The river flows, now here, now there, at will. which is a very close translation, much closer than any usually found in a foreign language, where indeed it would. in all probability assume some such form as this: The river self-impelled pursues its course. In these examples we have what is seldom found in translations, accuracy of meaning expressed in similar metre ; yet the music and the poetry are gone; because the music and the poetry are organically dependent on certain peculiar arrangements of sound and suggestion. Walter Scott speaks of the verse of an old ballad which haunted his boyhood; it is this: The dews of night began to fall; The moon, sweet regent of the sky, And many an oak that grew thereby. This verse we will rearrange as a translator would rearrange it: The nightly dews commenced to fall; The moon, whose empire is the sky, Here is a verse which certainly would never have haunted any one; and yet upon what apparently slight variations the difference of effect depends! The meaning, metre, rhymes, and most of the words, are the same; yet the difference in the result is infinite. Let us translate it a little more freely : Sweetly did fall the dews of night; The moon, of heaven the lovely queen, On Cumnor Hall shone silver bright, And glanced the oaks' broad boughs between. I appeal to the reader's experience whether this is not a translation which in another language would pass for excellent; and nevertheless it is not more like the original than a wax rose is like a garden rose. To conclude these illustrations, I will give one which may serve to bring into relief the havoc made by translators who adopt a different metre from that of the original. Wordsworth begins his famous Ode: There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The translator, fully possessed with the sense of the pas sage, makes no mistakes, but adopting another metre, we will suppose, paraphrases it thus: A time there was when wood and stream and field, The earth, and every common sight, did yield To me a pure and heavenly delight, Such as is seen in dream and vision bright. That time is past; no longer can I see The things which charmed my youthful reverie. These are specimens of translating from English into English, and show what effects are produced by a change of music and a change of suggestion. It is clear that in a foreign language the music must incessantly be changed, and as no complex words are precisely equivalent in two languages, the suggestions must also be different. Idioms are of course untranslateable. Felicities of expression are the idioms of the poet; but as on the other hand these felicities are essential to the poem, and on the other hand untranslateable, the vanity of translation becomes appa rent. I do not say that a translator cannot produce a fine poem in imitation of an original poem; but I utterly disbelieve in the possibility of his giving us a work which can be to us what the original is to those who read it. If, therefore, we reflect what a poem Faust is, and that it contains almost every variety of style and metre, it will be tolerably evident that no one unacquainted with the original can form an adequate idea of it from translation;* and if this is true, it will explain why Charles Lamb should prefer Marlowe's Faustus, and why many other readers should speak slightingly of the Faust. † As useful memoranda for comparison, I will here analyze Marlowe's Faustus and Calderon's El Magico. Doctor Faustus has many magnificent passages, such as Marlowe of the mighty line' could not fail to write; but on the whole it is wearisome, vulgar, and ill-conceived. The lowest buffoonery, destitute of wit, fills a large portion of the scenes; and the serious parts want dramatic evolution. There is no character well drawn. The melancholy figure of Mephistopholis has a certain grandeur, but he is not the Tempter, according to the common conception, creeping to his purpose with the cunning of the serpent; nor is he the cold, ironical, spirit that denies;' he is more like the Satan of Byron, with a touch of piety and much repentance. The language he addresses to Faustus is such as would rather frighten than seduce him: * Goethe's poems,' said Beethoven, 'exercise a great sway over me, not only by their meaning, but by their rhythm also. It is a language which urges me on to composition.' †The English reader would perhaps best succeed who should first read Dr. Anster's brilliant paraphrase, and then carefully go through Hayward's prose translation. Of the poetical translations, Blackie's is the best and closest I have seen, and it has valuable notes. If one version is to be chosen, Hayward's will perhaps be the best. Faust. Did not my conjuring raise thee? speak! Meph. That was the cause, but yet per accidens ; And pray devoutly to the Prince of Hell. Faust. So Faustus has already done, and holds this principle, There is no chief but only Belzebub; To whom Faustus doth dedicate himself. This word damnation terrifies not me, My ghost be with the old philosophers. But, leaving these vain trifles of men's souls, Meph. Arch-regent and commander of all spirits. Meph. Yes, Faustus, and most dearly loved of God. For which God threw him from the face of heaven. Conspired against our God with Lucifer, And are forever damn'd with Lucifer. Faust. Where are you damn'd? Meph. In hell. Faust. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell? Meph. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, that saw the face of God, In being deprived of everlasting bliss? Is this the language of the Tempter? is it even the language of the fallen Lucifer? It is the language of the poet, interpreting what the audience would feel in Satan's place, not what Satan feels. The same want of characterpainting is felt throughout the play. But we have to deal with the philosophical rather than with the dramatic treatment of the subject. The reader who opens Faustus under the impression that he is about to see a philosophical subject treated philosophically, will have mistaken both the character of Marlowe's genius and of Marlowe's epoch. Faustus is no more philosophical in intention than the Jew of Malta, or Tamburlaine the Great. It is simply the theatrical treatment of a popular legend,a legend admirably characteristic of the spirit of those ages in which men, believing in the agency of the devil, would willingly have bartered their future existence for the satisfaction of present desires. Here undoubtedly is a philosophical problem, which even in the present day is constantly presenting itself to the speculative mind. Yes, even in the present day, since human nature does not change: forms only change, the spirit remains; nothing perishes, it only manifests itself differently. Men, it is true, no longer believe in the devil's agency; at least they no longer believe in the power of calling up the devil and transacting business with him; otherwise there would be hundreds of such stories as that of Faust. But the spirit which created that story and rendered it credible to all Europe remains unchanged. The sacrifice of the future to the present is the spirit of that legend. The blindness to consequences caused by the imperiousness of desire; the recklessness with which inevitable and terrible results are braved in perfect consciousness of their being inevitable, provided that a temporary pleasure can be obtained, is the spirit which dictated Faust's barter of his soul, which daily dictates the barter of men's souls. We |