moral purpose is whether it shall convey an avowed lesson, whether, in
short, it shall be undisguisedly or at least deliberately didactic. To
this there seems to me but one answer possible, whether from a literary
or an ethical point of view,--and that is an unqualified negative.
From the point of view of political and social economics it might
appear that this statement is too sweeping, but closer examination, I
believe, shows it to be sound. Take, for instance, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
a book which has been at least as widely read as any ever produced
in this country. Whatever may have been the opinion in the quarter
of the century in which the book saw the light, it would probably be
impossible to find to-day a critic of reputation who would place it
above mediocrity considered simply as literature. As a means of aiding
a great social reform it is one of the most noteworthy intellectual
productions of the time. Its reputation was of course due largely
to the accidental association with a great political movement, but
its influence makes it a historical document of the highest possible
interest. From the literary point of view its moral purpose is a
mistake, and is a drag upon it; just as the question of the reform
of the Court of Chancery is a drag upon “Bleak House.” We may admire
the reformatory effects of these novels, but our interest in this is
historical in so far as it exists at all.
When the critics took Mrs. Humphry Ward to task for so heavily
freighting “Robert Elsmere” with metaphysical discussion and
disquisition, that lady published a defense of her methods. She
declared that she could not “try to reflect the time without taking
account of forces which are at least as real and living as other
forces, and have as much to do with the drama of human existence.” She
misses the real point. She assumes that the objection is to the choice
of subject which she has made in writing her book. The trouble is not
simply that she has concerned herself with theological scruples. It
is that she has made her moral obvious as a moral; and, what is of
perhaps even more importance, that she has not the art to make her
theme show through it the fundamentally human emotions with which, and
with which only, art is properly concerned. It is not the province
of art to deal with the question of limited interests except as they
depend upon and illustrate human life in its wide meaning. Art cannot
stop at so confined an inquiry as whether a man shall be a Mohammedan,
a Catholic, or a Protestant or an Agnostic. The novelist who would
succeed permanently must go deeper than that. The essential principle
of conviction which is common to all humanity must be shown through the
conflict between differing creeds. Here the matter is that of emotions
and principles general to all men, although the especial circumstances
in which these are exercised may be particular and individual. In so
far as “Robert Elsmere” is significant of that passionate fidelity to
truth which is respected by all mankind it is vital and significant;
but it is mistaken and transient in so far as it is concerned with
the discussion of accidental rather than with general truth. I use
“accidental” here in a purely literary sense. I am not estimating the
value of creeds. I mean simply to say that all men as human beings
are not interested in the question whether Agnosticism or the Church
of England is to be preferred; while every true man is concerned with
the fact that it often costs much for a human being to follow his most
profound inner conviction.
This brings me to what I should say is the first principle involved
in this matter. Literature as an art should deal with those ethical
questions only which are of universal human interest.
We have noticed already that whatever a reader is led to do for
himself is more real and more vital than anything which can be done
for him. This principle, carried farther and higher, underlies the
fact that mankind will give little heed to any “record of intellectual
conceptions” of life, while they will be moved and led by a “reflection
of life”--in other words by those tales which are the embodiment of
human emotions and human passions. To be told what some man thinks that
life should mean to us may interest but is not likely to move us deeply
or to change us. To be shown, vitally and vividly, what life has meant
to any human being can hardly fail to reach our emotions and to affect
the whole mental being. Life can teach more than any man can teach. The
novelist who preaches is tacitly assuming that his individual belief
is of more value than the inferences which a reader would draw from a
faithful picture of life. The race avenges itself upon such an egotist.
It does not reason about it, but it lets his book die. Where is the
didactic novel that has outlived its generation? To be didactic is at
best to be temporary.
The very essence of all art is that the motive of a work shall be
inherent in it and not an outside purpose; but even aside from this,
the moral purpose which shows itself as such defeats its own object.
The lesson which is elaborated for us belongs in the sermon, and
sermons are apt to be of effect so transient that it is necessary to
have a fresh one at least once a week. The teaching of a genuine work
of art is permanent. It is hardly conceivable that the race should
outlive the teaching of Dante or Shakespeare. The hypothesis upon
which the “moral purpose,” so called, is introduced into fiction is
that men shall be moved to accept its teaching. The objection which it
seems fair to urge against this is that the ethical lesson conveyed
indirectly is so much more effectual; and that it is not wise to waste
the opportunity and to dull men’s minds to the legitimate effects of
fiction.
What the sincere novelist does is practically to say to his reader:
“Here is a portion of life as it seems to me it is or might be. I
tell you the whole of its reality or its possibility as far as I can
perceive it. What it means, what is the lesson to be drawn from it,
you must discover for yourself. In the first place the emotions which
I have felt in writing the tale cannot be directly expressed. I have
endeavored to suggest them, and that is all that can be done by means
of language. In the second place, the moral of life will be vital
only to him who draws it for himself.” Of course it is impossible to
determine how far one novelist or another would definitely say to
himself anything of this sort; but I believe that this is the position
consciously or unconsciously taken by every serious writer of fiction.
