Read Ebook: The Death of Wallenstein by Schiller Friedrich Coleridge Samuel Taylor Translator

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Ebook has 96 lines and 8258 words, and 2 pages

THEKLA. To--Tell him, Neubrunn.

NEUBRUNN. To Neustadt.

ROSENBERG. So; I leave you to get ready.

of the moon, Struggling, darts snatches of uncertain light. No form of star is visible! That one White stain of light, that single glimmering yonder, Is from Cassiopeia, and therein Is Jupiter. But now The blackness of the troubled element hides him!

, I know; What pang is permanent with man? From the highest, As from the vilest thing of every day, He learns to wean himself: for the strong hours Conquer him. Yet I feel what I have lost In him. The bloom is vanished from my life, For oh, he stood beside me, like my youth, Transformed for me the real to a dream, Clothing the palpable and the familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn, Whatever fortunes wait my future toils, The beautiful is vanished--and returns not.

COUNTESS. Oh, be not treacherous to thy own power. Thy heart is rich enough to vivify Itself. Thou lovest and prizest virtues in him, The which thyself didst plant, thyself unfold.

WALLENSTEIN . Who interrupts us now at this late hour? It is the governor. He brings the keys Of the citadel. 'Tis midnight. Leave me, sister!

COUNTESS. Oh, 'tis so hard to me this night to leave thee; A boding fear possesses me!

WALLENSTEIN. Fear! Wherefore?

COUNTESS. Shouldst thou depart this night, and we at waking Never more find thee!

WALLENSTEIN. Fancies!

COUNTESS. Oh, my soul Has long been weighed down by these dark forebodings, And if I combat and repel them waking, They still crush down upon my heart in dreams, I saw thee, yesternight with thy first wife Sit at a banquet, gorgeously attired.

WALLENSTHIN. This was a dream of favorable omen, That marriage being the founder of my fortunes.

COUNTESS. To-day I dreamed that I was seeking thee In thy own chamber. As I entered, lo! It was no more a chamber: the Chartreuse At Gitschin 'twas, which thou thyself hast founded, And where it is thy will that thou shouldst be Interred.

WALLENSTEIN. Thy soul is busy with these thoughts.

COUNTESS. What! dost thou not believe that oft in dreams A voice of warning speaks prophetic to us?

WALLENSTEIN. There is no doubt that there exist such voices, Yet I would not call them Voices of warning that announce to us Only the inevitable. As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow. That which we read of the fourth Henry's death Did ever vex and haunt me like a tale Of my own future destiny. The king Felt in his breast the phantom of the knife Long ere Ravaillac armed himself therewith. His quiet mind forsook him; the phantasma Started him in his Louvre, chased him forth Into the open air; like funeral knells Sounded that coronation festival; And still with boding sense he heard the tread Of those feet that even then were seeking him Throughout the streets of Paris.

COUNTESS. And to thee The voice within thy soul bodes nothing?

WALLENSTEIN. Nothing. Be wholly tranquil.

COUNTESS. And another time I hastened after thee, and thou rann'st from me Through a long suite, through many a spacious hall. There seemed no end of it; doors creaked and clapped; I followed panting, but could not overtake thee; When on a sudden did I feel myself Grasped from behind,--the hand was cold that grasped me; 'Twas thou, and thou didst kiss me, and there seemed A crimson covering to envelop us.

WALLENSTEIN. That is the crimson tapestry of my chamber.

A great stone near Luetzen, since called the Swede's Stone, the body of their great king having been found at the foot of it, after the battle in which he lost his life.

Could I have hazarded such a Germanism as the use of the word afterworld for posterity,--"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen Namen"--might have been rendered with more literal fidelity: Let world and afterworld speak out my name, etc.

I have not ventured to affront the fastidious delicacy of our age with a literal translation of this line,

werth Die Eingeweide schaudernd aufzuregen.

Anspessade, in German, Gefreiter, a soldier inferior to a corporal, but above the sentinels. The German name implies that he is exempt from mounting guard.

I have here ventured to omit a considerable number of lines. I fear that I should not have done amiss had I taken this liberty more frequently. It is, however, incumbent on me to give the original, with a literal translation.

"Weh denen, die auf Dich vertraun, an Dich Die sichre Huette ihres Glueckes lehnen, Gelockt von deiner geistlichen Gestalt. Schnell unverhofft, bei naechtlich stiller Weile, Gaehrts in dem tueckschen Feuerschlunde, ladet, Sich aus mit tobender Gewalt, und weg Treibt ueber alle Pflanzungen der Menschen Der wilde Strom in grausender Zerstoerung."

WALLENSTEIN. "Du schilderst deines Vaters Herz. Wie Du's Beschreibst, so ist's in seinem Eingeweide, In dieser schwarzen Heuchlers Brust gestaltet. Oh, mich hat Hoellenkunst getaeuscht! Mir sandte Der Abgrund den verflecktesten der Geister, Den Luegenkundigsten herauf, und stellt' ihn Als Freund an meiner Seite. Wer vermag Der Hoelle Macht zu widersthn! Ich zog Den Basilisken auf an meinem Busen, Mit meinem Herzblut naehrt' ich ihn, er sog Sich schwelgend voll an meiner Liebe Bruesten, Ich hatte nimmer Arges gegen ihn, Weit offen liess ich des Gedankens Thore, Und warf die Schluessel weiser Vorsicht weg, Am Sternenhimmel," etc.

LITERAL TRANSLATION.

"Alas! for those who place their confidence on thee, against thee lean their secure hut of their fortune, allured by thy hospitable form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men drives the wild stream in frightful devastation."

WALLENSTEIN.--"Thou art portraying thy father's heart; as thou describest, even so is it shaped in its entrails, in this black hypocrite's breast. Oh, the art of hell has deceived me! The abyss sent up to me the most the most spotted of the spirits, the most skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend by my side. Who may withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glutfull at the breasts of my love. I never harbored evil towards him; wide open did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise foresight. In the starry heaven, etc." We find a difficulty in believing this to have been written by Schiller.

This is a poor and inadequate translation of the affectionate simplicity of the original--

Sie alle waren Fremdlinge, Du warst Das Kind des Hauses.

Indeed the whole speech is in the best style of Massinger. O si sic omnia!

It appears that the account of his conversion being caused by such a fall, and other stories of his juvenile character, are not well authenticated.

We doubt the propriety of putting so blasphemous a statement in the mouth of any character.--T.

The soliloquy of Thekla consists in the original of six-and-twenty lines twenty of which are in rhymes of irregular recurrence. I thought it prudent to abridge it. Indeed the whole scene between Thekla and Lady Neubrunn might, perhaps, have been omitted without injury to the play.--C.

These four lines are expressed in the original with exquisite felicity:--

Am Himmel ist geschaeftige Bewegung. Des Thurmes Fahne jagt der Wind, schnell geht Der Wolken Zug, die Mondessichel wankt Und durch die Nacht zuckt ungewisse Helle.

The word "moon-sickle" reminds me of a passage in Harris, as quoted by Johnson, under the word "falcated." "The enlightened part of the moon appears in the form of a sickle or reaping-hook, which is while she is moving from the conjunction to the opposition, or from the new moon to the full: but from full to a new again the enlightened part appears gibbous, and the dark falcated."

The words "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"--The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in swift stream.

A very inadequate translation of the original:--

Verschmerzen werd' ich diesen Schlag, das weiss ich, Denn was verschmerzte nicht der Mensch!

LITERALLY.

I shall grieve down this blow, of that I'm conscious: What does not man grieve down?

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