504
PARTISAN REVIEW
IV
The person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into
another language, has only one duty to perform, and this is to repro–
duce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the
text. The term "literal '.ranslation" is tautological since anything but
that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or
a parody.
The problem, then, is a choice between rhyme and reason:
can a translation while rendering with absolute fidelity the whole
text, and nothing but the text, keep the form of the original, its
rhythm and its rhyme? To the artist whom practice within the limits
of one language, his own, has convinced that matter and manner
are one, it comes as a shock to discover that a work of art can pre–
sent
itse~f
to the would-be translator as split into form and content,
and that the question of rendering one but not the other may arise
at alL Actually what happens is still a monist's delight: shorn of its
primary verbal existence, the original text will not be able to soar
and to sing; but it can be very nicely dissected and mounted, and
scientifically studied in all its organic details. So here is the sonnet,
and there is the sonneteer's ardent admirer still hoping that by some
miracle of ingenuity he will be able to render every shade and sheen
of the original and somehow keep intact its special pattern in another
tongue.
Let me state at once that in regard to mere meter there is not
much trouble. The iambic measure is perfectly willing to be com–
bined with literal accuracy for the curious reason that English prose
lapses quite naturally into an iambic rhythm.
Stevenson has a delightful essay warning the student against
the danger of transferring one's prose into blank verse by dint of
polishing and pruning; and the beauty of the thing is that Stevenson's
discussion of the rhythmic traps and pitfalls is couched in pure iam–
bic verse with such precision and economy of diction that readers,
or at least the simpler readers, are not aware of the didactic trick.
Newspapers use blank verse as commonly as Monsieur Jourdain
used prose. I have just stretched my hand toward a prostrate paper,
and reading at random I find
Debate on European Army interrupted: the Assembly's
Foreign Affairs Committee by a vote
