Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I.Jean Paul
General
Hesperus; or, Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography. Vol. I.
Jean Paul
Fiction
I report, then, briefly. In this edition such amendments have been made
as were most needed and easiest. In the first place, I have frequently
translated myself into German out of the Greek, Latin, French, and
Italian, and in fact in every instance where the speech-cleanser, with
proper respect for the subject itself, demanded it. Once for all, we
writers must all accommodate ourselves to the verbal-alien-bill, or
decree for exiling foreigners, of Campe, Kolbe, and others; and even
our beloved Goethe, however much he too "emergiert" and "eminiert,"
will at last, in some future edition or other, have, for example, to
throw both of these very words, which in the latest[1] he brings
forward in the same line, out of the book. Is it not time, now that we
have ejected the foreign peoples which had been long enough encamped in
Germany, that we should send after them what has still longer remained
behind,--their echo, or words?
Only let Kolbe, or any other Purist, be a reasonable man, and not
exhort us to change the technical words which are the common property
of cultivated Europe--e. g. of music, of philosophy--into vernacular
ones which will not be understood, especially in cases where the hand
of the interpreter would snatch and pluck away the butterfly-dust of
variegated allusions. For example, the name Purist itself may serve as
an example. Supposing one should call Arndt a _political Purist_ of
Germany, and Kolbe should substitute political _speech-purifier_, or
pure of speech, this small conceit would give up in the translation the
little bit of ghost that it haply possessed.
Even if the author, however, has not turned out such things,--as some
philological anchorites do, who, like the windpipe, eject all foreign
matter with disagreeable coughing and spitting, and only retain their
native air,--still he has at least sought to imitate the glaciers,
which from year to year gradually shove down foreign bodies, such as
stone and wood, from their sides. How diligently I have done this in
the present edition of Hesperus, on every side, may be seen by the old
printed copy interlined with the new emendations, and I could well wish
Herr Kolbe would just travel to Berlin and inspect the copy. At least I
will beseech the German Society there, which some years ago made me a
member, to go to the bookstore and see for themselves what their
colleague has done, what erasions and substitutions he has made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account