The Poems of Goethe by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (10 best novels of all time .TXT) 📕

ion, but a paraphrasethat they give. It may perhaps be thought that the present
translations go almost to the other extreme, and that a renderingof metre, line for line, and word for word, makes it impossibleto preserve the poetry of the original both in substance and insound. But experience has convinced me that it is not so, andthat great fidelity is even the most essential element of
success, whether in translating poetry or prose. It was thereforevery satisfactory to me to find that the principle laid down byme to myself in translating Schiller met with the very general,if not universal, approval of the reader. At the same time, Ihave endeavoured to profit in the case of this, the younger bornof the two attempts made by me to transplant the muse of Germanyto the shores of Britain, by the criticisms, whether friendly orhostile, that have been evoked or provoked by the appearance ofits elder brother.

As already mentioned, the latter contained the whole of thePoems of Schiller. It