HORÆ GERMANICÆ NO. I.
Muss in 's Land der Dichtung gehen
Wer den Dichter will verstehen
Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.
Gedichte sind gemahlte Fensterscheiben
Sieht man vom markt in de Kirche hinein
Da ist alles dunkel und düster
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Kommt aber nur einmal herin
Begrüsst die hellige capele
Da ist's auf einmal farbig helle
Geschicht und Zierrath glänzt in Schnelle
Bedeutend wirkt ein edler schein.
If any one talent in this world of mediocrity be more decidedly rare than the rest, it is the talent of translation, especially of poetry; or rather to carry the idea fairly out, it may be questioned whether any such thing as translating poetry, be possible at all. A good poem in one language, is often the exciting cause of a good or bad poem in another, which last shall be called a translation, as Pope's Iliad for instance, is called a translation of Homer; but does not every school-boy of any cleverness know, that though you may translate Homer's Iliad or his Odyssey for ever and ever, yet you never can translate him. Talma may take off Alexander, that's one step down, and a travelled ape may serve you up an imitation of Talma, that's another, and that brings you to about the distance from the conqueror, that most translations keep from their originals; for most of them are made under the double disadvantage, of an imperfect apprehension by the translator himself of the real genius of his author, and of an imperfect fashion of rendering what he does apprehend. Let somebody attitudinize to show you what the Apollo Belvedere is, or the Venus de Medicis, allow for their defects of conception and memory, their faults of form, and the disadvantages of "pantaloons and boddices," and then say whether such an exhibition satisfies or diminishes at all your desire to study with your own eyes those wonders of the chisel. If it does not, then
