Bode’s translation of the third and fourth volumes of Yorick’s Journey,[38] that is, the continuation by Eugenius, followed directly after the announcement in the preface to the second edition of the first two volumes, as already mentioned. Böttiger states that Bode had this continuation from Alberti and knew it before anyone else in Germany. It was published in England in the spring of 1769, and was greeted with a disapproval which was quite general, and it never enjoyed there any considerable genuine popularity or recognition. Bode published this translation of Stevenson’s work without any further word of comment or explanation whatsoever, a fact which easily paved the way for a misunderstanding relative to the volumes, for Bode was frequently regarded as their author and held responsible for their defects. Bode himself never made any satisfactory or adequate explanation of his attitude toward these volumes, and the reply to Goeze in the introduction to his translation of Shandy is the nearest approach to a discussion of his position. But there Bode is concerned only with the attack made by the Hamburg pastor upon his character, an inference drawn from the nature of the book translated, and the character of the translation; in the absence of a new edition in which “Mine and His shall be marked off by distinct boundaries,” he asks Goeze only to send to him, and beg “for original and translation,” naturally for the purpose of comparison. This evasive reply is Bode’s only defense or explanation. Böttiger claims that the review of Bode’s translation in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek did much to spread the idea of Bode’s authorship, though the reviewer in that periodical[39] only suggests the possibility of German authorship, a suspicion aroused by the substitution of German customs and motif and word-play, together with contemporary literary allusion, allusion to literary mediocrities and obscurities, of such a nature as to preclude the possibility of the book’s being a literal translation from the English.
The exact amount and the nature of Bode’s divergence from the original, his alterations and additions, have never been definitely stated by anyone. The reviewer in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek is manifestly ignorant of the original. Böttiger is indefinite and partisan, yet his statement of the facts has been generally accepted and constantly repeated. He admits the German coloring given the translation by Bode through German allusions and German word-plays: he says that Bode allowed himself these liberties, feeling that he was no longer dealing with Sterne, a statement of motive on Bode’s part which the latter never makes and never hints at. The only absolute additions which Böttiger mentions as made by Bode to the narrative of Eugenius are the episode, “Das Hündchen,” and the digression, “Die Moral.” The erroneous idea herein implied has been caught up and repeated by nearly everyone who has mentioned Bode’s translation of the work.[40] The less certain allusion to “Die Moral” has been lost sight of, and “Das Hündchen” alone has been remembered as representing this activity on Bode’s part. In fact this episode is only one of many pure creations on Bode’s part and one of the briefer. In the first pages of these volumes Bode is faithful to the original, a fact suggesting that examination or comparison of the original text and Bode’s translation was never carried beyond the first two-score pages; yet here, it would seem, Bode’s rendering was less careful, more open to censure for inaccuracy, than in the previous volumes.[41]
This method of translation obtains up to page 48, then Bode omits a half-page of half-innocent, half-revolting suggestion, the story of the Cordelier, and from the middle of page 49 to page 75, twenty-five pages, the translator adds material absolutely his own. This fiction, introducing Yorick’s sentimental attitude toward the snuff-box, resuming a sentimental episode in Sterne’s work, full of tears and sympathy, is especially characteristic of Yorick, as the Germans conceived him. The story is entitled “Das Mündel,”[42] “The Ward,” and is evidently intended as a masculine companion-piece to the fateful story of Maria of Moulines, linked to it even in the actual narrative itself. An unfortunate, half-crazed man goes about in silence, performing little services in an inn where Yorick finds lodging. The hostess tells his story. He was once the brilliant son of the village miller, was well-educated and gifted with scholarly interests and attainments. While instructing some children at Moulines, he meets a peasant girl, and love is born between them. An avaricious brother opposes Jacques’s passion and ultimately confines him in secret, spreading the report in Moulines of his faithlessness to his love. After a tragedy has released Jacques from his unnatural bondage, he learns of his loved one’s death and loses his mental balance through grief. Such an addition to the brief pathos of Maria’s story, as narrated by Sterne, such a forced explanation of the circumstances, is peculiarly commonplace and inartistic. Sterne instinctively closed the episode with sufficient allowance for the exercise of the imagination.
Following this addition, the section “Slander” of the original is omitted. The story of the adventure with the opera-girl is much changed. The bald indecency of the narrative is somewhat softened by minor substitutions and omissions. Nearly two pages are inserted here, in which Yorick discourses on the difference between a sentimental traveler and an avanturier. On pages 122–126, the famous “Hündchen” episode is narrated, an insertion taking the place of the hopelessly vulgar “Rue Tireboudin.” According to this narrative, Yorick, after the fire, enters a home where he finds a boy weeping over a dead dog and refusing to be comforted with promises of other canine possessions. The critics united in praising this as being a positive addition to the Yorick adventures, as conceived and related in Sterne’s finest manner. After the lapse of more than a century, one can acknowledge the pathos, the humanity of the incident, but the manner is not that of Sterne. It is a simple, straight-forward relation of the touching incident, introducing that element of the sentimental movement which bears in Germany a close relation to Yorick, and was exploited, perhaps, more than any other feature of his creed, as then interpreted, i.e., the sentimental regard for the lower animals.[43] But there is lacking here the inevitable concomitant of Sterne’s relation of a sentimental situation, the whimsicality of the narrator in his attitude at the time of the adventure, or reflective whimsicality in the narration. Sterne is always whimsically quizzical in his conduct toward a sentimental condition, or toward himself in the analysis of his conduct.
