Schopenhauer, Arthur

concerning Alexandre Weill's translation in Revue française of his chapter 'Animalischer Magnetismus und Magie' from Über den Willen in der Natur, an excoriating attack on the perceived deficiencies of the French version, criticising the translation for being not much more than half as long as the original, illustrating the wanton curtailing and omission of his text with reference to a passage of Kant, detailing over a dozen instances of gross errors of translation, complaining bitterly how an ignorant person such as this translator dare substitute one of his words for a quite different one ("...p. 356. Matérialisme, für Realismus(p. 105) (wodurch eine scheussliche Unwahrheit entsteht. - Wie denn ein so unwissender Mensch wie dieser Uebersetzer, sich untersteht, einem meiner Worte ein ganz anderes zu substituieren?!!)...), lambasting the translator for his poor grasp of Latin, comparing the only approximate rendering into French of his meaning with an English translation which captures his style, tone and manner perfectly like a Daguerrotype photograph, noting that his translator's models were the French newspapers, stating finally that he would prefer not to be translated at all when the result is so careless and bad, and that on top of this one had had the effrontery to put his name quite unjustifiably to such a wretchedly bad version of his text

3 closely written pages, 4to (28.2 x 22.2cm), with a later typed transcription, loose probably nineteenth-century wrapper, no place [Frankfurt?], 14 December 1857, leading edges creased, splitting along folds, small hole in one place due to ink corrosion, some light spotting



...Ueberhaupt aber sind meine Schriften zu Auslassungen nicht geeignet; weil bei mir nie etwas Unbedeutendes, geschweige Ueberflüssiges, steht, u. alle meine Sätze genau verankert sind: daher man nichts weglassen kann, ohne das Uebrigbleibende zu verderben...Wie denn ein so unwissender Mensch wie dieser Uebersetzter, sich untersteht, einem meiner Worte ein ganz anderes zu substituieren?!!...Ich könnte noch viel mehr anführen; - doch genug! Aber, horresco referens, dieser Uebersetzer versteht nicht ein Mal Latein!...Pfui! u. schreibt! - An eine Nachahmung meines Stils ist bei einer solchen Uebersetzung natürlich nicht zu denken: vielmehr hat er meine Periode flüchtig gelesen u. dann den ungefähren Sinn, meistens in phrases bannales wiedergeben. Wie sticht dagegen der Engländer ab, in der Westminster review...der 3-4 Seiten von mir so übersetzt hat, dass ich mich wie im Spiegel sehe, - Stil, Ton, Mannier alles wie Daguerrotypiert! - Statt dessen macht dieser nach Art der französ. Zeitungen, bei jeder Periode ein a linea, -- sans rime & sans saison, u. recht gemein...

Not in Arthur Hübscher (ed.), Arthur Schopenhauer. Gesammelte Briefe (Bonn, 2/1987)

The splitting along the folds is not severe, being restricted to the leading edges. However localized creasing and splitting does affect a few words near the edges, since the author writes up to the margins. The letter is written on 3 pages: the 4th page is blank and this whole bifolium has been folded as for sending in an envelope. There are no signs of repair or restoration. The two leaves are joined with no splitting along the hinge.
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One of the most important autograph letters by Schopenhauer to appear at auction in recent years.

A remarkable letter, written in Schopenhauer's characteristically direct manner, concerning the translation in Revue française (20 December 1856) of a chapter from one of his major works, Über den Willen in der Natur [On the Will in Nature] (1836), which his correspondent, Friedrich Emil Suchsland, proprietor of the J. C. Hermann'sche Buchhandlung in Frankfurt, had published in second edition in 1854. While in his chapter Schopenhauer exposes the pseudo-scientific explanation of essentially unexplainable phenomena as a means of disguising a lack of understanding, here in this letter he is exercised by the lack of comprehension shown by the hapless translator, Alexandre Weill (1811-1898), who was the first to make a French translation of Schopenhauer. (Weill, incidentally, survived Schopenhauer's mauling, and is remembered today as a notable homme de lettres and one of the most colourful Jewish personalities in 19th-century France.) In many fascinating and detail-rich passages Schopenhauer reveals his insistence on absolute precision of thought and expression, demonstrating that clarity and direct forcefulness of utterance which is a hallmark of his writings.