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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856,by CHARLES T. BROOKS,In the Clerk's Office of the District Courtof the District of Rhode Island.
Perhaps some apology ought to be given to English scholars, that is, thosewho do not know German, (to those, at least, who do not know what sort ofa thing Faust is in the original,) for offering another translation to thepublic, of a poem which has been already translated, not only in a literalprose form, but also, twenty or thirty times, in metre, and sometimes withgreat spirit, beauty, and power.
The author of the present version, then, has no knowledge that a renderingof this wonderful poem into the exact and ever-changing metre of theoriginal has, until now, been so much as attempted. To name only onedefect, the very best versions which he has seen neglect to follow theexquisite artist in the evidently planned and orderly intermixing ofmale and female rhymes, i.e. rhymes which fall on the last syllableand those which fall on the last but one. Now, every careful student ofthe versification of Faust must feel and see that Goethe did notintersperse the one kind of rhyme with the other, at random, as thosetranslators do; who, also, give the female rhyme (on which the vivacity ofdialogue and description often so much depends,) in so small a proportion.
A similar criticism might be made of their liberty in neglecting Goethe'smethod of alternating different measures with each other.
It seems as if, in respect to metre, at least, they had asked themselves,how would Goethe have written or shaped this in English, had that been hisnative language, instead of seeking con amore (and con fidelità) asthey should have done, to reproduce, both in spirit and in form, themovement, so free and yet orderly, of the singularly endowed andaccomplished poet whom they undertook to represent.
As to the objections which Hayward and some of his reviewers haveinstituted in advance against the possibility of a good and faithfulmetrical translation of a poem like Faust, they seem to the presenttranslator full of paradox and sophistry. For instance, take thisassertion of one of the reviewers: "The sacred and mysterious union ofthought with verse, twin-born and immortally wedded from the moment oftheir common birth, can never be understood by those who desire versetranslations of good poetry." If the last part of this statement had read"by those who can be contented with prose translations of good poetry,"the position would have been nearer the truth. This much we might welladmit, that, if the alternative were either to have a poem like Faust in ametre different and glaringly different from the original, or to have itin simple and strong prose, then the latter alternative would be the oneevery tasteful and feeling scholar would prefer; but surely to every onewho can read the original or wants to kno