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"It is indeed sublime music," said the Frenchman. "The air Pace mia smarrita, which the Queen will now sing, is one of those bravura songs which every composer is compelled to introduce, though they mar the general scheme of the work; but an opera would as often as not never see the light, if the prima donna's vanity were not duly flattered.
And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion. Like Dante, Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, but, unlike Dante, I cannot add, Che la diritta via era smarrita.
Something, too, must be said of the difficulties inevitably arising from the diverse structure and genius of the Italian and English languages. None will deny that many of them are insurmountable. Take the third line of the first canto, "Che la diritta via era smarrita," which Mr. Longfellow translates "For the straightforward pathway had been lost."
Perhaps there is no better word than "lost" by which to translate smarrita in this place; yet the two words are far from equivalent in force. About the word smarrita there is thrown a wide penumbra of meaning which does not belong to the word lost.
No one who in childhood has wandered alone in the woods can help feeling all this suggested by the word smarrita in this passage. How bald in comparison is the word lost, which might equally be applied to a pathway, a reputation, and a pocket-book!
By its diffuse connotations the word smarrita calls up in our minds an adequate picture of the bewilderment and perplexity of one who is lost in a trackless forest.
The English is no doubt the most copious and variously expressive of all living languages, yet I doubt if it can furnish any word capable by itself of calling up the complex images here suggested by smarrita. And this is but one example, out of many that might be cited, in which the lack of exact parallelism between the two languages employed causes every translation to suffer.
And with the complacent tone of one who has received a solid education, he quoted the opening lines Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura Che la diritta via era smarrita a quotation which was more apt than he supposed. Lilia glanced at Philip to see whether he noticed that she was marrying no ignoramus.
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