22 SEPTEMBER 1894, Page 24

Parsival a Knightly Epic. By Wolfram von Eschenbach. For the

first time translated into English Verse, by Jessie L. Weston. Vol. I. (Nutt.)—Wolfram von Eschenbach has been universally regarded as the greatest poet of Mediteval Germany. In spite of the hostility of Gottfried von Strassburg, he was held in high esteem by his contemporaries, and his numerous imitators bear witness to his influence on the literature of his time. " Parzival," his greatest work, was written probably in the first decade of the thirteenth century. It is a psychological epic, founded, as far as the subject is concerned, on French romances, and in especial on Chrestien de Troyes' "Li cent° du graal." Wolfram could neither read nor write, and though his very illiterateness gave him an independence of thought and a boldness of humour and satire which charm the reader, it also made his style crabbed and obscure. His verse, rugged in metre, and often faulty in rhyme, is full of metaphors and similes half-worked out and very hard to interpret ; his wealth of thought seems to run away with him, so that his sentences are frequently broken off in the middle and become inextricably entangled. Nor have his short couplets the splendid rhythm and swing of the "Nibelungenlied" or "Gudrun." It was well, therefore, that an English translation of a poem which may be said to give the classical form of the Grail Legend, should be attempted. The difficulties of the task are very great, and it is no discredit to Miss Weston to say that her success is only partial. The long lino of fifteen syllables which has been chosen, necessitates an excessive use of expletives, which becomes very wearisome. But Miss Weston's chief fault lies in her frequent and extensive amplifications of the original. It is of course impossible to translate quite literally an author whose ideas are so involved. The translator is obliged to set down what the poet meant to say, rather than what he actually said, But there is no justification for the addition of whole clauses and even lines, which have no existence whatever in the German. So that though the version runs smoothly enough on the whole, it cannot be called a faithful representation of the original. The work will be completed in a second volume.