No conviction, no opinion, no faith is vital which is not the original
growth of the mind which holds it. We may induce it. We may advance
ideas, we may even formulate views, and suppose that we have converted
another to our own position, be it intellectual, moral, æsthetic, or
religious. We may have secured a sort of conformity; the other may even
himself suppose that he thinks as we do; but until he feels that we
think as he does there is little hope that genuine opinions have taken
root in his mind. It is only when the life within him has consciously
put into tangible form its own belief that he is in any permanent way,
in any real sense, convinced. Conviction which is forced upon one by
deliberately didactic books is like a costume, assumed willingly or
unwillingly as the case may be, but only an outer covering. Conviction
which is wrought in one by inner emotion in reading the story of
Arthur Pendennis, of Colonel Newcome, of Effie Deans, of Jean Valjean,
of Hester Prynne, is a change in the very fibre of the moral being.
The one is a view, and the other is vitality; one is a theory, and the
other is belief; the one is a creed, but the other is character.
XX
TRANSLATION
As the intimate intercourse of the inhabitants of the earth increases,
the necessity of setting over literature from one tongue to another is
every day greater. One nation is no longer content with its own science
or its own literature. Each is greedy for the intellectual treasures
of the whole race. Whatever of thought, of experience, of imagination
has been recorded by the men of any country, is of interest to the
readers of all, and there is therefore a steadily increasing demand for
versions of foreign books.
Translation has come to be almost a distinct profession. The increased
exercise of the art has raised greatly the standard of excellence
demanded. It is true that there is still a great deal of slip-shod work
offered to the public, but even cheapness is ceasing to be an effectual
recommendation for bad translations when good ones are to be had. It
is now necessary for the writer who makes this his business to learn
his trade pretty thoroughly. The days of schoolboy renderings are about
over, and some translators, like Miss Katherine Wormeley, have raised
their work to so high a level that it is almost entitled to take rank
with original production.
Translation is in the mind of the general public associated with
rendering into extremely scraggly English the “Commentaries” of Cæsar
or the “Æneid” of Virgil. Most of us have been through experiences like
that of Betty in “A Woodland Wooing:”--
“Just listen to this stuff. I’ve got the rest of it, but I can’t
make head or tail out of this.”
“Well, what is it?” demanded Bob.
“‘Him likewise perchance furious alike impelling, and the spoils
of the Ægean deity whatsoever by means of madness notwithstanding
to be about to be sacrificed.’ There, that is the very best I can
make out of it.”
“Well,” returned Bob, with brotherly candor, “you _are_ a muff.
That’s plain enough. Don’t you see: ‘He also declared himself
about to be sacrificed, an offering to the insatiate Ægean deity;
not caring to live, moreover, impelled by furious madness, but
ready alike to finish and be forgotten.’ That is as easy as
rolling off a log.”--Ch. iii.
This idea, however, it is needful to lay aside if the subject is to be
discussed intelligibly, for Translation has come to be treated as a
serious matter, and to be developed like any other intellectual pursuit.
The first fact to be accepted in considering Translation is that
it is impossible exactly to render into one language what has been
written in another. The race that has made each tongue has impressed
its own character upon it in every syllable, in every idiom. It is
not difficult to repeat in one speech the general idea of what is
said in another, and for practical purposes this is often all that
is required. The directions for making a machine, the particulars of
a shipment of grain, the questions one asks in shopping may with no
especial difficulty be changed from language to language. When it
comes to thoughts, and still more when emotions are to be dealt with,
it is impossible to give in two tongues precisely the same shade of
meaning. The delicate aroma of a piece of literary art is as surely
diminished or lost in translation as a man becomes a foreigner and
noticeably strange when removed from his own country to another. Even
in practical affairs this is sometimes a serious consideration. The
meaning in different languages of the phrases most nearly equivalent is
so far from being identical that in important treaties between nations
of differing speech it is necessary to agree beforehand what tongue
shall be considered authoritative in case of dispute. In scientific
books it is common to find that a translator is forced to add the
original to his version of some sentence or phrase because there is no
exact equivalent. Words cannot completely express thought in any case,
and to this constant infirmity of language is in translation added the
difficulty that the words of one tongue cannot accurately represent the
precise shade of idea phrased by another.
Professor Wendell remarks:--
Each language names ideas in a way peculiarly its own. The common
agreement on arbitrary symbols that at length results in the
vocabulary of any language is sure to produce symbols that stand
for peculiar aspects of real thoughts and emotions which language
tries to define,--for aspects in other words which differ from
those named by any other tongue; and what is thus plainly true of
words by themselves is just as true of words in combination....
