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"You don't care, I knew that!" cried Verhovensky in an access of furious anger. "You are lying, you miserable, profligate, perverted, little aristocrat! I don't believe you, you've the *The reference is to the legend current in the sect of Flagellants. Translator's note. appetite of a wolf!... Understand that you've cost me such a price, I can't give you up now! There's no one on earth but you!
At any rate, even if there are readers to whom it is a matter of indifference, fidelity to the method is as much a part of the translator's duty as fidelity to the matter.
"The To-morrow of Death" if one were to put his trust in the translator's prefatory note discusses a grave question upon "purely scientific methods." We are glad to see this remark, because it shows what notions may be entertained by persons of average intelligence with reference to "scientific methods."
Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have only the translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got side-tracked.
Amazing as the statement may seem, we feel ourselves compelled to say at once, though regretfully, that Burton's own account of the history of the translation, given in his Translator's Foreword to the Arabian Nights, and Lady Burton's account, given in her life of her husband, do not tally with the facts as revealed in his letters.
In each case the new translator cared more for his author and took a much higher view of a translator's duty than his predecessor had done. But in each case the plain and accurate translation was a failure, while the loose and ornate one continued to be admired. We need not conclude from this that the wilful inaccuracy of Pope or Dryden would be any longer excusable in such a work.
Most of us would say the same of Jonathan Swift himself, and all of us, I think, share R.L. Stevenson's resentment against a book with the portrait of a living author, and in a heightened degree against an English translation of an ancient Hebrew classic with the translator's portrait. Sometimes such a translator is the author; his rendering, at all events, is not the classic.
No fewer than twenty-seven insurgent leaders, in the reign of Abdullah alone, are enumerated in the translator's notes from Ibn Hayyan. The epithet of kelb, "dog," frequently applied to this leader, has led Condé into the strange error of creating for him a son, whom he calls Kalib Ibun Hafssun. The term Muwallad is said to be the origin of mulatto.
Some of the female characters in his poems retain their dewy freshness, their exquisite originality, even after passing through the translator's crucible. At the age of 19 he wrote a poem on "Odysseus," which was published under a pseudonym. Then, three years later, there appeared a collection of rhapsodies entitled "Milosao," which he had garnered from the lips of Albanian village maidens.
It only remains to say a few words of the translator's labours; and although we do not pretend to decide on the fidelity of the version he has given us, or how much his author may have lost or gained in his hands, we cannot but think that we perceive internal evidence of efforts to be faithful, even at the hazard of losing perhaps something of more value in the attempt.
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