Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/30

10 Italy to enable people of culture to enjoy the American authors in the original text, and very few translations had been published before the war. Most of the Italian acquaintance with American literature has been made indirectly through French translations. The popularity of Poe in France, therefore, explains why Poe is better known in Italy than other American writers. My first reading of Poe's Contes extraordinaires was in a French translation, there being at that time no Italian translation at all."

But Poe did not lack for translators after the start was once made. An Italian version of his stories, Storie incredibili di Edgardo Poe, appeared in 1869, another in 1876, and two in 1885. The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym followed in 1887. The Raven was translated into Italian verse in 1890 by Guido Menasci, and in 1892 Ulysse Ortensi, heeding the desire rather than the warning of Baudelaire, translated all of Poe's major poems into musical Italian prose.

Italian art has also felt the impress of Poe's genius. It is well known that Gaetano Previati, whose influence has been potent on the modern school of Italian painters, found more inspiration for his brush in the