In its vocabulary, in its grammar, in its entirety, each language
must express the lasting meaning of life in aspects different from
those expressed by any other.--_Stelligeri_, p. 103.
It follows that the best that a translator can hope to do is to give
the nearest approximation to the original that the language into which
he is changing it is capable of. The problem is not unlike that of the
engraver who is endeavoring to reproduce a picture painted with the
brush. At every point he is forced to decide what combination of lines
and spaces will best represent the work before him. He knows that it
is impossible by any arrangement of lines actually to reproduce the
brush-work of the painter, and so he goes on considering what effect
among those within his reach most nearly approaches this.
The methods of the translator of course vary with the nature of the
original with which he has to deal. In rendering documents which
have to do with practical affairs the chief consideration is strict
exactness of idea. If one attempts to translate a scientific treatise,
the most important point is absolute accuracy. It is in any case
necessary to write correct and clear English, but Force and Elegance
may for the moment be left practically out of consideration,--or,
rather, are considered as in importance subordinate to Clearness. To
say in our tongue as precisely as possible what the author has said in
his is the translator’s first care, and to express, too, the material,
literal, scientific meaning of this as it would appear to a reader of
the original. Here there is no question of atmosphere, of suggestion,
of connotation. The emotional element of literature may and indeed
must be ignored here. The intellectual quality is the only thing to be
regarded.
All this is comparatively easy. If one knows the languages from which
and into which he is translating, he should have no especial difficulty
in changing a scientific paper from one to another. His knowledge of
the subject will of course affect the ease and accuracy of the result;
and of course the comparative richness of the scientific vocabulary of
the languages is to be taken into account. In general terms, however,
this sort of translation calls for the exercise of the intellectual
faculties only; and whatever depends upon the intellect may be acquired
by any one who has an intellect, if he choose to take the trouble.
When it is a question of a version in another tongue of literature in
its higher sense the matter at once becomes more complicated. Here
there is not only the idea to be considered, but the suggestion,
the flavor, the peculiar quality of style and individuality. There
must be an attempt to give some impression of the effect produced in
the original by euphony, by what we speak of as word-color, meaning
thereby the melody and the peculiar quality which terms have from
suggestions so subtle that it is all but impossible to analyze them.
All these requirements thrust themselves upon the translator, and he
must struggle to achieve the impossible in transferring these from one
language to the other. The difficulties of the undertaking are well
illustrated by George Henry Lewes, in the following passage:--
Words are not only symbols of objects, but centres of
associations; and their suggestiveness depends partly upon their
sound. Thus there is not the slightest difference in meaning
expressed when I say, “The dews of night began to fall,” or, “The
nightly dews commenced to fall.” Meaning and metre are the same;
but one is poetry, the other prose. Wordsworth paints a landscape
in this line:--
The river wanders at its own sweet will.
Let us translate it into other words: “The river runneth free
from all restraint.” We preserve the meaning, but where is the
landscape? Or we may turn it thus, “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 upon
certain peculiar arrangements of sound and suggestion.--_Life of
Goethe_, 2d ed., p. 466. Quoted in Genung’s “Practical Rhetoric.”
It is in the rendering of works which belong to that department of
literature to which is given the name belles-lettres that translation
is most difficult and also most common. Poetry, fiction, essays, and
kindred forms are most frequently the subject of the worker at this
craft. Here the form is often of importance as great as that of the
idea. To give merely a literal version of the exact ideas in the
original would do no more toward reproducing it than a photograph does
toward reproducing the Sistine Madonna or a plaster cast the Venus
of Melos. Indeed, of the formally literal translation it is hardly
too much to say that it really represents the original no more than
a collection of paint-tubes containing all the colors in a painting
would represent the picture. The value in the painting lies in the
manner in which the tints have been arranged and varied, blended here
and contrasted there. In literature, the value lies in the cunning
blending and contrasting, the arrangement and variety with which ideas
are presented. Shelley said of the chant of the archangels which
opens the “Prologue in Heaven” of Goethe’s “Faust” that not only is
it “impossible to represent in another language the melody of the
versification,” but that “even the volatile strength and delicacy of
the ideas escape in the crucible of translation.” Every one who has
attempted to translate a work of imaginative merit must appreciate this.
* * * * *
Of course, the first thing which a translator considers is the setting
over of the ideas from one tongue to another, yet it seems to me a
great mistake to make first a version which is simply literal, and
then to try to mould it over into forms of literary grace. Of course,
this is a matter which must to a certain extent depend upon individual
temperament, but it is certainly true here as in other work that a
phrase or a sentence can be more readily shaped and modified while
it is fresh than when it has cooled and hardened. Translation is no
mechanical operation, and no mechanical excellence will suffice. It is
therefore well to aim at excellence of quality from the first, instead
of attempting to add it as it were by an afterthought.
