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In 1769, the year when the first edition was dated, the Mittelstedt translation was published under a slightly altered title, as already mentioned. This second edition of the Mittelstedt translation in the same year as the first is overlooked by Jördens and Hirsching, both of whom give a second and hence really a third edition in 1774.
Schummel’s title, “Empfindsame Reisen,” is, of course, taken from the newly coined word in Bode’s title, but in face of this fact it is rather remarkable to find that several quotations from Sterne’s Journey, given in the course of the work, are from the Mittelstedt translation.
One of the most remarkable proofs that under fickle fortune, constant danger, and the most destructive influences the life of man may be long preserved is exemplified in the case of an old soldier named Mittelstedt, who died in Prussia in 1792, aged one hundred and twelve. He was born at Fissalm in June, 1681.
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.
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
On two occasions, indeed, Schummel uses the title of the Mittelstedt rendering as first published, “Versuch über die menschliche Natur.” These facts lead one to believe that Schummel drew his inspiration from the reading of this translation.
The Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek reviews both the Bode and Mittelstedt renderings, together with Bode’s translation of Stevenson’s continuation, in the second volume of the Anhang to Volumes I-XII. The critique of Bode’s work defines, largely in the words of the book itself, the peculiar purpose and method of the Journey, and comments briefly but with frank enthusiasm on the various touching incidents of the narrative: “Nur ein von der Natur verwahrloseter bleibt dabei kalt und gleichgültig,” remarks the reviewer. The conception of Yorick’s personal character, which prevailed in Germany, obtained by a process of elimination and misunderstanding, is represented by this critic when he records without modifying his statement: “Various times Yorick shows himself as the most genuine foe of self-seeking, of immoral double entendre, and particularly of assumed seriousness, and he scourges them emphatically.” The review of the third and fourth parts contains a similar and perhaps even more significant passage illustrating the view of Yorick’s character held by those who did not know him and had the privilege of admiring him only in his writings and at a safe distance. “Yorick,” he says, “although he sometimes brings an event, so to speak, to the brink of an indecorous issue, manages to turn it at once with the greatest delicacy to a decorous termination. Or he leaves it incomplete under such circumstances that the reader is impressed by the rare delicacy of mind of the author, and can never suspect that such a man, who never allows a double entendre to enter his mind without a blush, has entertained an indecent idea.” This view is derived from a somewhat short-sighted reading of the Sentimental Journey: the obvious Sterne of Tristram Shandy, and the more insidiously concealed creator of the Journey could hardly be characterized discriminatingly by such a statement. Sterne’s cleverness consists not in suggesting his own innocence of imagination, but in the skill with which he assures his reader that he is master of the situation, and that no possible interpretation of the passage has escaped his intelligence. To the Mittelstedt translation is accorded in this review the distinction of being, in the rendering of certain passages, more correct than Bode’s. A
Mittelstedt proposes “Gefühlvolle Reisen,” “Reisen fürs Herz,” “Philosophische Reisen,” and then condemns his own suggestions as indeterminate and forced.
This first edition of the Mittelstedt translation contains 248 pages and is supplied with a preface which is, like Bode’s, concerned in considerable measure with the perplexing problem of the translation of Sterne’s title. The English title is given and the word “sentimental” is declared a new one in England and untranslatable in German.
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