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Texts : Uncollected Prose : Dial Essays (1841) : MICHAEL ANGELO
Michael Angelo"Michael Angelo, Considered as a Philosophic Poet" from Uncollected Prose, Dial Essays 1841
Michael Angelo, considered as a Philosophic Poet, with Translations. We welcome this little book with joy, and a hope that it may be republished in Boston. It would find, probably, but a small circle of readers, but that circle would be more ready to receive and prize it than the English public for whom it was intended, if we may judge by the way in which Mr. Taylor, all through his prefatory essay, has considered it necessary to apologize for, or, at least, explain views very commonly received among ourselves. The essay is interesting from the degree of acquaintance it exhibits with some of those great ones, who have held up the highest aims to the soul, and from the degree of insight which reverence and delicacy of mind have given to the author. From every line comes the soft breath of green pastures where "walk the good shepherds." Of the sonnets, we doubt the possibility of making good translations into English. No gift of the Muse is more injured by change of form than the Italian sonnet. As those of Petrarch will not bear it, from their infinite grace, those of Dante from their mystic and subtle majesty; so these of Angelo, from the rugged naivete with which they are struck off from the mind, as huge splinters of stone might be from some vast block, can never be "done into English," as the old translators, with an intelligent modesty, were wont to write of their work. The grand thought is not quite evaporated in the process, but the image of the stern and stately writer is lost. We do not know again such words as "concetto," "superna" in their English representatives. But since a knowledge of the Italian language is not so common an attainment as could be wished, we ought to be grateful for this attempt to extend the benefit of these noble expressions of the faith which inspired one of the most full and noble lives that has ever redeemed and encouraged man. Fidelity must be the highest merit of these translations; for not even an Angelo could translate his peer. This, so far as we have looked at them, they seem to possess. And even in the English dress, we think none, to whom they are new, can read the sonnets, —
and others of the same pure religion, without a delight which shall
We hope they may have the opportunity. It is a very little book with a great deal in it, and five hundred copies will sell in two years. We add Mr. Taylor's little preface, which happily expresses his design.
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