Part 4 (1/2)

Bode's last words are a covert a.s.sumption of his role as prophet and priest of Yorick in Germany: ”The reader may himself judge from the following pa.s.sage, whether we have spoken of our Briton in terms of too high praise.”

In the July number of the _Unterhaltungen_, another Hamburg periodical, is printed another translation from the Sentimental Journey ent.i.tled: ”Eine Begebenheit aus Yoricks Reise furs Herz ubersetzt.” The episode is that of the _fille de chambre_[10] who is seeking Crebillon's ”Les Egarements du Coeur et de l'Esprit.” The translator omits the first part of the section and introduces us to the story with a few unacknowledged words of his own. In the September number of the same periodical the rest of the _fille de chambre_ story[11] is narrated. Here also the translator alters the beginning of the account to make it less abrupt in the rendering. The author of this translation has not been determined.

Bode does not translate the word ”Sentimental” in his published extracts, giving merely the English t.i.tle; hence Lessing's advice[12]

concerning the rendering of the word dates probably from the latter part of the summer. The translation in the September number of the _Unterhaltungen_ also does not contain a rendering of the word. Bode's complete translation was issued probably in October,[13] possibly late in September, 1768, and bore the imprint of the publisher Cramer in Hamburg and Bremen, but the volumes were printed at Bode's own press and were ent.i.tled ”Yoricks Empfindsame Reise durch Frankreich und Italien, aus dem Englischen ubersetzt.”[14]

The translator's preface occupies twenty pages and is an important doc.u.ment in the story of Sterne's popularity in Germany, since it represents the introductory battle-cry of the Sterne cult, and ill.u.s.trates the att.i.tude of cultured Germany toward the new star. Bode begins his foreword with Lessing's well-known statement of his devotion to Sterne. Bode does not name Lessing; calls him ”a well-known German scholar.” The statement referred to was made when Bode brought to his friend the news of Sterne's death. It is worth repeating:

”I would gladly have resigned to him five years of my own life, if such a thing were possible, though I had known with certainty that I had only ten, or even eight left. . . . but under the condition that he must keep on writing, no matter what, life and opinions, or sermons, or journeys.”

On July 5, 1768, Lessing wrote to Nicolai, commenting on Winckelmann's death as follows: ”He is the second author within a short time, to whom I would have gladly given some years of my own life.”[15]

Nearly thirty years later (March 20, 1797) Sara Wulf, whose maiden name was Meyer and who was later and better known as Frau von Grotthus, wrote from Dresden to Goethe of the consolation found in ”Werther” after a disappointing youthful love affair, and of Lessing's conversation with her then concerning Goethe. She reports Lessing's words as follows: ”You will feel sometime what a genius Goethe is, I am sure of this. I have always said I would give ten years of my own life if I had been able to lengthen Sterne's by one year, but Goethe consoles me in some measure for his loss.”[16]

It would be absurd to attach any importance to this variation of statement. It does not indicate necessarily an affection for Sterne and a regret at his loss, mathematically doubled in these seven or eight years between Sterne's death and the time of Lessing's conversation with Sara Meyer; it probably arises from a failure of memory on the part of the lady, for Bode's narrative of the anecdote was printed but a few months after Sterne's death, and Lessing made no effort to correct an inaccuracy of statement, if such were the case, though he lived to see four editions of Bode's translation and consequently so many repet.i.tions of his expressed but impossible desire. Erich Schmidt[17] reduces this willingness on Lessing's part to one year,--an unwarranted liberty.

These two testimonies of Lessing's devotion are of importance in defining his att.i.tude toward Yorick. They attest the fact that this was no pa.s.sing fancy, no impulsive thought uttered on the moment when the news of Sterne's death was brought to him, and when the Sentimental Journey could have been but a few weeks in his hands, but a deep-seated desire, born of reflection and continued admiration.[18] The addition of the word ”Reisen” in Bode's narrative is significant, for it shows that Lessing must have become acquainted with the Sentimental Journey before April 6, the date of the notice of Sterne's death in the _Hamburgische Adress-Comptoir-Nachrichten_;[19] that is, almost immediately after its English publication, unless Bode, in his enthusiasm for the book which he was offering the public, inserted the word unwarrantably in Lessing's statement.

