★ 125 ★
The Medicis, the Fuggers, were merchants as they should be. Our merchants as a whole, not excluding the largest, are nothing but shopkeepers.
68. A translation is either grammatical, or transformative, or mythical. Mythical translations are translations of the highest style. They represent the pure, perfect character of the individual work of art. They do not give us the actual work of art, but the ideal of it. I believe that there is still no complete example of it. However, one meets clear hints of it in the spirit of certain reviews and descriptions of artworks. It takes a mind in which the poetic spirit and the philosophical spirit have permeated each other in all their fullness. Greek mythology is in part one such translation of a national religion. The modern Madonna is such a myth as well.
Grammatical translations are the translations in the ordinary sense. They require a great deal of learning, but only discursive ability.
The transforming translations, if they are to be genuine, include the highest poetic spirit. They slip easily into travesty, like Bürger's Homer in Iambic, Pope's Homer, and French translations as a whole. The true translator of this kind must in fact be the artist himself, and be able to give the idea of the whole in one way or another. He must be the poet of the poet, allowing himself to express his own and the poet's particular idea at the same time. The genius of humanity stands in a similar relationship with every individual human being.
Not just books, anything can be translated in these three ways.
