tion>George MacDonald
Rampolli
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066229610
Table of Contents
PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATIONS.
I think every man who can should help his people to inherit the earth by bringing into his own of the wealth of other tongues. In the flower-pots of translation I offer these few exotics, with no little labour taught to exist, I hope to breathe, in English air. Such labour is to me no less serious than delightful, for to do a man’s work, in the process of carrying over, more injury than must be, is a serious wrong.
I have endeavoured, first of all, to give the spirit of the poetry.
Next, I have sought to retain each individual meaning that goes to form the matter of a poem.
Third, I have aimed at preserving the peculiar mode, the aroma of the poet’s style, so far as I could do it without offence to the translating English.
Fourth, both rhythm and rime being essential elements of every poem in which they are used, I have sought to respect them rigorously.
Fifth, spirit, matter, and form truly represented, the more literal the translation the more satisfactory will be the result.
After all, translation is but a continuous effort after the impossible. There is in it a general difficulty whose root has a thousand ramifications, the whole affair being but an accommodation of difficulties, and a perfect translation from one language
