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Two letters by Yorick are mentioned particularly, letters which bear testimony to Yorick’s practical benevolence: one describing his efforts in behalf of a dishonored maiden, and one concerning the old man who fell into financial difficulties. Both the translations win approval, but Bode’s is preferred; they are designated as doubtless his.
At almost precisely the same time that Bode’s translation appeared, another German rendering was published, a
Bode changes M’lle Laborde into M’lle Gillet, and Walter Shandy is her visitor, not Yorick. Bode allows himself some verbal changes and softens the bald suggestion at the end. Bode’s motive for this startling change is not clear beyond question.
The publication of the Mittelstedt translation was the occasion of a brief controversy between the two translators in contemporary journals. Mittelstedt printed his criticism of Bode’s work in a home paper, the Braunschweiger Intelligenzblätter, and Bode spoke out his defense in the Neue Hamburger Zeitung. That Bode in his second edition adopted some of the reviewer’s suggestions and criticisms has been noted, but in the preface to this edition he declines to resume the strife in spite of general expectation of it, but, as a final shot, he delivers himself of “an article from his critical creed,” that the “critic is as little infallible as author or translator,” which seems, at any rate, a
This is interesting in connection with Böttiger’s claim that the whole cavalcade of sentimental travelers who trotted along after Yorick with all sorts of animals and vehicles was a proof of the excellence and power of Bode’s translation.
Böttiger notes with partisan zeal that Bode’s translation was made use of in some of the alterations of this second edition, and further records the fact that the account of Sterne’s life, added in this edition, was actually copied from Bode’s preface.
After the “Vergebene Nachforschung” (Unsuccessful Inquiry), which agrees with the original, Bode adds two pages covering the touching solicitude of La Fleur for his master’s safety. This addition is, like the “Hündchen” episode, just mentioned, of considerable significance, for it illustrates another aspect of Sterne’s sentimental attitude toward human relations, which appealed to the Germany of these decades and was extensively copied; the connection between master and man. Following this added incident, Bode omits completely three sections of Eugenius’s original narrative, “The Definition,” “Translation of a Fragment” and “An Anecdote;” all three are brief and at the same time of baldest, most revolting indecency. In all, Bode’s direct additions amount in this first volume to about thirty-three pages out of one hundred and forty-two. The divergences from the original are in the second volume (the fourth as numbered from Sterne’s genuine Journey) more marked and extensive: above fifty pages are entirely Bode’s own, and the individual alterations in word, phrase, allusion and sentiment are more numerous and unwarranted. The more significant of Bode’s additions are here noted. “Die Moral” (pages 32-37) contains a fling at Collier, the author of a mediocre English translation of Klopstock’s “Messias,” and another against Kölbele, a
The wanton passages are acknowledged, but the reviewer asserts that the author must be pardoned them for the sake of his generous and kind-hearted thoughts. The Mittelstedt translation is also quoted and parallel passages are adduced to demonstrate the superiority of Bode’s translation.
Johann Joachim Christoph Bode has already been mentioned in relation to the early review of Zückert’s translation of Shandy. His connection with the rapid growth of the Yorick cult after the publication of the Sentimental Journey demands a more extended account of this German apostle of Yorick. In the sixth volume of Bode’s translation of Montaigne was printed first the life of the translator by C.
The preface to this first edition of Bode’s translation of the Sentimental Journey contains, further, a
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