Chapter 16 - Some remarks on Sanskrit literature

Summary

§183

As much as I admire the religious and philosophical works of Sanskrit literature, I still have only rarely been able to find pleasure in the poetic; in fact, at times it has seemed to me as though these were as tasteless and monstrous as the sculpture of the same people. Even their dramatic works I value chiefly only for the very didactic elucidations and proofs of religious faith and morals that they contain. All this might stem from the fact that poetry by nature is untranslatable. For in it thoughts and words are so intimately and firmly intertwined, like the uterine and foetal parts of the placenta, that we cannot substitute foreign words without affecting the thoughts. After all, everything with metre and rhyme is inherently a compromise between thought and language; however, by its nature this can only be accomplished on its own native soil of thought, not on a foreign soil in which we would like to transplant it, let alone in one so barren as the minds of translators usually are. What greater contrast could there be, really, than the free outpouring of the poet's inspiration, which on its own and instinctively comes into being dressed in metre and rhyme, and the painstaking, calculating, cold, syllable-counting and rhyme-seeking agony of the translator? Moreover, since there is no lack in Europe of poetic works that address us directly, but there is indeed a lack of proper metaphysical insights, I'm of the opinion that translators from Sanskrit should apply their efforts much less to poetry and much more to the Vedas, Upanishads and philosophical works.