The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria: A Drama of Early Christian Rome — John Shaqi
The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria: A Drama of Early Christian RomeCalderón de la Barca, Pedro
Religion
The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria: A Drama of Early Christian Rome
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro
Christian martyrs -- Italy -- Rome -- Drama
"But our purpose is not to speak of Calderon, but of his translator Mr.
MacCarthy; and to make our readers acquainted with his very successful
effort to reproduce in English some of the most characteristic
productions of the genius of Spain, retaining even one of the
peculiarities in the structure of the verse which has hardly ever been
transplanted from the soil of the peninsula". . . .
"Mr. MacCarthy's translations strike us as among the most successful
experiments which have been made to represent in our language the
characteristic beauties of the finest productions of other nations.
They are sufficiently faithful, as may be readily seen by the Spanish
scholar, as the translator has the courage to print the original and his
version side by side. The rich, imaginative passages of Calderon are
reproduced in language of such grace and flexibility as shows in Mr.
MacCarthy no inconsiderable amount of poetical power. The measures of
Calderon are retained; the rhymed passages are translated into rhyme,
and what is more noticeable still, Mr. MacCarthy has done what no writer
in English has ever before essayed, except to a very limited extent--he
has copied the asonantes of the original". . . .
"We take leave of Mr. MacCarthy with hearty acknowledgments for the
pleasure we have had in reading his excellent translations, which have
given us a sense of Calderon's various and brilliant genius such as we
never before had, and no analysis of his dramas, however full and
careful, could bestow".
From a Review of "Love the Greatest Enchantment", etc., in the "New York
Tablet", July 19, 1862, written by the gifted and ill-fated Hon. Thomas
D'Arcy M'Gee, of Montreal.
"This beautiful volume before us--like virtue's self, fair within and
without--is Mr. Mac-Carthy's second contribution to the Herculean task
which Longfellow cheers him on to continue--the translation into English
of the complete works of Calderon. Two experimental volumes,
containing six dramas of the same author, appeared in 1853, winning the
well-merited encomium of every person of true taste into whose hands
they happened to fall. The Translator was encouraged, if not by the
general chorus of popular applause, by the precious and emphatic
approbation of those best entitled by knowledge and accomplishments to
pronounce judgment. So here, after an interval of seven years, we have
right worthily presented to us three of those famous Autos, which for
two centuries drew together all the multitude of the Madrilenos, on
the annual return of the great feast of Corpus Christi. On that same
self-same festival, in a northern land, under a gray and clouded sky, in
the heart of a city most unlike gay, garden-hued, out-of-door Madrid, we
have spent the long hours over these resurrected dramas, and the spell
of both the poets is still upon us, as we unite together, in dutiful
juxtaposition, the names of Calderon and Mac-Carthy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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