Essay on the Principles of Translation

by Lord Alexander Fraser Tytler Woodhouselee

CHAPTER VIII

WHETHER A POEM CAN BE WELL TRANSLATED INTO PROSE

From all the preceding observations respecting the imitation of style, we may derive this precept, That a Translator ought always to figure to himself, in what manner the original author would have expressed himself, if he had written in the language of the translation.

This precept leads to the examination, and probably to the decision, of a question which has admitted of some dispute, Whether a poem can be well translated into prose?

There are certain species of poetry, of which the chief merit consists in the sweetness and melody of the versification. Of these it is evident, that the very essence must perish in translating them into prose. What should we find in the following beautiful lines, when divested of the melody of verse?

She said, and melting as in tears she lay,

In a soft silver stream dissolved away.

The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps,

For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps;

Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore,

And bathes the forest where she rang’d before.

Pope’s Windsor Forest.

But a great deal of the beauty of every regular poem, consists in the melody of its numbers. Sensible of this truth, many of the prose translators of poetry, have attempted to give a sort of measure to their prose, which removes it from the nature of ordinary language. If this measure is uniform, and its return regular, the composition is no longer prose, but blank-verse. If it is not uniform, and does not regularly return upon the ear, the composition will be more unharmonious, than if the measure had been entirely neglected. Of this, Mr. Macpherson’s translation of the Iliad is a strong example.

But it is not only by the measure that poetry is distinguishable from prose. It is by the character of its thoughts and sentiments, and by the nature of that language in which they are clothed.[45] A boldness of figures, a luxuriancy of imagery, a frequent use of metaphors, a quickness of transition, a liberty of digressing; all these are not only allowable in poetry, but to many species of it, essential. But they are quite unsuitable to the character of prose. When seen in a prose translation, they appear preposterous and out of place, because they are never found in an original prose composition.

In opposition to these remarks, it may be urged, that there are examples of poems originally composed in prose, as Fenelon’s Telemachus. But to this we answer, that Fenelon, in composing his Telemachus, has judiciously adopted nothing more of the characteristics of poetry than what might safely be given to a prose composition. His good taste prescribed to him certain limits, which he was under no necessity of transgressing. But a translator is not left to a similar freedom of judgement: he must follow the footsteps of his original. Fenelon’s Epic Poem is of a very different character from the Iliad, the Æneid, or the Gierusalemme Liberata. The French author has, in the conduct of his fable, seldom transgressed the bounds of historic probability; he has sparingly indulged himself in the use of the Epic machinery; and there is a chastity and sobriety even in his language, very different from the glowing enthusiasm that characterises the diction of the poems we have mentioned: We find nothing in the Telemaque of the Os magna sonaturum.

The difficulty of translating poetry into prose, is different in its degree, according to the nature or species of the poem. Didactic poetry, of which the principal merit consists in the detail of a regular system, or in rational precepts which flow from each other in a connected train of thought, will evidently suffer least by being transfused into prose. But every didactic poet judiciously enriches his work with such ornaments as are not strictly attached to his subject. In a prose translation of such a poem, all that is strictly systematic or preceptive may be transfused with propriety; all the rest, which belongs to embellishment, will be found impertinent and out of place. Of this we have a convincing proof in Dryden’s translation of the valuable poem of Du Fresnoy, De Arte Graphica. The didactic parts of the poem are translated with becoming propriety; but in the midst of those practical instructions in the art of painting, how preposterous appear in prose such passages as the following?

“Those things which the poets have thought unworthy of their pens, the painters have judged to be unworthy of their pencils. For both those arts, that they might advance the sacred honours of religion, have raised themselves to heaven; and having found a free admission into the palace of Jove himself, have enjoyed the sight and conversation of the Gods, whose awful majesty they observe, and whose dictates they communicate to mankind, whom, at the same time they inspire with those celestial flames which shine so gloriously in their works.

“Besides all this, you are to express the motions of the spirits, and the affections or passions, whose centre is the heart. This is that in which the greatest difficulty consists. Few there are whom Jupiter regards with a favourable eye in this undertaking.

“And as this part, (the Art of Colouring), which we may call the utmost perfection of Painting, is a deceiving beauty, but withal soothing and pleasing; so she has been accused of procuring lovers for her sister (Design), and artfully engaging us to admire her.”

But there are certain species of poetry, of the merits of which it will be found impossible to convey the smallest idea in a prose translation. Such is Lyric poetry, where a greater degree of irregularity of thought, and a more unrestrained exuberance of fancy, is allowable than in any other species of composition. To attempt, therefore, a translation of a lyric poem into prose, is the most absurd of all undertakings; for those very characters of the original which are essential to it, and which constitute its highest beauties, if transferred to a prose translation, become unpardonable blemishes. The excursive range of the sentiments, and the play of fancy, which we admire in the original, degenerate in the translation into mere raving and impertinence. Of this the translation of Horace in prose, by Smart, furnishes proofs in every page.

We may certainly, from the foregoing observations, conclude, that it is impossible to do complete justice to any species of poetical composition in a prose translation; in other words, that none but a poet can translate a poet.