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Fantasy Aspects, issue 2, November 1947
Page 11
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FROM HORIZONS THE DEVIL TO PAY by HARRY WARNER, JR. Last Summer I spent two month's spare time reading "Science and Sanity," which seemed likely to be the peak of sluggishness for a long time. But barely six months later, that record is completely shattered, for it has taken me a full three months to plow through the original German of Goethe's "Faust." It would have been much easier to read a translation, of course, but the opera libretto knowledhe of German that I've picked up, aided by a good annotated edition, made it no too difficult-- just very slow. And now that I'm finished, I'm convinced that a poet as great as Goethe would be required to do a really competent translating job. Further, individual phrases or brief passages are flatly untranslatable into good poetry, because they express the thought in the perfect way, and that way naturally fails to scan and rhyme if translated literally, but loses its effect if put into different words. Externally, of course, "Faust" is the familiar story of the man who signs away his soul to the devil which removes the danger that someone will complain that I'm putting non-fantasy metter into HORIZONS by writing about it. This theme is familiar in English literature through Marlowe's play, and in music through works by Gounod, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, Boito, Busoni, and many others. In science fiction it still bobs up occassionally; witness the recent ASTounding yarn, "The Code." Goethe goes immeasurable forther than any of these, and is at once more explicit and more puzzling. Philosophically, it's still not easy to settle on a "meaning," although the questions has been argued for more than a century, The edition to which I had access insists that a middle course must be taken: the reader must consider the drama neither as a single unit in which everything contributes to the whole, nor as a series of disconnected and meaningless episodes. The underlying philosophy might be construed as a vaugely pelagian and a very comforting one to the man who can believe it, although hardly a logical one: that salvation, or some kind of eternal reward will come to those who try earnestly to live a fruitful life, even though their efforts often results in events that turn out to have quite evil results. "A good man, through obscurest aspirations, has still the instinct of the one true way," the German-speaking God tells the Devil in one translation of the prolouge in [h?]eaven. Faust, who very frequently in the play symbolizes humanity as a whole, gets himself into some awful messes, partly through the machinations of the ----(Page 11)----
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FROM HORIZONS THE DEVIL TO PAY by HARRY WARNER, JR. Last Summer I spent two month's spare time reading "Science and Sanity," which seemed likely to be the peak of sluggishness for a long time. But barely six months later, that record is completely shattered, for it has taken me a full three months to plow through the original German of Goethe's "Faust." It would have been much easier to read a translation, of course, but the opera libretto knowledhe of German that I've picked up, aided by a good annotated edition, made it no too difficult-- just very slow. And now that I'm finished, I'm convinced that a poet as great as Goethe would be required to do a really competent translating job. Further, individual phrases or brief passages are flatly untranslatable into good poetry, because they express the thought in the perfect way, and that way naturally fails to scan and rhyme if translated literally, but loses its effect if put into different words. Externally, of course, "Faust" is the familiar story of the man who signs away his soul to the devil which removes the danger that someone will complain that I'm putting non-fantasy metter into HORIZONS by writing about it. This theme is familiar in English literature through Marlowe's play, and in music through works by Gounod, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, Boito, Busoni, and many others. In science fiction it still bobs up occassionally; witness the recent ASTounding yarn, "The Code." Goethe goes immeasurable forther than any of these, and is at once more explicit and more puzzling. Philosophically, it's still not easy to settle on a "meaning," although the questions has been argued for more than a century, The edition to which I had access insists that a middle course must be taken: the reader must consider the drama neither as a single unit in which everything contributes to the whole, nor as a series of disconnected and meaningless episodes. The underlying philosophy might be construed as a vaugely pelagian and a very comforting one to the man who can believe it, although hardly a logical one: that salvation, or some kind of eternal reward will come to those who try earnestly to live a fruitful life, even though their efforts often results in events that turn out to have quite evil results. "A good man, through obscurest aspirations, has still the instinct of the one true way," the German-speaking God tells the Devil in one translation of the prolouge in [h?]eaven. Faust, who very frequently in the play symbolizes humanity as a whole, gets himself into some awful messes, partly through the machinations of the ----(Page 11)----
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