P_oor mariner on summer seas_,
U_ntaught to fear the treacherous breeze!_
A_h, wretched whom your Siren call_
D_eludes and brings to watery woes_!
F_or me--yon plaque on Neptune's wall_
S_hows I've endured the seaman's throes_.
M_y drenched garments hang there, too_:
H_enceforth I shun the enticing blue._
It is not improbable that the struggle of the centuries with the
difficulties of rendering Horace has been a chief influence in the
development of our present exacting ideal of translation; so exacting
indeed that it has defeated its purpose. By emphasis upon the
impossibility of rendering accurately the content of poetry in the form
of poetry, scholastic discussion of the theory of translation has led
first to despair, and next from despair to the scientific and
unaesthetic principle of rendering into exact prose all forms of
literature alike. The twentieth century has thus opened again and
settled in opposite manner the old dispute of the French D'Alembert and
the Italian Salvini in the seventeen-hundreds, which was resolved by
actual results in favor of D'Alembert and fidelity to spirit as opposed
to Salvini and fidelity to letter.
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