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Faust; a Tragedy, Translated from the German of Goethe By: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) |
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A TRAGEDY TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE
WITH NOTES BY CHARLES T BROOKS
SEVENTH EDITION. BOSTON
TICKNOR AND FIELDS MDCCCLXVIII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856,
by CHARLES T. BROOKS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
of the District of Rhode Island. UNIVERSITY PRESS:
WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY,
CAMBRIDGE.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Perhaps some apology ought to be given to English scholars, that is, those
who do not know German, (to those, at least, who do not know what sort of
a thing Faust is in the original,) for offering another translation to the
public, of a poem which has been already translated, not only in a literal
prose form, but also, twenty or thirty times, in metre, and sometimes with
great spirit, beauty, and power. The author of the present version, then, has no knowledge that a rendering
of this wonderful poem into the exact and ever changing metre of the
original has, until now, been so much as attempted. To name only one
defect, the very best versions which he has seen neglect to follow the
exquisite artist in the evidently planned and orderly intermixing of
male and female rhymes, i.e. rhymes which fall on the last syllable
and those which fall on the last but one. Now, every careful student of
the versification of Faust must feel and see that Goethe did not
intersperse the one kind of rhyme with the other, at random, as those
translators do; who, also, give the female rhyme (on which the vivacity of
dialogue and description often so much depends,) in so small a proportion. A similar criticism might be made of their liberty in neglecting Goethe's
method of alternating different measures with each other. It seems as if, in respect to metre, at least, they had asked themselves,
how would Goethe have written or shaped this in English, had that been his
native language, instead of seeking con amore (and con fidelità ) as
they should have done, to reproduce, both in spirit and in form, the
movement, so free and yet orderly, of the singularly endowed and
accomplished poet whom they undertook to represent. As to the objections which Hayward and some of his reviewers have
instituted in advance against the possibility of a good and faithful
metrical translation of a poem like Faust, they seem to the present
translator full of paradox and sophistry. For instance, take this
assertion of one of the reviewers: "The sacred and mysterious union of
thought with verse, twin born and immortally wedded from the moment of
their common birth, can never be understood by those who desire verse
translations of good poetry." If the last part of this statement had read
"by those who can be contented with prose translations of good poetry,"
the position would have been nearer the truth. This much we might well
admit, that, if the alternative were either to have a poem like Faust in a
metre different and glaringly different from the original, or to have it
in simple and strong prose, then the latter alternative would be the one
every tasteful and feeling scholar would prefer; but surely to every one
who can read the original or wants to know how this great song sung
itself (as Carlyle says) out of Goethe's soul, a mere prose rendering
must be, comparatively, a corpus mortuum. The translator most heartily dissents from Hayward's assertion that a
translator of Faust "must sacrifice either metre or meaning." At least he
flatters himself that he has made, in the main, (not a compromise between
meaning and melody, though in certain instances he may have fallen into
that, but) a combination of the meaning with the melody, which latter is
so important, so vital a part of the lyric poem's meaning, in any worthy
sense. "No poetic translation," says Hayward's reviewer, already quoted,
"can give the rhythm and rhyme of the original; it can only substitute the
rhythm and rhyme of the translator." One might just as well say "no
prose translation can give the sense and spirit of the original; it
can only substitute the sense and spirit of the words and phrases of the
translator's language ;" and then, these two assertions balancing each
other, there will remain in the metrical translator's favor, that he may
come as near to giving both the letter and the spirit, as the effects of
the Babel dispersion will allow... Continue reading book >>
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