I have heard, from my friend Mr. Charles Lamb, writing by desire of Mr. Robinson, that you wish to have the justly-celebrated ‘Faust’ of Goethe translated, and that some one or other of my partial friends have induced you to consider me as the man most likely to execute the work adequately, those excepted, of course, whose higher power (established by the solid and satisfactory ordeal of the wide and rapid sale of their works) it might seem profanation to employ in any other manner than in the development of their own intellectual organization. I return my thanks to the recommender, whoever he be, and no less to you for your flattering faith in the recommendation; and thinking, as I do, that among many volumes of praiseworthy German poems, the ‘Louisa’ of Voss, and the ‘Faust’ of Goethe, are the two, if not the only ones, that are emphatically original in their conception, and characteristic of a new and peculiar sort of thinking and imagining, I should not be averse from exerting my best efforts in an attempt to import whatever is importable of either or of both into our own language.
But let me not be suspected of a presumption of which I am
not consciously guilty, if I say that I feel two difficulties; one arising from
long disuse of versification, added to what I know,
better than the most hostile critic could inform me, of my comparative
weakness; and the other, that any work in Poetry strikes
me with more than common awe, as proposed for realization by myself, because
from long habits of meditation on language, as the symbolic medium of the
connection of Thought with Thought, and
| 298 | MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY |
I thought it right to state to you these opinions of mine,
that you might know that I think the Translation of the Faust a task demanding (from me, I mean), no ordinary efforts—and why?
This—that it is painful, very painful, and even odious to me, to attempt
anything of a literary nature, with any motive of pecuniary advantage; but that I bow to the all-wise Providence, which
has made me a poor man, and therefore compelled me by other duties inspiring
feelings, to bring even my Intellect to the Market. And
the finale is this. I should like to attempt the Translation. If you will
mention your terms, at once and irrevocably (for I am an idiot at bargaining,
and shrink from the very thought), I will return an answer by the next Post,
whether in my present circumstances, I can or cannot undertake it. If I do, I
will do it immediately; but I must have all Goethe’s works, which I cannot procure in Bristol; for to
give the ‘Faust’ without a preliminary
critical Essay would be worse than nothing, as far as regards the Public. If you were to ask me as a Friend, whether I
think it would suit the General Taste, I should reply
that I cannot
| COLERIDGE AND GOETHE’S ‘FAUST.’ | 299 |
