Denis Florence MacCarthy

Denis Florence MacCarthy (May 26, 1817 - April 7, 1882), Irish poet, translator, and biographer.

Biography

Denis Florence MacCarthy was born in Lower O'Connell Street, Dublin. His early life, before he devoted himself to literary pursuits, calls for little remark. From a learned priest, who had spent much time in Spain, he acquired that intimate knowledge of Spanish, which he was later to turn to such good advantage. In April, 1834, before he was yet seventeen, he contributed his first verses to the Dublin Satirist. He was one of that brilliant coterie of writers whose utterances through the Nation [not to be confused with the American paper of the same name] influenced so powerfully the Irish people in the middle of the last century. In this organ, started by Charles Gavan Duffy in 1842, appeared over the pseudonym of Desmond most of his patriotic verse. In 1846 he was called to the Irish bar, but never practised. In the same year he edited The Poets and Dramatists of Ireland, which he prefaced with an essay on the early history and religion of his countrymen. He also edited about this time The Book of Irish Ballads (by various authors), with an introductory essay from his pen on ballad poetry in general. In 1850 appeared his Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics, original and translated. His attention was first directed to Pedro Calderón de la Barca by a passage in one of Percy Bysshe Shelley's essays, and thenceforward the interpretation of the "Spanish Shakespeare" claimed the greater part of his attention. The first volume of his translations, containing six plays, appeared in 1853, and was followed by further instalments in 1861, 1867, 1870, and 1873. His version of Daybreak in Capacabana was completed only a few months before his death. Until 1864 he resided principally on Killiney Hill, overlooking Dublin Bay. The delicate health of some members of his family then rendered a change of climate imperative, he paid a prolonged visit to the Continent, and on his return settled in London, where he published, in addition to his translations, Shelley's Early Life, which contains an interesting account of that poet's visit to Dublin in 1812. He had already for some months resettled in his native land, when death overtook him on Good Friday, 1882 at Blackrock, Dublin. His poetical gifts were inherited by his daughter, who became a nun, and wrote as Sister Mary Stanislaus.

His poems are distinguished by a noble sense of harmony and an exquisite sympathy with natural beauty. One of the most graceful of Irish lyrists, he is entirely free from the morbidity and fantastic sentiment so much affected by modern poets. Such poems as "The Bridal of the Year," "Summer Longings" (alias "Waiting for the May"), and his long narrative poem, "The Voyage of St. Brendan," seem with the years but to increase in general esteem. The last-mentioned, in which a beautiful paraphrase of the "Ave Maria Stella" is inserted as the evening song of the sailors, is not more clearly characterized by its fine poetic insight than by that earnest religious feeling which marked its author throughout life. But it is by his incomparable version of Calderon that he has most surely won a permanent place in English letters. For this task—always beset with extreme difficulties—of transferring the poetry of one language into the poetry of another without mutilating the spirit or form of the original, he was qualified by the sympathy of his countrymen with the Catholic spirit of the Latin races, and especially with Spain as the mythical cradle of the Irish race. His success is sufficiently testified by George Ticknor, who declared in his History of Spanish Literature that our author "has succeeded in giving a faithful idea of what is grandest and most effective in his [sc. Calderon's] genius . . . to a degree which I had previously thought impossible. Nothing, I think, in the English language will give us so true an impression of what is most characteristic of the Spanish drama, and of Spanish poetry generally."

Published works

Below are lists of his published works, some of which are available on-line at Project Gutenberg (see Online works at Project Gutenberg below).

Poetry

Poems. Published in Dublin by M. H. Gill and Son in 1882. An extensive collection edited by the poet's son.
The Book of Irish Ballads. Published in Dublin by James Duffy in 1846, revised in 1869.
Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics, Original and Translated. Published in Dublin by James McGlashan in 1850.
The Bell-Founder, And Other Poems. Published in London by David Bogue in 1857.
Underglimpses, And Other Poems. Published in London by David Bogue in 1857.
Irish Legends And Lyrics. Published in Dublin by McGlashan & Gill in 1858.
Poems of Denis F. McCarthy [sic], with Life and Notes. Published in Dublin and Cork by The Educational Company, Ltd., no date.

Drama

Dramas of Calderon, Tragic, Comic, and Legendary. Published in London by Charles Dolman in 1853. Containing The Constant Prince (El Principe Constante), The Secret in Words (El Secreto a Voces), The Physician of His own Honour (El Medico de Su Honra), Love after Death (Amar despues de la Muerte), The Purgatory of Saint Patrick (El Purgatorio de San Patricio), and The Scarf and the Flower (La Banda y la Flor). Rebound with a foreword in 1886 for the Memorial Fund Committee.
Love the Greatest Enchantment: The Sorceries of Sin: The Devotion of the Cross. Published in London by Longtan, Green, Longman and Roberts in 1861. Containing (with original language texts) El Mayor Encanto Amor, Los Encantos de la Culpa (an Auto Sacramental), and La Devocion de la Cruz.
Mysteries of Corpus Christi. Published in Dublin by James Duffy in 1867. Containing Balshazza's Feast (La Cena de Balthasar) and The Divine Philothea (La Divina Filotea), two Auto Sacramentales.
The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria. Published in Dublin by John F. Fowler in 1870. Containing Los dos amantes del cielo: Crisanto y Daria.
Calderon's Dramas. Published in London by Henry S. King in 1873. Containing Life is a Dream (La Vida es Sueño), The Wonder-Working Magician (El Magico Prodigioso), and a new edition of The Purgatory of St. Patrick (Purgatorio de San Patricio).
Daybreak at Capacabana. La Aurora en Copacabana was completed shortly before the translator's death. [[[User:Eoghanacht|Editor's Note]]: I have been unable to determine if it was ever published.]

Biography

The Poets and Dramatists of Ireland. Published in Dublin by James Duffy in 1846.
Shelley's Early Life. Published in London by John Camden Hotten in 1872.

Sample poem

WAITING FOR THE MAY

  Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
    Waiting for the May--
Waiting for the pleasant rambles,
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
  With the woodbine alternating,
    Scent the dewy way.
  Ah! my heart is weary waiting,
    Waiting for the May.

  Ah! my heart is sick with longing,
    Longing for the May--
Longing to escape from study,
To the young face fair and ruddy,
  And the thousand charms belonging
    To the summer's day.
  Ah! my heart is sick with longing,
    Longing for the May.

  Ah! my heart is sore with sighing,
    Sighing for the May--
Sighing for their sure returning,
When the summer beams are burning,
  Hopes and flowers that, dead or dying,
    All the winter lay.
  Ah! my heart is sore with sighing,
    Sighing for the May.

  Ah! my heart is pained and throbbing,
    Throbbing for the May--
Throbbing for the sea-side billows,
Or the water-wooing willows,
  Where in laughing and in sobbing
    Glide the streams away.
  Ah! my heart is pained and throbbing,
    Throbbing for the May.

  Waiting sad, dejected, weary,
    Waiting for the May.
Spring goes by with wasted warnings,
Moon-lit evenings, sun-bright mornings;
  Summer comes, yet dark and dreary
    Life still ebbs away:
  Man is ever weary, weary,
    Waiting for the May!

Online works at Project Gutenberg

Reference

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)