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The French Originals of Rossetti's John of Tours and My Father's Close

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Cecil Yelveeton Lang
Cecil Yelveeton Lang*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Though much of Rossetti's original poetry is now (temporarily) out of fashion, his success as a translator has never been questioned. His renderings of the Vita Nuova and the Early Italian Poets are standard, while his translations from Vil-lon, particularly the Ballad of Dead Ladies, will probably live as long as Villon's verses. Better than anyone else, perhaps, Rossetti shows the accuracy of the truism that only a poet can translate poetry.

Type
Comment and Criticism
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 5: Issue 1 part 1 , December 1949 , pp. 1219 - 1222
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 “The Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti”, reprinted in The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and T. J. Wise, Bonchurch Edition (London and New York, 1926–27), xv, 32 f.

2 Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study (London, 1882), p. 309.

3 The Symbolist Movement in Literature (London, 1899), p. 19.

4 My information is based wholly on Nicolas I. Popa's edition of Les Filles du Feu (2 vols., Paris, 1931), and on Aristide Marie's Bibliographie des uvres de Gérard de Nerval (Paris, 1936).

5 See George Doncieux's Le Romancéro populaire de la France (Paris, 1904), pp. 48 f., 84 f.

6 The English poems are from The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. W. M. Rossetti (London, 1911), pp. 542 f. The French are from Popa's Les Filles du Feu, pp. 208 f.

7 Paris, 1931, pp. 97 f. The refrain, which has at least one variant, is usually printed only once and followed by “”“bis”:it has been reinserted here to conform to Rossetti's adaptation.

8 “Versions inédites de la chanson de Jean Renaud”, Romania, xi (Jan., 1882), 97–108. See also Victor Smith's “Chants du Velay et du Forez”, Romania, x (Oct., 1881), 581–587; and the versions and variants mentioned by Doncieux.