Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/197

 happily I interpreted Goethe without itching for translator's laurels or royalties."

"Let's see the original, Mark."

"Here it is:

"Vers libre with a vengeance, eh?" chuckled Mark. "And why in thunder shouldn't that mean verse liberally handled?"

"If I translated your version of Goethe back into German, do you suppose the Fatherlanders would understand it?"

"No," said honest Mark, "but I do understand their translations of my lingo I am told they make me appear like a native German writer, in fact Moritz Busch called me the most translatable of foreign authors, to my face—but Goethe was a poet, and a prose man, like me, can never do justice to a poetry man of Goethe's distinction. Look at these German translations of Shakespeare—they think them classic—they get my eyes in flood with laughter." 193