To return to Bode's preface. With emphatic protestations, disclaiming vanity in appealing to the authority of so distinguished a friend, Bode proceeds to relate more in detail Lessing's connection with his endeavor. He does not say that Lessing suggested the translation to him, though his account has been interpreted to mean that, and this fact has been generally accepted by the historians of literature and the biographers of Lessing.[20] The tone of Bode's preface, however, rather implies the contrary, and no other proof of the supposition is available. What Bode does a.s.sert is merely that the name of the scholar whom he quotes as having expressed a willingness to give a part of his own life if Sterne's literary activity might be continued, would create a favorable prepossession for his original (”ein gunstiges Vorurtheil”), and that a translator is often fortunate enough if his selection of a book to translate is not censured. All this implies, on Lessing's part, only an approval of Bode's choice, a fact which would naturally follow from the remarkable statement of esteem in the preceding sentence. Bode says further that out of friends.h.i.+p for him and regard for the reader of taste, this author (Lessing), had taken the trouble to go through the whole translation, and then he adds the conventional request in such circ.u.mstances, that the errors remaining may be attributed to the translator and not to the friend.

The use of the epithet ”empfindsam” for ”sentimental” is then the occasion for some discussion, and its source is one of the facts involved in Sterne's German vogue which seem to have fastened themselves on the memory of literature. Bode had in the first place translated the English term by ”sittlich,” a manifestly insufficient if not flatly incorrect rendering, but his friend coined the word ”empfindsam” for the occasion and Bode quotes Lessing's own words on the subject:

”Bemerken Sie sodann da.s.s sentimental ein neues Wort ist. War es Sternen erlaubt, sich ein neues Wort zu bilden, so muss es eben darum auch seinem Uebersetzer erlaubt seyn. Die Englander hatten gar kein Adjectivum von Sentiment: wir haben von Empfindung mehr als eines, empfindlich, empfindbar, empfindungsreich, aber diese sagen alle etwas anders. Wagen Sie, empfindsam! Wenn eine muhsame Reise eine Reise heisst, bey der viel Muhe ist: so kann ja auch eine empfindsame Reise eine Reise heissen, bey der viel Empfindung war. Ich will nicht sagen, da.s.s Sie die a.n.a.logie ganz auf ihrer Seite haben durften. Aber was die Leser vors erste bey dem Worte noch nicht denken mogen, sie sich nach und nach dabey zu denken gewohnen.”[21]

The statement that Sterne coined the word ”sentimental” is undoubtedly incorrect,[22] but no one seems to have discovered and corrected the error till Nicolai's article on Sterne in the _Berlinische Monatsschrift_ for February, 1795, in which it is shown that the word had been used in older English novels, in ”Sir Charles Grandison”

indeed.[23] It may well be that, as Bottiger hints,[24] the coining of the word ”empfindsam” was suggested to Lessing by Abbt's similar formation of ”empfindnisz.”[25]

[Transcriber's Note: The reference is to Bottinger, not to the present text.]

The preface to this first edition of Bode's translation of the Sentimental Journey contains, further, a sketch of Sterne's life,[26]

his character and his works. Bode relates the familiar story of the dog, but misses the point entirely in rendering ”puppy” by ”Geck” in Sterne's reply, ”So lang er ein Geck ist.” The watchcoat episode is narrated, and a brief account is given of Sterne's fortunes in London with Tristram Shandy and the sermons. Allusion has already been made to the hints thrown out in this sketch relative to the reading of Sterne in Germany.

A translation from Shandy of the pa.s.sage descriptive of Parson Yorick serves as a portrait for Sterne.

