people's voice. It is with spiritual values, not with external forms, that he concerns himself ”

“ To plant one's self at the window with every variation in temperature in order to ascertain what garb is assumed by the taste of the legal majority is to distract, to chill, to fossilize the soul. The poet should express himself and his moral and artistic convictions with all the sincerity, the clearness, the resolution in his power; the rest is no concern of his."
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THE following half dozen poems have been selected from the "Odi Barbare," [5] on the two volumes of which Carducci's fame most clearly rests. ”

“ One may preserve the thought, but to make another language recreate the same atmosphere, borders upon the impossible. In the present instance I have aimed simply at being as literal as was consistent with the chosen form of verse, trusting that in such wise some virtue of the original might still cling to its English rendering. ”

“ And because it seems to me that this interpretative faculty, this power to present "the living soul" of things is a peculiarly precious literary attribute, I have taken for translation poems that offered striking examples of its presence without regard to the fact that, in substance, they nearly all belonged to one type. ”