| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: letter, transgress the ordinary rules of English construction;
and that Dr. Parsons, by his comparative freedom of movement,
produces better poetry as well as better English? In the last
example especially, Mr. Longfellow's inversions are so violent
that to a reader ignorant of the original Italian, his sentence
might be hardly intelligible. In Italian such inversions are
permissible; in English they are not; and Mr. Longfellow, by
transplanting them into English, sacrifices the spirit to the
letter, and creates an obscurity in the translation where all is
lucidity in the original. Does not this show that the theory of
absolute literality, in the case of two languages so widely
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: and a rude windlass denoted where they toiled each day in dismal
groping for the pay-streak. To the left, four pairs of snowshoes
stood erect, showing the mode of travel which obtained when the
stamped snow of the camp was left behind.
That Schwabian folk-song sounded strangely pathetic under the cold
northern stars, and did not do the men good who lounged about the
fire after the toil of the day. It put a dull ache into their
hearts, and a yearning which was akin to belly-hunger, and sent
their souls questing southward across the divides to the sun-
lands.
"For the love of God, Sigmund, shut up!" expostulated one of the
|
