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We are led to insist upon this trait of the collection the more, because the translator's choice of language often seems to be the result of a desire to adapt himself to very youthful readers, though why should even they be led to believe that such phrases as the following are correct by seeing them in print?
And with the pale rose of the first sunrays the phantoms of doubt left me exhausted, miserable and helpless like a wet cat. Translator's note. With paragraph 55 ends the diary of Syvorotka. Among his documents, however, has been found the following letter, not in his characteristic handwriting, but in that of someone else, bearing directly upon the incidents narrated by the diarist.
Cunningham wrote to Borrow advising him to send out freely copies for review, and with each a note saying that it was the translator's ultimate intention to publish an English version of the whole Kiaempe Viser with notes; also to "scatter a few judiciously among literary men." It is doubtful if this sage counsel were acted upon; for there is no record of any review or announcement of the work.
The renderings have the same qualities of idiomatic speech and subtly rendered nuance which is always to be found in this translator's work, and although both of these volumes represent the minor work of Dostoievsky, his minor work is finer than our major work, and characterized by a passionate curiosity about the human soul and a deep insight into its mysteries.
This is hoped will suffice to assure the ingenuous Reader that in no treatise of the translator's, whether original or translatitious, shall willingly be offered the meanest rub to the reputation of any worthy gentleman, and that, however providence dispose of him, no misfortune shall be able to induce his mind to any complacency in the disparagement of another. Again. Mr. Hugh Salel to Rabelais.
But it is not only in passages relating to the Church that the translator's faithlessness is displayed. Almost every page of his work exhibits some omission, addition, transposition, or paraphrase, for which no explanation can be given, and not even an insufficient excuse be offered.
Frazer's "Golden Bough," and the present translator's "Custom and Myth," and "Myth, Ritual, and Religion." Mr. Frazer, especially, has enabled the English reader to understand the savage and rural element of sympathetic magic as a factor in the Demeter myth. Meanwhile Mr. Pater has dealt with the higher sentiment, the more religious aspect, of the myth and the rites.
Regarded, however, as poetry, the book was a failure, and for the simple reason that Burton was not a poet. Like his Kasidah, it contains noble lines, but on every page we are reminded of the translator's defective ear, annoyed by the unnecessary use of obsolete words, and disappointed by his lack of what Poe called "ethericity."
Here, too, should be named Jane Barlow, whose poems and stories are faithful imaginative transcripts of the face of nature and the hearts of men as she knew them in Connemara. Finally there is William Butler Yeats, who, on the whole, is the representative man of the Revival. Except in the translator's sphere, his writings have given him a place in almost all the activities of this movement.
The beauty of a translator's work is in the perfect accord of conscience and freedom, and this is not attained without unwearied search for the right word, the only right word which will give the true meaning and the true expression of any idea.
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