_The Sorrows of Belgium, by Leonid Andreyev. New York: The
Macmillan Company._
It does make you feel sorry. Sorry for a big talent corrupted by the
omnipotent Huhn-Public. During the Russo-Japanese war Andreyev wrote his
_Red Laughter_, a rough affair, yet powerful in its horror. This
pamphlet is nothing but an editorial from an anti-German newspaper.
A test of man’s well-being and consciousness of power is the
extent to which he can acknowledge the terrible and questionable
character of things, and whether he is in any need of a faith at
the end.—_Nietzsche._
_The Poets’ Translation Series_
The object of the editors of this series is to present a number of
translations of Greek and Latin poetry and prose, especially of those
authors who are less frequently given in English.
This literature has too long been the property of pedagogues,
philologists and professors. Its human qualities have been obscured by
the wranglings of grammarians, who love it principally because to them
it is so safe and so dead.
But to many of us it is not dead. It is more alive, more essential, more
human than anything we can find in contemporary English literature. The
publication of such classics, in the way we propose, may help to create
a higher standard for poetry than that which prevails, and a higher
standard of appreciation of the writers of antiquity, who have suffered
too long at the hands of clumsy metrists. We do not deny that there are
many good translations in English of classical writers—Lang’s _Homer_
and _Theokritos_, Mackail’s _Anthology_ or Aldington’s _Apuleius_, for
instance; but too often such works are lonely and austerely expensive.
THE POET’S TRANSLATION SERIES will appear first in _The Egoist_
(starting September 1st) and will then be reprinted and issued as small
pamphlets, simple and inexpensive, so that none will buy except to read.
The translations will be done by poets whose interest in their authors
will be neither conventional nor frigid. The translators will take no
concern with glosses, notes, or any of the apparatus with which learning
smothers beauty. They will endeavor to give the words of these Greek and
Latin authors as simply and as clearly as may be. Where the text is
confused, they will use the most characteristic version; where obscure,
they will interpret.
The first six pamphlets, when bound together, will form a small
collection of unhackneyed poetry, too long buried under the dust of
pedantic scholarship. They range over a period of two thousand years of
literature—a proof of the amazing vitality of the Hellenic tradition.
If this venture has the success its promoters look for, other similar
and possibly larger pamphlets will be issued.
1. (Ready September) The complete poems (25) of Anyte of Tegea, now
brought together in English for the first time: translated by Richard
Aldington. (8 pages) 2d. (2½d. post free).
2. (Ready October) An entirely new version of the poems and new
fragments, together with the more important of the old fragments, of
Sappho: translated by Edward Storer. (12 pages) 4d (4½d. post free).