Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/13



is certainly the duty of a translator to be thoroughly convinced of the intrinsic merit of any work he may propose to translate, for he will be in a measure responsible for its influence upon the minds of those to whom he may introduce it. No hope of sudden success should dazzle him into unworthy labor. Let him first ascertain if the proposed work be one of general human interest, calculated to increase the moral worth of the people to whom it is to be offered, to express the influential conceptions of an original mind, open a new literature, throw light upon the hidden history of an epoch, or develop the characteristics of a nation;—if any one of the above conditions be met, then is the translator justified in transplanting the quickening germs into the mental being of his own countrymen, to bloom in wider consciousness, in fairer actions.

It is claimed that the translations herewith offered meet not only one, but all of the above conditions.

That the works of Krasinski are of "general human interest" is proved by the fact that, even under their anonymous publication, they were enthusiastically received by the critics of Europe, and immediately translated into French and German; that "they are calculated to increase the moral worth of the people to whom they are offered," is evident in that they contain a genuine attempt to introduce the sublime ethics of Christianity into the vexed and vicious sphere of modern politics; that "they embody the influential conceptions of an original mind," may be read in the fact that these "conceptions" modified the character of an entire People; that the translations open a "new literature" is clear, since they are the first specimens of modern Polish poetry as yet given to Rh