Concerning Lafcadio Hearn; With a Bibliography by Laura Stedman. George M. Gould
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is not one artist among them."
All this is very true; but the writer does not explain the causes of this state of affairs. They are many, no doubt;—the principal fact for consideration being that there is no demand for artistic work in translation. And there is no demand for it, not so much because it is rare and unlikely to be appreciated as because it is dear. Artistic translators cannot afford to work for a song—neither would they attempt to translate a five-hundred-page novel in three weeks or a month as others do. Again, artistic translators would not care to attach their names to the published translation of a fourth-or fifth-class popular novel. Finally, artistic translations do not obtain a ready market with first-class American publishers, who, indeed, seldom touch domestic translations of foreign fiction, and depend for their translations of European literature upon transatlantic enterprise. Thus the artistic translator may be said to have no field. He may sell his work to some petty publisher, perhaps, but only at a price that were almost absurd to mention;—and the first-class publishers do not care to speculate in American translations at all. We might also add that the translator's task is always a thankless one—that however superb and laborious his execution, it can never obtain much public notice, nor even so much as public comprehension. The original author will be admired—the translator unnoticed, except by a few critics.
Moreover, the men capable of making the most artistic translations are usually better employed. The translator of a great French, German, or Italian masterpiece of style, ought, in the eternal fitness of things, to be a man able to write something very artistic in his own tongue. No one seems to doubt that Longfellow was the man to translate Dante—that Tennyson could parallel Homer (as he has shown by a wonderful effort) in the nineteenth-century English—that Carlyle re-created Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" by his rendering of it—that Austin Dobson was the first to teach English readers some of the beauties of Gautier's poetry—that Swinburne alone could have made François Villon adopt an English garb which exactly fitted him. But the same readers perhaps never gave a thought to the fact that the works of Flaubert, of Daudet, of Droz, of Hugo, of at least a score of other European writers, call for work of an almost equally high class on the part of the translator, and never receive it! What a translation of Daudet could not Henry James give us!—how admirably John Addington Symonds could reproduce for us the Venetian richness of Paul de Saint Victor's style! But such men are not likely to be invited, on either side of the Atlantic, to do such work;—neither are they likely to do it as a labour of love! A splended translation of Flaubert might be expected from several members of what is called "The New England School;" but what Boston publisher would engage his favourite literary man in such pursuits? It is really doubtful whether the men most capable of making artistic translations could afford, under any ordinary circumstances, to undertake much work of the kind, except as a literary recreation. At all events, the English-reading world cannot hereafter expect to obtain its translations from other European languages through the labour of the best writers in its own. The only hope is, that the recklessness shown by publishers in their choice of translators will provoke a reaction, and that such work will be more generously remunerated and entrusted to real experts hereafter.
It is unfortunately true that the translators who work for English publishers are far more competent than those who do similar work in the United States; forasmuch as transatlantic firms are glad to print cheap popular translations, while only inferior American firms care to undertake them. Another obstacle to good translations in the United States is that none of the great literary periodicals will devote space to them. The English and the French magazines and reviews are less conservative, and some very wonderful translations have been published by them. Artistic translation might be admirably developed in this country by the establishment of a new magazine-policy.
The wise reader, if he is also a sincere friend of Hearn, must wish that the correspondence published had been limited to the first volume. Room aplenty in this could have been made for the dozen valuable paragraphs contained in the second. It is not strange that the letters of Hearn worth saving were written before his departure for Japan. He repeatedly had urged that letter-writing both financially and mentally was expensive to the writer. In Japan he was so incessantly busy, much with his teaching and more with his real literary work, that time and will were wanting for that sort of letters which are of interest to the general reader. The interest of the person addressed is another affair. The dreary half-thousand pages of the correspondence of the Japanese time are most disappointing to one who has been thrilled by almost every page of the incomparable letters to Krehbiel and to a few others. Besides the two reasons for this which I have suggested, there are others which may perhaps be evident to some judicious readers, but which at this time may scarcely be plainly stated. At present the trees are so thick that the forest cannot be seen, but some day an amused and an amusing smile of recognition and disgust will curl the lips of the literary critic. There are two other considerations which should be held in mind: One of them was brought to me by a correspondent of Hearn who had frequently noted it; sometimes (has it happened before?) Hearn used his "friend" to whom he was writing, as a sort of method of exercising his own fancy, as a gymnastics in putting his imagination through its paces, or for a preliminary sketching in of notes and reminders to be of possible use in later serious work. Moreover, the plan was of service in rewarding his correspondents for their praise and appreciation. Of a far more substantial character were the letters sometimes written in gratitude for money received. Hearn flattered himself, as we know, that he was without "cunning," but there is at least one exquisitely ludicrous letter in existence which shows an inverted proof of it, in the execution of an Indian war-dance, because of "the ways and means" furnished.
As published, Hearn's letters may be classified as follows: To
| Krehbiel | 1887 (3); 1878 (5); 1879 (2); 1880 (3); 1881 (4); 1882 (4); 1883 (4); 1884 (13); 1885 (8); 1886 (6); 1887 (4) | 56 |
| Hart | 1882 (3); 1883 (1) | 4 |
| Ball | 1882 (2); 1883 (4); 1885 (3) | 9 |
| O'Connor | 1883 (4); 1884 (2); 1885 (2); 1886 (2); 1887 (2) | 12 |
| Albee | 1883 (1); 1898 (2) | 3 |
| Gould | 1887 (5); 1888 (4); 1889 (8) | 17 |
| Bisland | 1887 (8); 1889 (11); 1890 (3); 1900 (1); 1902 (3); 1903 (9); 1904 (1) | 36 |
| Tunison | 1889 (1) | 1 |
| Chamberlain | 1890 (7); 1891 (13); 1895 (22) | 42 |
| Nishida | 1890 (2); 1891 (2); 1892 (2); 1893 (9); 1894 (2); 1895 (3); 1896 (3); 1897 (2) | 25 |
| Hirn | 1890 (1); 1902 (5); 1903 (1) | 7 |
| Baker | 1891 (1); 1892 (1); 1894(1); 1895 (3); 1896 (2) | 8 |
| Hendrick | 1891 (2); 1892 (4); 1893 (10); 1894 (6); 1895 (6); 1896(9); 1897 (7); 1898 (2); 1902 (2) | 48 |
| Otani | 1891 (1); 1892 (1); 1894(1); 1897 (1); 1898 (2); 1900 (1) | 7 |
| Ochiai | 1893 (2); 1894 (2); 1896 (2) | 6 |