Page:The English Review vol 7 Mar-Jun 1847 FGgaAQAAIAAJ.pdf/309

292 of ideas; as is the case with the passage in question in Mr. Noel's translation :

"Nor was it simply the want of resemblance, which, as an opposite pole, decided their attraction. Siebenkäs was more ready to forgive, Leibgeber to punish: the former was more to be compared to a satire of Horace, the latter to a ballad of Aristophanes, with its unpoetical and poetical dissonances; but like girls who, when they become friends, love to wear the same dress, so did their souls wear exactly the same frock-coat and morning-dress of life; I mean, two bodies, with the same cuffs and collars, of the same colour, button-holes, trimmings, and cut. Both had the same brightness of eye, the same sallowness of face, the same height, and the same meagreness; for the phenomenon of similarity of features is more common than is generally believed, being only remarked when some prince or great man casts a bodily reflection."—Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, by Noel, vol. i. p. 10.

Here the word "attraction," which answers only to one of the two senses of the German "Anziehen," is evidently an insufficient translation; it is besides divided from the sentence with which it should stand in immediate connexion, by the whole parenthetical sentence; to say nothing of the lameness of the phrase, "more to be compared to," or of the inappropriate rendering of "Gassenhauer" by "ballad," and of "Härten" by "dissonances;" which latter, moreover, in Mr. Noel's translation, refers to the "ballads of Aristophanes" only, whereas, in the original, it refers to both, but principally to Leibgeber; whence "harshnesses" is preferable; in addition to which, the clumsy circumlocution, "girls who, when they become friends," for "Freundinnen," and the tasteless "phenomenon," for "Naturspiel," complete the process of deterioration which Jean Paul's original has undergone in the hands of his translator. This brief specimen will be sufficient to show how difficult, nay, next to impossible, it is to translate Jean Paul well, and how easy to mangle him. The fact is, that even Mr. Carlyle, whose translations are on the whole admirable, was obliged to take great liberties occasionally with the original, and has not unfrequently lost some of the more recondite allusions