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This Zückert translation is first reviewed by the above mentioned Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent in the issue for January 4, 1764. The review, however, was not calculated to lure the German reader of the periodical to a perusal either of the original, or of the rendering in question: it is concerned almost exclusively with a summary of the glaring inaccuracies in the first nineteen pages of the work and with correct translations of the same; and it is in no sense of the word an appreciation of the book. The critic had read Shandy in the original, and had believed that no German hack translator would venture a version in the language of the fatherland. It is a review which shows only the learning of the reviewer, displays the weakness of the translator, but gives no idea of the nature of the book itself, not even a glimpse of the critic’s own estimate of the book, save the implication that he himself had understood the original, though many Englishmen even were staggered by its obtuseness and failed to comprehend the subtlety of its allusion. It is criticism in the narrowest, most arrogant sense of the word, destructive instead of informing, blinding instead of illuminating. It is noteworthy that Sterne’s name is nowhere mentioned in the review, nor is there a hint of Tristram’s English popularity. The author of this unsigned criticism is not to be located with certainty, yet it may well have been Bode, the later apostle of Sterne-worship in Germany. Bode was a resident of Hamburg at this time, was exceptionally proficient in English and, according to Jördens and Schröder, he was in 1762-3 the editor of the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent. The precise date when Bode severed his connection with the paper is indeterminate, yet this, the second number of the new year 1764, may have come under his supervision even if his official connection ended exactly with the close of the old year. To be sure, when Bode ten years later published his own version of Shandy, he translated, with the exception of two rather insignificant cases, none of the passages verbally the same as the reviewer in this journal, but it would be unreasonable to attach any great weight to this fact. Eight or nine years later, when undertaking the monumental task of rendering the whole of Shandy into German, it is not likely that Bode would recall the old translations he had made in this review or concern himself about them. A
He inserts here a brief account of Walter Shandy, his disappointment at Tristram’s calamitous nose and Tristram’s name, and his resolve to perfect his son’s education; and then he makes the visit to M’lle Laborde, as narrated by Eugenius, an episode out of Walter Shandy’s book, which was written for Tristram’s instruction, and, according to Bode, was delivered for safe-keeping into Yorick’s hands.
He says his work, as an imitation of Sterne’s two novels, has “few or absolutely no beauties of the original, and many faults of its own.” He states that his enthusiasm for Tristram has been somewhat dampened by Sonnenfels and Riedel; he sees now faults which should not have been imitated; the frivolous attitude of the narrator toward his father and mother is deprecated, and the suggestion is given that this feature was derived from Tristram’s own frankness concerning the eccentricities and incapacities of his parents.
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