Page:The English Review vol 7 Mar-Jun 1847 FGgaAQAAIAAJ.pdf/320

Rh Heering lighted both him and the witnesses down the stair. ' I will swear,' he said, 'he does not survive the night; there are many curious indications; but if he really gets over the night, I will hang out my handkerchief from the tower early in the morning.' Shuddering with cold, they descended the long ladder through the empty dark descent in which there was nothing but steps. The slow iron pendulum of the clock, that carried on the decrees of destiny, swung here in there, like the mowing of the scythe of time. The winds that came in gusts against the tower; the solitary and careful steps of the nine men, as they descended; the strange light of the lantern that struggled in the upper darkness and shed a sepulchral light upon the living, and the expectation that Flitt, at any moment, might depart, and like a pale ghost pass through the church; all these haunted Walt, like a dream, in the land of shadows and terrors, so that he stepped from the tower', like one risen from the dead, and meeting eye to eye, and life with life, in the outward living world."— Walt and Vult, or, The Twins, vol. i. pp. 38, 39.

We have marked in italics the numerous mistranslations and perversions of this short passage, as far as the case admits of it; and we now ask our readers to compare them with the correct translation which we have given above, and those who know German, with the original. To render e.g. "Mir will's schwanen," i.e. It bodes me, by "I will swear,' is bad enough; but to translate "wenn er wirklich ahgefahren ist," i.e. if he is actually gone, "if he really gets over the night," giving just the contrary sense, is really too bad; to say nothing of several more venial blunders against both grammar and dictionary. But what we find fault with above all, is the evident want of all capability to seize upon the imagery of our author, and the cool composure with which words and entire passages, which it is clear the translator does not understand, are either omitted altogether, or else some random productions of the translator's own dull brain are put in the place of Jean Paul's vivid thoughts. For instance, the bold and striking figure of "the owl of death," which is already beginning to "pluck" its prey, the dying man "fluttering in its