has been contemptuously called the “Privy-Councillor’s dialect” (Geheimrathssprache) by some of the critics, who assail Goethe with cries of wrath; but it is a feature of the original which cannot be reproduced in the translation, and ought not to be, if it could be. If the reader now and then falls upon an unusual compound, or a seemingly forced inversion of language, I must beg him to remember that my sins against the poetical laws of the English language are but a small percentage of Goethe’s sins against the German. The other difficulty seems to lie partly in the intellectual constitution of the critics themselves, many of whom are nothing if not metaphysical. The fulness of the matter is such that various apparently consistent theories may be drawn from it, and much of the confusion which has thence ensued has been charged to the author’s account. Here, as in the First Part, the study of Goethe’s life and other works has been my guide through the labyrinth of comment; I have endeavored to give, in every case, the simplest and most obvious interpretation, even if, to some readers, it may not seem the most satisfactory.
diction, awkwardly long and painfully complicated sentences, a mass of unsuccessful verbal forms and adaptations, unnecessarily obscure images, forced transitions, affected superlative participles and compounds,—all these things operate repellently enough upon many persons, and spoil, in advance, their enjoyment of the work.”—Köstlin, Goethe's Faust, Seine Kritiker und Ausleger.
