TRANSLATIONS (FOUND IN A COMMONPLACE BOOK).* SOMEWHER19 in France, or,
to be more precise, in the literature thereof, is to be found the expression, " Beautiful as prose "—Belle serene lu prose. To those who cling to the old ways this may seem a desperate saying. We are so accustomed to think of poetry as synonymous with what is specially beautiful in literature that few of us are yet prepared for the menacing possibility, for, thank Heaven it is still only a possibility, of the entire cehaustion of verse. If there are epics, they shall fail ; if them are metrical tragedies, they shall vanish away ; if there are lyrics, they shall be heard no more ; and in their place there shall be nothing but prose,. not prosaic prose, however, but prose which its advocates believe will be more sonorous and more satisfying than our present poetry, because more elastic and less subject to convention. We have outgrown, they tell us, these men of the second birth in literature, the swaddling- clothes of our infancy. We need freedom, not bands. The new rhythms will be not only subtler but nobler than the old. We shall make our prosody as we go, and it will be more harmonious because more closely fitted to its subject.
Though we cannot surrender at discretion to this attack, we admit that there may be something in it. No doubt there are one or two pieces of prose existing in the English language in which a melody has been reached beyond the melody of verse, a rhythm which fascinates beyond the fascination of ordinary metres, because it has in it no touch of monotony or repetition. But in any case, and whichever is to be the victor of the new ago, poetry or prose, no one can doubt the amazing charm of good prose, whether lyrical, descriptive, elegiac, or narra- tive, and no one can fail to desire its cultivation. If it can win, it deserves to win. It may be treason to Apollo, but clearly if it succeeds none will ever dare to call it by that name. Therefore all honour to those who practise prose as a serious art, and not as an accident, for, remember, hitherto the most beautiful things in English prose have been marital fortuitously rather than consciously. The great invocation to death at the and of Ralegh's History was apparently a direct inspiration, " the courteous revelation " of some spirit, and not a piece of conscious art.
It is only natural that the war, with its breaking up of old tradi- tions, and with its keen emotions, should have given us examples of the new prose. Wo find attempts of a very memorable kind in a little book published last summer by Messrs. B. H. Blackwell, entitled Translation/ (Found in a Commonplace Book), edited by " S. C." It is an open secret that this little book is not compossd of real translations, but of isolated • Trenstaticma (Poand in a Comrnotiplem coot). Edited WS. C. Oxford B. If, riackwell. L8t. set.] Items of -prose, er, as we should prefer to call them, of prose poems, put together by a distinguished mau of letters now ranging the pathless realms of air at the front.
We are far from saying that the writer in question has carried the position which he has attempted to storm. He may have'got the first trench, but we are sure he will admit that he has not yet consolidated
• the position, and the counter-attack of his brother-poets may yet wrest from him the ground apparently gained. Before we go any further we must point out that he has hampered himself by the adoption of the fiction that .he is translating from the classics. That may have helped him to make a start, but it has to some extent put his Muse into a strait-waistcoat, and deprived him of a good deal of freshness and elasticity. It has also made him—quite unconsciously of course s —a little too reminiscent of Landor's Grece-Roman dialogues. Take for example the following :-
"Riches I crave not, neither power, nor fame, nor even love, having tasted the 'sweetness and the bitterness thereof, but a farm where trees give shade in the summer and provide logs for the winter, enough for a blazing hearth."
That is a beautiful and restrained piece of writing, but it is too classical in tone. The following lyric, though full of grace and charm, is open to a similar objection :- " In a silent lake thick with tangled leaves and floating waterlilies, a mossy tower and a ruined wall stand covered with leaves. Here, they say, dwells an immortal spirit banished by the Immortal Gods whom she slighted. But she, in her exile, regrets nothing, not even the air of Olympus, so •beautiful is her dwelling-place of water and lilies and leaves."