A second edition of Bode's work was published in 1769. The preface, which is dated ”Anfang des Monats Mai, 1769,” is in the main identical with the first, but has some significant additions. A word is said relative to his controversy with a critic, which is mentioned later.[27]

Bode confesses further that the excellence of his work is due to Ebert and Lessing,[28] though modesty compelled his silence in the previous preface concerning the source of his aid. Bode admits that even this disclosure is prompted by the clever guess of a critic in the _Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent_,[29] who openly named Lessing as the scholar referred to in the first introduction. The addition and prominence of Ebert's name is worthy of note, for in spite of the plural mention[30] in the appendix to the introduction, his first acknowledgment is to one friend only and there is no suggestion of another counselor. Ebert's connection with the Bode translation has been overlooked in the distribution of influence, while the memorable coining of the new word, supplemented by Bottiger's unsubstantiated statements, has emphasized Lessing's service in this regard. Ebert is well-known as an intelligent and appreciative student of English literature, and as a translator, but his own works betray no trace of imitation or admiration of Sterne.

The final words of this new preface promise a translation of the continuation of the Sentimental Journey; the spurious volumes of Eugenius are, of course, the ones meant here. This introduction to the second edition remains unchanged in the subsequent ones. The text of the second edition was substantially an exact reproduction of the first, but Bode allowed himself frequent minor changes of word or phrase, an alteration occurring on an average once in about three pages. Bode's changes are in general the result of a polis.h.i.+ng or filing process, in the interest of elegance of discourse, or accuracy of translation. Bode acknowledges that some of the corrections were those suggested by a reviewer,[31] but states that other pa.s.sages criticised were allowed to stand as they were. He says further that he would have asked those friends who had helped him on his translation itself to aid him in the alterations, if distance and other conditions had allowed. The reference here is naturally to his separation from Ebert, who was in Braunschweig, but the other ”conditions” which could prevent a continuation of Lessing's interest in the translation and his a.s.sistance in revision are not evident. Lessing was in Hamburg during this period, and hence his advice was available.

Bode's retranslation of the pa.s.sage with which Sterne's work closed shows increased perception and appreciation for the subtleness of Sterne's indecent suggestions, or, perhaps, a growing lack of timidity or scruple in boldly repeating them. It is probable that the continuation by Eugenius, which had come into his hands during this period, had, with its resumption of the point, reminded Bode of the inadequacy and inexactness of his previous rendering.

At almost precisely the same time that Bode's translation appeared, another German rendering was published, a fact which in itself is significant for the determination of the relative strength of appeal as between Sterne's two works of fiction. The t.i.tle[32] of this version was ”Versuch uber die menschliche Natur in Herrn Yoricks, Verfa.s.ser des Tristram Shandy, Reisen durch Frankreich und Italien, aus dem Englischen.” It was dated 1769 and was published at the ”Furstliche Waisenhausbuchhandlung,” in Braunschweig. The preface is signed Braunschweig, September 7, 1768, and the book was issued in September or October. The anonymous translator was Pastor Mittelstedt[33] in Braunschweig (Hirsching und Jordens say Hofprediger), whom the partisan Bottiger calls the ever-ready manufacturer of translations (der allezeit fertige Uebersetzungsfabrikant). Behmer tentatively suggests Weis as the translator of this early rendering, an error into which he is led evidently by a remark in Bode's preface in which the apologetic translator states the rumor that Weis was engaged in translating the same book, and that he (Bode) would surely have locked up his work in his desk if the publisher had not thereby been led to suffer loss.

Nothing was ever heard of this third translation.

This first edition of the Mittelstedt translation contains 248 pages and is supplied with a preface which is, like Bode's, concerned in considerable measure with the perplexing problem of the translation of Sterne's t.i.tle. The English t.i.tle is given and the word ”sentimental” is declared a new one in England and untranslatable in German. Mittelstedt proposes ”Gefuhlvolle Reisen,” ”Reisen furs Herz,” ”Philosophische Reisen,” and then condemns his own suggestions as indeterminate and forced. He then goes on to say, ”So I have chosen the t.i.tle which Yorick himself suggests in the first part.”[34] He speaks of the lavish praise already bestowed on this book by the learned journals, and turns at last aside to do the obvious: he bemoans Sterne's death by quoting Hamlet and closes with an apostrophe to Sterne translated from the April number of the _Monthly Review_ for 1768.[35] In 1769, the year when the first edition was dated, the Mittelstedt translation was published under a slightly altered t.i.tle, as already mentioned. This second edition of the Mittelstedt translation in the same year as the first is overlooked by Jordens and Hirsching,[36] both of whom give a second and hence really a third edition in 1774. Bottiger notes with partisan zeal that Bode's translation was made use of in some of the alterations of this second edition, and further records the fact that the account of Sterne's life, added in this edition, was actually copied from Bode's preface.[37]

