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PARTISAN REVIEW
FAUST: A MODERN VERSION
GOETHE'S FAUST, F'ARTS I AND II . An IIbridged version tronsillted by
Louis MllcNeice. Oxford University Press. $4.00.
One does not know whether to be amused or sobered by the
thought that the process of translating Goethe's
Faust
into English has
been virtually continuous from the time it started. This may be stretch–
ing the truth a little, but not much. The poem appeared in stages up–
wards of a century ago--chiefly in 1790, 1808 and 1832; there are all
of fifty translations of the whole or the part thus far; none of them seems
to have been executed overnight. Putting the translators end to end,
it works out at, say, two and a half years apiece. Call this
jug~ling
with
arithmetic, if you will, it teJIs a story. Before the present translation gets
reviewed, the next one is under way. Someone is working at it now.
It
is obvious that if the translations were better there would be fewer
of them; it can only be because the existing translations do not satisfy
that a new one is undertaken. And we have to admit it: we have no
rendering of Goethe's
Faust
that transmits what Gottfried Keller-a hard
man
to
please-<>nce called the electrifying language of the original. Not
one of the fifty translations, it is safe to say, has ever become the bed–
side book that the German text has been for millions of readers. It
isn't t'asy to say why this is so, but I think it was Mark Van Doren who
gave the best clue when he said somewhere that the remoter the lan–
guage, the easier it was to translate from and that, precisely because
German was a sister-tongue, English could only struggle with it.
Translators, he almost implied, should steer clear of the Germanic
languages altogether.
MacNeice comes to the difficult task with an advantage that he
shares with Shelley. He is a poet too, less inspired, but more practiced
and adaptable. This is what lovers of
Faust
have been waiting for ever
since SheJIey gave up the task
too
soon-a poet-translator, not a pedant,
one who brought with
him
something of the creative force that shaped
the German poem. Naturally we come to this volume with high expec–
tations and the reward is there. There is scarcely a page without the
felicities and surprises that only a poet can spring. And there are sus–
tained passages too. The prison scene-a supreme test-is beautifully
done. This is certainly one of the most interesting of the
Faust
transla–
tions, perhaps the most interesting.
Unfortunately MacNeice has his handicaps as well. Instead of
coming to the poem with the enthusiasm that it calls for-an enthusiasm