Later on in the book, however, we get nearer to life and breathe a freer literary atmosphere. Take for example this story of death, which forms the first of three exquisite elegies of the front line :— " Between our trenches and the enemy his body lies. We cannot rescue it, but neither can the enemy molest it. He sleeps undisturbed by the spears that hurtle over him, and well content, for he fell in the accomplishment of the task in which he more than all others excelled, and in the last of his many perilous hours it was joy he found and not fear."
-Hero our author has entirely escaped from the fiction of translation, and, though be may lose a certain classical charm, the emotional gain is -very great. We cannot refrain from quoting the other two. We shall say something in criticism later, but they are noble prose poems. They touch, but only to tranquilize. There is no note of anger or of despair—emotions which vulgarize and debase the thought of death :—
" Stricken mortally by the foe, you had but time to smile, then you fell and lay glorious and beautiful in death. And you the mother, and you the father, and you the wife of so peerless a man, bewail the loss, but bewail not his fate ; for in order that our inheritance may endure, and that our land may be inviolate, wo give the best that wo have, and give glad ly."
" This month, a year ago, when the trees were breaking into blossom, you greeted the halcyon, the sea-blue bird of spring, and you sang the joy of battle • but now, having done with all these things, you slumber under the still grass. This year you will not hear the birds sing, nor see the fields change, and the trees put on their summer apparel. Your horse ie ridden by another, and the hound that you loved has found a new master. But I who had known you for so many years, have found no new friend to place in your stead, nor have I met another like you ; so that now, in the spring breeze that is blowing, I miss something that used to be there, and the sunshine to me is less bright than heretofore. But you perhaps, in new hunting-grounds, are joyous still, and still to those who meet you shine like the sun ; or if your new abode be one of shadow, like a star brighter than other stars you appear, yes, brighter than the moon herself.'
But though the poet of the elegies just quoted escapes from the trans- lation mood, our criticism in regard to want of variety holds good. What he must do, and what we sincerely hope he will do, is to study variety. We should like to see him approach his task exactly este would if ho were writing verse. He should use his prose for description, for analysis, for invocation, and even for satire. And we would have him use it boldly, make it sing itself, only avoiding the temptation to set his words to any of the old metrieal tunes. Nor, in our opinion, should he despise one of the artifices of the modern poet. The modem poet as he reads the works of his predecessors finds some haunting rhythm, which the older poet has used maybe but in one stanza. On this he models himself, and makes what was but a freak into a mould. There are many passages in our prose writers, from Ralegh or even from Lyly down to the present day, which might well bear adaptation and develop. ment of this kind. To illustrate what we mean, wo will take—though it will shock some of our more fastidious readers—the passage from Macaulay which concludes the essay on John Hampden :— " Others could conquer ; he alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his watched the Scotch army descending from the heights of Dunbar. But it was when to the sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles had succeeded the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious of ascendency and burning for revenge, it was when the vices and ignorance which the old tyranny had generated threatened the new freedom with destruction, that England missed the sobriety, the self- command, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone."
Et would of course be the abomination of desolation to copy the lilt of this passage slavishly, but properly understood and properly used
it could render hints of harmonies that might grow and blossom in a wise adapter's hand.
Even the despised "Junius," whose prose has so long been out of fashion, will provide rhythmic: suggestions for those who care to labour in this vineyard. Here is a possible model from the best of the letters to the Duke of Grafton I--- " Whenever the spirit of distributing prebends and bishopricks shall have departed from you, you will find that learned seminary perfectly recovered from the delirium of an installation and, what in truth it ought to be, once more the peaceful scene of slumber and thoughtless medita- tion. The venerable tutors of the university will no longer distress your modesty by proposing you for a pattern to their pupils. The learned dulness of declamation will be silent ; and even the venal muse, though happiest in fiction, will forget your virtues. Yet, for the benefit of the succeeding age, I could wish that your retreat could he deferred until your morals shall happily be ripened to that maturity of corruption at which the worst examples cease to be contagious."
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