One might read the singular "il fiorentino" as a part-for-whole, as in "the football player in those days wore very little protective padding" and therefore substitute for the idiom a plural construction: football players back then... Also, shouldn't we expect to find <uppercase>I</upper case>l <uppercase>F</uppercase>iorentino if Pound had intended that phrase to be a moniker for Dante? Does the MS/typescript (?) have lower case? Tim Romano ----- Original Message ----- From: "charles moyer" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 6:16 PM Subject: "the Florentines" > I confess I'm at a loss for the Italian, but Pound himself translates the > line > > "E 'l caso ghibellin ben seppe il fiorentino." as "And the Florentines > understood the Ghibelline case." > > In the Italian version it is still part of the speech of Ezzelino as > indicated by quotation marks, but in the English translation the quotation > marks are missing. > Perhaps the next line is quite appropriate. > "E come onde che vengon da piu d'un trasmittente" which Pound separated > byan empty line in the Italian version, but not in the English, "Confusion > of voices as from several transmitters, broken" etc. This sounds like the > twittering of the voices in Hades which always follows the Homeric paradigm. > We may wish Pound had found someone else to translate his own Canto. And > incidently, does anyone know of an English translation of Canto LXXIII? > > CDM > >