Columbus Letter On The First Voyage - Editions of The Letter - Italian Translation Fragments

Italian Translation Fragments

There are three manuscripts of incomplete attempts by Italian authors to translate the narrative Spanish (or perhaps Latin) letter into Italian prose, probably within 1493. The three fragments were first published by Cesare de Lollis in the Raccolta Colombiana of 1894.

  • 18. First Italian fragment manuscript translation into Italian, held at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The Italian translator's note claims this to be a copy of a letter written by Columbus "to certain counsellors" ("ad certi consieri") in Spain, and forwarded by "the treasurer" (i.e. Gabriel Sanchez) to his brother, "Juan Sanchez" (named in the text), a merchant in Florence.
  • 19. Second Italian fragment manuscript fragment held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. The Italian translator simply notes that it is a copy of the "letter that came from Spain" ("copia della letera venuta di Spagna"). There is a close connection between this Florentine fragment and the first Latin edition, suggesting one is derived from the other, or they were both using the same Spanish document.
  • 20. Third Italian fragment manuscript fragment held also by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. It contains no translator's notes about its origin or provenance.

It might be worth noting here that the first known French translation appeared in Lyon in 1559, in a volume by Charles Fontaine. The first known English translation appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1816.

Read more about this topic:  Columbus Letter On The First Voyage, Editions of The Letter

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