The first and essential requisite in making a translation is that it be
English. By this is meant not only that it shall be made up of English
words. It is not even sufficient that it be made up of English words
so arranged that they may be understood. It is necessary that the
English shall be sound and idiomatic. The ideal translation preserves
nothing in its style to indicate that it was not originally written
in the tongue in which it stands. It is the aim of the translator
to approximate as closely to this standard of excellence as he is
able. The sentence-structure of the German is more elaborate and
more extended than our own. It is necessary that the translator of
German works do not model his English version after this peculiarity
of the original. The paragraph structure of the French is peculiarly
broken and brief; yet the writer who sets work over from French into
English is not permitted to let this fact determine the manner of his
paragraphing in the latter language. Still more important is it that
the idiom of the alien speech shall not leave its traces upon the style
of the translation. This is the point in which all mechanical training
fails. A friend gave me the other day a copy of the sign which was
placed above the electric-light button in the chamber that he occupied
in a hotel at Geneva: “One is begged on entering the room to press
the button to let the light, and on parting again to extend it.” The
man who wrote this rather remarkable direction knew his vocabulary
tolerably well, but he had no idea of the English idiom. You have all
of you seen innumerable examples of the same sort of blunder, and it
is one which can be avoided only by an intimate acquaintance with the
tongue into which one is translating.
Of the three great languages with which the translator is likely to
have to do, French is by far the most idiomatic, German the least,
while English in this respect stands midway between the other two. The
problem in dealing with idioms is to find in one tongue expressions
which are rather the equivalents of the original than a literal
translation. The most nearly satisfactory renderings of the plays of
Aristophanes which are to be found in our literature are those of
John Hookham Frere, and they are probably among the least literal.
Aristophanes was one of the most idiomatic of classic authors, and
he indulged in slang as well as in idiom. To give an impression at
all approximating to that of the original it is necessary constantly
to depart from the exact words of the Greek text, especially when an
attempt is made to preserve the feeling of the metrical effects of the
comedies. In “The Birds,” the literal meaning of a certain passage is
this: “Come ... as many as in the furrows incessantly twitter around
the clods so lightly with blithesome voice.” This is rendered by
Frere:--
Rioting on the furrowed plain,
Pecking, hopping,
Picking, popping,
Among the barley newly sown.
The difference between the literal version and the other is that from
the latter the reader gets something of the impression which the
Greek carried to its auditors, while from the former nothing is to be
obtained beyond the plain and exact meaning.
Those who have examined the translation of the “Phormio” which was
furnished to the audience when that play was acted at Harvard in 1894
found there numerous illustrations of this use of equivalents in place
of exact meaning. The character of the dialogue made it proper to
employ modern slang to give the impression which the original conveyed
to the audience for which it was written. Accordingly the Latin phrase
which literally means “Gird up your loins” was translated “Brace up!”
“Bring the old man” was rendered “Trot out your old man!” “Now what
will be the talk of folk?” is made to read “Why, what will Mrs. Grundy
say?” The whole is an amusing though perhaps somewhat extreme example
of the modern idea of translating by the emotional equivalent instead
of by the literal equivalent; of giving the phrase which shall make on
the English-speaking reader the impression made by the original upon
the reader who spoke the tongue in which the work was first written.
The method of turning foreign works into English which has until
recently been the popular one is admirably illustrated by the versions
of German novels which have been so successfully made by Mrs. A. L.
Wister. Mrs. Wister once said to a young woman who applied to her for
aid in getting translating to do, and who justified her application
upon the ground that she was an excellent French and German scholar:
“That is not the question. The thing is whether you are able to write
English well. Anybody can find out the meaning of a French or German
text; that is simply a matter of using a grammar and a dictionary.
The secret of making an acceptable translation lies in the ability to
express that meaning in good English.” This is admirably said, but it
does not cover the whole ground. It is of the first importance that
the translator write good English, but it is hardly to be supposed
that the use of grammar and lexicon will give a writer that intimate
and sympathetic acquaintance with foreign idioms without which it is
impossible to make a version satisfactory in the modern sense.
Mrs. Wister is an excellent example of what might more correctly be
called a “paraphraser” than a “translator.” It has been her custom
to select some popular German novel, and from that to make a story
which seemed to her likely to please the American public. She has
allowed herself the widest liberty, even to the extent, if I am not
misinformed, of suppressing characters and modifying situations which
did not please her, or of otherwise altering the story in important
particulars. The success with which her books have met has justified
her practical wisdom in adopting this method of following literature
as a bread-winning business. She set out to please the average
story-reader, by providing for the market pleasantly exciting, clean,
and entertaining books. She has done it well, and she has achieved the
end she sought.