After the “Vergebene Nachforschung” (Unsuccessful Inquiry), which agrees with the original, Bode adds two pages covering the touching solicitude of La Fleur for his master’s safety. This addition is, like the “Hündchen” episode, just mentioned, of considerable significance, for it illustrates another aspect of Sterne’s sentimental attitude toward human relations, which appealed to the Germany of these decades and was extensively copied; the connection between master and man. Following this added incident, Bode omits completely three sections of Eugenius’s original narrative, “The Definition,” “Translation of a Fragment” and “An Anecdote;” all three are brief and at the same time of baldest, most revolting indecency. In all, Bode’s direct additions amount in this first volume to about thirty-three pages out of one hundred and forty-two. The divergences from the original are in the second volume (the fourth as numbered from Sterne’s genuine Journey) more marked and extensive: above fifty pages are entirely Bode’s own, and the individual alterations in word, phrase, allusion and sentiment are more numerous and unwarranted. The more significant of Bode’s additions are here noted. “Die Moral” (pages 32–37) contains a fling at Collier, the author of a mediocre English translation of Klopstock’s “Messias,” and another against Kölbele, a contemporary German novelist, whose productions have long since been forgotten.[44]
Eugenius’s chapter, “Vendredi-Saint,” Bode sees fit to alter in a rather extraordinary way, by changing the personnel and giving it quite another introduction. He inserts here a brief account of Walter Shandy, his disappointment at Tristram’s calamitous nose and Tristram’s name, and his resolve to perfect his son’s education; and then he makes the visit to M’lle Laborde, as narrated by Eugenius, an episode out of Walter Shandy’s book, which was written for Tristram’s instruction, and, according to Bode, was delivered for safe-keeping into Yorick’s hands. Bode changes M’lle Laborde into M’lle Gillet, and Walter Shandy is her visitor, not Yorick. Bode allows himself some verbal changes and softens the bald suggestion at the end. Bode’s motive for this startling change is not clear beyond question. The most plausible theory is that the open and gross suggestion of immoral relation between Yorick, the clergyman and moralist, and the Paris maiden, seemed to Bode inconsistent with the then current acceptation of Yorick’s character; and hence he preferred by artifice to foist the misdemeanor on to the elder Shandy.
The second extensive addition of Bode’s in this volume is the section called “Die Erklärung,” and its continuation in the two following divisions, a story which unites itself with the “Fragment” in Sterne’s original narration. Yorick is ill and herbs are brought to him in paper wrappings which turn out to contain the story of the decayed gentleman, which, according to Sterne’s relation, the Notary was beginning to write. It will be remembered that the introduction in Sterne was also brought by La Fleur as a bit of wrapping paper. This curious coincidence, this prosaic resumption of the broken narrative, is naïve at least, but can hardly commend itself to any critic as being other than commonplace and bathetic. The story itself, as related by the dying man is a tale of accidental incest told quietly, earnestly, but without a suggestion of Sterne’s wit or sentiment.
In the next section, emanating entirely from Bode, “Vom Gesundheitstrinken,” the author is somewhat more successful in catching the spirit of Sterne in his buoyancy, and in his whimsical anecdote telling: it purports to be an essay by the author’s friend, Grubbius. The last addition made by Bode[45] introduces once more Yorick’s sentiment relative to man’s treatment of the animal world. Yorick, walking in the garden of an acquaintance, shoots a sparrow and meets with reproof from the owner of the garden. Yorick protests prosaically that it was only a sparrow, yet on being assured that it was also a living being, he succumbs to vexation and self-reproof at his own failure to be true to his own higher self. A similar regret, a similar remorse at sentimental thoughtlessness, is recorded of the real Yorick in connection with the Franciscan, Lorenzo. But there is present in Sterne’s story the inevitable element of caprice in thought or action, the whimsical inconsistency of varying moods, not a mere commonplace lapse from a sentimental creed. In one case, Yorick errs through whim, in the other, merely through heedlessness.
Bode’s attitude toward the continuation of Eugenius and the general nature of his additions have been suggested by the above account. A résumé of the omissions and the verbal changes would indicate that they were made frequently because of the indecency of the original; the transference of the immorality in the episode of M’lle. Laborde and Walter Shandy, if the reason above suggested be allowed, is further proof of Bode’s solicitude for Yorick’s moral reputation. Yet the retention of the episode “Les Gants d’Amour” in its entirety, and of parts of the continued story of the Piedmontese, may seem inconsistent and irreconcilable with any absolute objection on Bode’s part other than a quantitative one, to this loathesome element of the Eugenius narrative.
Albrecht Wittenberg[46] in a letter to Jacobi, dated Hamburg, April 21, 1769, says he reads that Riedel is going to continue “Yorick’s Reisen,” and comments upon the exceedingly difficult undertaking. Nothing further is known of this plan of Riedel’s.