“Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.”
Maxim 426; translation by Bailey Saunders
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe185
German writer, artist, and politician 1749–1832Related quotes
“He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty conceal'd.”
James Thomson (poet) The Seasons
Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Autumn (1730), l. 229.
“Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.”
Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces
Source: Fugitive Pieces
Xu Yuanchong (1921) Translator of Chinese poetry
Source: 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation (1987), p. xxii
Alcaeus of Mytilene (-600–-560 BC) ancient Greek poet
"No More for Lycus", as translated by James S. Easby-Smith
“Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
Against Unworthy Praise http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1433/ <br class="br">The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) <br class="br">Context: p>O heart, be at peace, because<br>Nor knave nor dolt can break<br>What's not for their applause<br>Being for a woman's sake.<br>Enough if the work has seemed,<br>So did she your strength renew,<br>A dream that a lion had dreamed<br>Till the wilderness cried aloud,<br>A secret between you two,<br>Between the proud and the proud.What, still you would have their praise!<br>But here's a haughtier text,<br>The labyrinth of her days<br>That her own strangeness perplexed;<br>And how what her dreaming gave<br>Earned slander, ingratitude,<br>From self-same dolt and knave;<br>Aye, and worse wrong than these.<br>Yet she, singing upon her road,<br>Half lion, half child, is at peace.</p
Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter
Morning Has Broken, was widely popularized by the Cat Stevens version on Teaser and the Firecat (1971), but was actually written by Eleanor Farjeon in 1931. · A performance by Cat Stevens (1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5sSEkZ86ts <br class="br">Misattributed