NOTES TO THE TRANSLATION, REPRINTED FROM THE FIRST EDITION. Page 584, line 20. This age and after-ages speak my name. COULD I have hazarded such a Germanism, as the use of the word after-world for posterity,-"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen Nahmen" might have been rendered with more literal fidelity:-Let world and after-world speak out my name, &c. Page 584, line 80. Make thy flesh shudder, and thy whole heart sicken. ` I have not ventured to affront the fastidious delicacy of our age with a literal translation of this line "werth Die Eingeweide schaudernd aufzuregen." [This is omitted in the German as it now stands.-D. O.] Page 639, line 16. I have here ventured to omit a considerable number of lines. I fear that I should not have done amiss had I taken this liberty more frequently. It is, however, incumbent on me to give the original with a literal translation: Weh denen die auf dich vertraun, an dich WALLENSTEIN. Du schilderst deines Vaters Herz. Wie du's O mich hat Höllenkunst getäuscht. Mir sandte Weit offen liess ich des Gedankens Thore, LITEKAL TRANSLATION. Alas! for those who place their confidence on thee, against thee lean the secure hut of their fortune, allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation. WALLENSTEIN. As thou describest, even black hypocrite's breast. Thou art portraying thy father's heart. so is it shaped in his entrails, in this O, the art of hell has deceived me! The abyss sent up to me the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend at my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glut-full at the breasts of my love. I never harbored evil towards him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry heaven, &c. We find a difficulty in believing this to have been written by Schiller. THE following notes are from the pen of the late lamented Mrs. H. N. Coleridge, the editor's sister, who was engaged in an examination of the translation of Wallenstein with a view to this edition, which she did not live to complete : NOTE 1. About a year and a half ago, a writer in "The Westminster Review" undertook to prove that the world had been mistaken all those years -from 1800 to 1850, that is, half a century-in imagining that it had obtained from the pen of Coleridge a translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, creditable to English literature, both from its poetical merit, and its general fidelity to the spirit of the original work. On the contrary, this critic, who signs himself G. H. E., endeavors to show that "it would have been better for the poet, for the reader, and for the credit of the translator, had Mr. C. refrained from meddling with the work, or confined himself to the task of a faithful interpretation," In pursuance of this enterprise, he brings forward a certain number of unquestionable errors in the sense of the German; errors, doubtless, well known from the first to students of Schiller, and admirers of Coleridge (that the report of them reached the German author himself, together with the first news that his noble play had been done into English, we are credibly informed by one who had a personal acquaintance with him), and which have not been hitherto generally supposed to prevent Mr. Coleridge's version from being, on the whole, a highly meritorious performance. Of these errors we shall proceed to lay a list before the reader; premising, however, that the greater number of the substitutions to be found in Mr. C.'s pages are not, as G. H. E. pronounces them, mere imbecility and verbiage, but contain a sufficiently pertinent meaning, and make up, in a homelier liveliness, what they lack of Schiller's sedate dignity-that of some others the worst that can be said is, that the meaning is strained and far-sought; and that there are but a few instances in which, it must be confessed, the translator has trespassed against good sense, as well as forgotten the German language: "Brimful of poetry, o'er the briny ocean, home NOTE 2. We now proceed to give a list of verbal errors in Mr. Coleridge's version; the translation has remained entirely unaltered from the first edition to the last. Page 353: West. Review, July, 1850. Art. 3. Der Posten," rendered "travelling-bills," instead of an "item" or "article in an account." PICC., SCH., COL.-Act i. Scene 2. PICC., SCI., COL.-Act i. Scene 4. Page 853: "Geschmeidig," "pliant," mistaken for "geschmiedet," "hammered out." Pages 856-7: "Jagdzug," rendered "hunting-dress," instead of "hunting-stud." PICC., SCH., COL.-Act i. Scene 9. Page 358: "Das holde kind!" translated "The voice of my child!" a bold substitution for "The charming child." PICC., SCH., COL.-Act i. Scene 8. Page 360: "Was denn?" "What then?" instead of "What?" PICC., SCH., COL.-Act ii. Scene 7. Page 361: "Ist unser Glaub' um Kanzel und Altar," rendered "Our faith hangs upon the pulpit and altar," instead of "is without pulpit and altar." PICC., SCH., COL.-Act ii. Scene 12. Page 362: "Losung," "redemption." "watchword," mistaken for "Erlösung," SOH., WALL, COL.-Act iv. Scene 7. Page 365: "Verstecktesten," "most secret," mistaken for "beflecktesten," ""most spotted." NOTES, p. 684. THE END. |