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Anna Louisa |
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Title: Anna Louisa Author: Thomas De Quincey [More Titles by De Quincey] SPECIMEN TRANSLATION FROM VOSS IN HEXAMETERS, WITH LETTER TO PROFESSOR W. ('CHRISTOPHER NORTH').
_Doctor_, I say, for I hear that the six Universities of England and Scotland have sent you a doctor's degree, or, if they have not, all the world knows they ought to have done; and the more shame for them if they keep no 'Remembrancer' to put them in mind of what they must allow to be amongst their most sacred duties. But that's all one. I once read in my childhood a pretty book, called 'Wilson's Account of the Pelew Islands,' at which islands, you know, H.M.S. _Antelope_ was wrecked--just about the time, I fancy, when you, Doctor, and myself were in long petticoats and making some noise in the world; the book was not written by Captain Wilson, but by Keates, the sentimentalist. At the very end, however, is an epitaph, and that _was_ written by the captain and ship's company:
For _your_ information, Doctor, it cannot be necessary, but on account of very many readers it will be so, to say that Voss's 'Luise' has long taken its place in the literature of Germany as a classical work--in fact, as a gem or cabinet _chef d'oeuvre_; nay, almost as their unique specimen in any national sense of the lighter and less pretending muse; less pretending, I mean, as to the pomp or gravity of the subject, but on that very account more pretending as respects the minuter graces of its execution. In the comparative estimate of Germans, the 'Luise' holds a station corresponding to that of our 'Rape of the Lock,' or of Gresset's 'Vert-vert'--corresponding, that is, in its _degree_ of relative value. As to its _kind_ of value, some notion may be formed of it even in that respect also from the 'Rape of the Lock,' but with this difference, that the scenes and situations and descriptions are there derived from the daily life and habits of a fashionable belle and the fine gentlemen who surround her, whereas in the 'Luise' they are derived exclusively from the homelier and more patriarchal economy of a rural clergyman's household; and in this respect the 'Luise' comes nearest by much, in comparison of any other work that I know of, to our own 'Vicar of Wakefield.' Like that delightful portrait of rural life in a particular aspect, or idyll as it might be called, the 'Luise' aims at throwing open for our amusement the interior of a village parsonage (_Scotice_, 'manse'); like that in its earlier half (for the latter half of the 'Vicar' is a sad collapse from the truth and nature of the original conception into the marvellous of a commonplace novel), the 'Luise' exhibits the several members of a rustic clergyman's family according to their differences of sex, age, and standing, in their natural, undisguised features, all unconsciously marked by characteristic foibles, all engaged in the exercise of their daily habits, neither finer nor coarser than circumstances naturally allow, and all indulging in such natural hopes or fictions of romance as grow out of their situation in life. The 'Luise,' in short, and the 'Vicar of Wakefield' are both alike a succession of circumstantial delineations selected from mere rustic life, but rustic life in its most pure and intellectual form; for as to the noble countess in the 'Luise,' or the squire and his uncle, Sir William, in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' they do not interfere sufficiently to disturb the essential level of the movement as regards the incidents, or to colour the manners and the scenery. Agreeing, however, in this general purpose, the two works differ in two considerable features; one, that the 'Vicar of Wakefield' describes the rural clergyman of England, 'Luise' the rural clergyman of North Germany; the other, that the English idyll is written in prose, the German in verse--both of which differences, and the separate peculiarities growing out of them, will, it may perhaps be thought, require a few words of critical discussion. There has always existed a question as to the true principles of translation when applied, not to the mere literature of _knowledge_ (because _there_ it is impossible that two opinions can arise, by how much closer the version by so much the better), but to the literature of _power_, and to such works--above all, to poems--as might fairly be considered _works of art_ in the highest sense. To what extent the principle of _compensation_ might reasonably be carried, the license, that is, of departing from the strict literal forms of the original writer, whether as to expressions, images, or even as to the secondary thoughts, for the sake of reproducing them in some shape less repellent to a modern ear, and therefore virtually sustaining the harmony of the composition by preventing the attention from settling in a disproportionate degree upon what might have a startling effect to a taste trained under modern discipline--this question has always been pending as a question open to revision before the modern courts of criticism; as surely to you, Dr. North, one of the chief 'swells' on that bench, I need not say. But, for the sake of accurate thinking, it is worth while observing that formerly this question was moved almost exclusively with a view to the Latin and Greek classics; and that circumstance gave a great and a very just bias to the whole dispute. For the difference with regard to any capital author of ancient days, as compared with modern authors, is this, that here we have a twofold interest--an interest with work, and a separate interest in the writer. Take the 'Prometheus Desmotes' of AEschylus, and suppose that a translator should offer us an English 'Prometheus,' which he acknowledged to be very free, but at the same time contended that his variations from the Greek were so many downright improvements, so that, if he had not given us the genuine 'Prometheus,' he had given us something better. In such a case we should all reply, but we do not want something better. Our object is not the best possible drama that could be produced on the fable of 'Prometheus'; what we want is the very 'Prometheus' that was written by AEschylus, the very drama that was represented at Athens. The Athenian audience itself, and what pleased its taste, is already one subject of interest. AEschylus on his own account is another. These are collateral and alien subjects of interest quite independent of our interest in the drama, and for the sake of these we wish to see the real original 'Prometheus'--not according to any man's notion of improvement, but such as came from a sublime Grecian poet, such as satisfied a Grecian audience, more than two thousand years ago. We wish, in fact, for the real AEschylus, 'unhousel'd, unaneal'd,' with all his imperfections on his head. Such was the way, and the just way, of arguing the point when the application was limited to a great authentic classic of the Antique; nor was the case at all different where Ariosto or any other illustrious Italian classic was concerned. But a new sort of casuistry in this question has arisen in our own times, and by accident chiefly in connection with German literature; but it may well be, Dr. North, that you will be more diverted by a careful scrutiny of my metres after Voss in illustration, than by any further dissertation on my part on a subject that you know so well.
In the month of leafy June, beneath celestial azure EDITOR'S NOTE.--This was, of course, written for _Blackwood's Magazine_; but it never appeared there.
[1] 'That tamer of housemaids': [Greek: Hektoros ippodamoio]--of Hector, the tamer of horses ('Iliad'). [2] 'On pinion of expectation.' Here I would request the reader to notice that it would have been easy for me to preserve the regular dactylic close by writing '_pinion of anticipation_;' as also in the former instance of '_many a dark December_' to have written '_many a rainy December_.' But in both cases I preferred to lock up by the massy spondaic variety; yet never forgetting to premise a dancing dactyle--'many a'--and 'pinion of.' Not merely for variety, but for a separate effect of peculiar majesty. [3] Alluding to a ridiculous passage in Thomson's 'Seasons': 'Delightful task! to teach the young idea how to shoot.' [4] All these arts, viz., teaching the horse to fight with his forelegs or lash out with his hind-legs at various angles in a general melee of horse and foot, but especially teaching him the secret of 'inviting' an obstinate German boor to come out and take the air strapped in front of a trooper, and do his duty as guide to the imperial cavalry, were imported into the Austrian service by an English riding-master about the year 1775-80. And no doubt it must have been horses trained on this learned system of education from which the Highlanders of Scotland derived their terror of cavalry. [5] 'Blind rams, brainless wild asses,' etc. The 'arietes,' or battering-rams with iron-bound foreheads, the 'onagri,' or wild asses, etc., were amongst the poliorcetic engines of the ancients, which do not appear to have received any essential improvement after the time of the brilliant Prince Demetrius, the son of Alexander's great captain, Antigonus. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |