Rampolli

A free download from www.dertz.in

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rampolli, by George MacDonald #39
in our series by George MacDonald
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Rampolli
Author: George MacDonald
Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8949]
[Yes, we are more
than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August
29, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMPOLLI
***
Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Charles Bidwell and Distributed
Proofreaders
RAMPOLLI
BY
GEORGE MACDONALD
CONTENTS.
PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATIONS
TRANSLATIONS--
FROM NOVALIS
" SCHILLER
"
GOETHE
" UHLAND
" HEINE
" VON SALIS-SEEWIS
"
CLAUDIUS
FROM THE DUTCH OF GENESTET
FROM
THE GERMAN--Author to me unkown
FROM PETRARCH

MILTON'S ITALIAN POEMS
LUTHER'S SONG-BOOK
A YEAR'S DIARY OF AN OLD SOUL
PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATIONS.
I think every man who can should help his people to inherit the earth by
bringing into his own of the wealth of other tongues. In the flower-pots
of translation I offer these few exotics, with no little labour taught to
exist, I hope to breathe, in English air. Such labour is to me no less
serious than delightful, for to do a man's work, in the process of
carrying over, more injury than must be, is a serious wrong.
I have endeavoured, first of all, to give the spirit of the poetry.

Next, I have sought to retain each individual meaning that goes to form
the matter of a poem.
Third, I have aimed at preserving the peculiar mode, the aroma of the
poet's style, so far as I could do it without offence to the translating
English.
Fourth, both rhythm and rime being essential elements of every poem
in which they are used, I have sought to respect them rigorously.
Fifth, spirit, matter, and form truly represented, the more literal the
translation the more satisfactory will be the result.
After all, translation is but a continuous effort after the impossible.
There is in it a general difficulty whose root has a thousand
ramifications, the whole affair being but an accommodation of
difficulties, and a perfect translation from one language into another is
a thing that cannot be effected. One is tempted even to say that in the
whole range of speech there is no such thing as a synonym.
Much difficulty arises from the comparative paucity in English of
double, or feminine rimes. But I can remember only one case in which,
yielding to impossibility, I have sacrificed the feminine rime: where
one thing or another must go, the less valuable must be the victom.
But sometimes a whole passage has had to suffer that a specially poetic
line might retain its character.
With regard to the Hymns to the Night_ and the _Spiritual Songs of
Friedrich von Hardenberg, commonly called Novalis, it is desirable to
mention that they were written when the shadow of the death of his
betrothed had begun to thin before the approaching dawn of his own
new life. He died in 1801, at the age of twentynine. His parents
belonged to the sect called Moravians, but he had become a Roman
Catholic.
Perhaps some of Luther's Songs might as well have been omitted, but
they are all translated that the Songbook might be a whole. Some, I

cannot tell how many or which, are from the Latin. His work is rugged,
and where an occasional fault in rime occurs I have reproduced it.
In the few poems from the Italian, I have found the representation of
the feminine rimes, so frequent in that language, an impossibility.
FROM NOVALIS.
HYMNS TO THE NIGHT
SPIRITUAL SONGS
A PARABLE
(From THE DISCIPLES AT SAIS)
HYMNS TO THE NIGHT.
I.
Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him,
what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light, with its
colours, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of
the wakening Day? The giant world of the unresting constellations
inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing