L’Enfer du Dante. Poème italien traduit en vers français par L. Lasne de Nevers.
1825.
Folio (305 x 212 mm), 517 pp., contemporary black half calf, yellow edges; binding rubbed and scuffed, corners worn (contemporary binding).
An unpublished French verse translation of Dante’s Inferno, by a certain L. Lasne, a native of Nevers.
The translation is composed in rhyming alexandrines, with the Italian text on facing pages. The manuscript shows evidence of careful revision, including additions of omitted words and lines, as well as numerous rewritten verses and passages corrected in red ink by the same hand.
The manuscript comprises a 10-page Notice préliminaire, an 8-page table of the arguments, the translation with the facing Italian text extending over more than 450 pages, and 42 pages of Notes.
The Notice préliminaire and Notes contain interesting remarks by L. Lasne demonstrating a good knowledge of both contemporary and eighteenth-century translations of Dante.
He repeatedly cites Pierre-Louis Ginguené’s Histoire littéraire de l’Italie (1811), criticizes Michel-Paul-Guy de Chabanon’s translation (1773), and refers to notes by Antoine de Rivarol (1780). In the Notes to Canto XXV, he writes: “Mr Masse a essayé de traduire en vers une partie de ce passage, je n’en avais aucune connaissance avant mon travail sur ce sujet” [“Mr Masse attempted to translate part of this passage into verse; I had no knowledge of it before undertaking my work on this subject”]. We have been unable to trace this translator.
In his notes to Canto XXVI, he mentions several authors: “Grangier, Venturi, Moutonnet [de Clairfons, 1776], Rivarol et Lombardi pensent que le poète entend par cette montagne la montagne du Purgatoire [...]” [“Grangier, Venturi, Moutonnet [de Clairfons, 1776], Rivarol and Lombardi believe that by this mountain the poet means the mountain of Purgatory”]. He also quotes a note from A.-F. Artaud de Montor’s translation (1812) in Canto XXXIII, and verses by Father Aquina in Canto XXXIV (we have been unable to trace any reference to this translator).
A remarkably early undertaking, predating the numerous French translations of Dante published from the 1830s onwards.
As Marc Scialom points out, it was only in 1811–1813 that “the first French Divine Comedy accompanied by substantial philological notes, based on ancient and modern commentators” [by Artaud de Montor] was published; and it was in 1840 that “the first rigorously literal prose version of Dante’s text” [by Pier-Angelo Fiorentino] appeared.
(1) Marc Scialom, “La traduction de la Divine Comédie, baromètre de sa réception en France ?”, Revue de littérature comparée, vol. 63, no. 2, 1989, pp. 197–207.
See also, by the same author, Répertoire chronologique et raisonné des traductions françaises de la « Divine Comédie » (XVe-XXe siècles), in Lingua e letteratura, no. 7, Milan, 1986, pp. 121–164.
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