The publication of the Mittelstedt translation was the occasion of a brief controversy between the two translators in contemporary journals.

Mittelstedt printed his criticism of Bode's work in a home paper, the _Braunschweiger Intelligenzblatter_, and Bode spoke out his defense in the _Neue Hamburger Zeitung_. That Bode in his second edition adopted some of the reviewer's suggestions and criticisms has been noted, but in the preface to this edition he declines to resume the strife in spite of general expectation of it, but, as a final shot, he delivers himself of ”an article from his critical creed,” that the ”critic is as little infallible as author or translator,” which seems, at any rate, a rather pointless and insignificant contribution to the controversy.

Bode's translation of the third and fourth volumes of Yorick's Journey,[38] that is, the continuation by Eugenius, followed directly after the announcement in the preface to the second edition of the first two volumes, as already mentioned. Bottiger states that Bode had this continuation from Alberti and knew it before anyone else in Germany. It was published in England in the spring of 1769, and was greeted with a disapproval which was quite general, and it never enjoyed there any considerable genuine popularity or recognition. Bode published this translation of Stevenson's work without any further word of comment or explanation whatsoever, a fact which easily paved the way for a misunderstanding relative to the volumes, for Bode was frequently regarded as their author and held responsible for their defects. Bode himself never made any satisfactory or adequate explanation of his att.i.tude toward these volumes, and the reply to Goeze in the introduction to his translation of Shandy is the nearest approach to a discussion of his position. But there Bode is concerned only with the attack made by the Hamburg pastor upon his character, an inference drawn from the nature of the book translated, and the character of the translation; in the absence of a new edition in which ”Mine and His shall be marked off by distinct boundaries,” he asks Goeze only to send to him, and beg ”for original and translation,” naturally for the purpose of comparison. This evasive reply is Bode's only defense or explanation. Bottiger claims that the review of Bode's translation in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_ did much to spread the idea of Bode's authors.h.i.+p, though the reviewer in that periodical[39] only suggests the possibility of German authors.h.i.+p, a suspicion aroused by the subst.i.tution of German customs and motif and word-play, together with contemporary literary allusion, allusion to literary mediocrities and obscurities, of such a nature as to preclude the possibility of the book's being a literal translation from the English.

The exact amount and the nature of Bode's divergence from the original, his alterations and additions, have never been definitely stated by anyone. The reviewer in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_ is manifestly ignorant of the original. Bottiger is indefinite and partisan, yet his statement of the facts has been generally accepted and constantly repeated. He admits the German coloring given the translation by Bode through German allusions and German word-plays: he says that Bode allowed himself these liberties, feeling that he was no longer dealing with Sterne, a statement of motive on Bode's part which the latter never makes and never hints at. The only absolute additions which Bottiger mentions as made by Bode to the narrative of Eugenius are the episode, ”Das Hundchen,” and the digression, ”Die Moral.” The erroneous idea herein implied has been caught up and repeated by nearly everyone who has mentioned Bode's translation of the work.[40] The less certain allusion to ”Die Moral” has been lost sight of, and ”Das Hundchen” alone has been remembered as representing this activity on Bode's part. In fact this episode is only one of many pure creations on Bode's part and one of the briefer. In the first pages of these volumes Bode is faithful to the original, a fact suggesting that examination or comparison of the original text and Bode's translation was never carried beyond the first two-score pages; yet here, it would seem, Bode's rendering was less careful, more open to censure for inaccuracy, than in the previous volumes.[41]