70. “Psalms” by Wolfgang Arthur Jordan

Goslar 1891, Ludwig Koch

Translating a literary work in a language that is so foreign to us is an extremely difficult task. If one does not set oneself the easier task of providing a translation that is suitable for the scholar and merely aims to be as faithful to the original as possible, but rather, as W. A. Jordan has done for the Psalms, one wants to provide a translation for those numerous people of our time who feel the need to be edified by the magnificent poetry of a long-gone era, the task is to provide a text that, as it stands in the translation, makes an impression of full originality. It should not be noticeable that the original was conceived and felt in a different language. To achieve this, it takes more than mechanical translation talent; it takes a gift for poetry that is able to revive the original in a foreign guise. The translator must feel the foreign as if it were original and re-create it. Whether the translation is correct in the usual sense of the word is much less important. I do not feel called upon to decide on this, nor can I say a word about this part of the task, since I am not a philologist. What matters to me is to say here that Jordan has achieved something that fully satisfies its purpose. The high meaning and content of the poetry is rendered in a dignified form. The reader can vividly experience the impression of this meaning and content. We have encountered only a few artistic difficulties in the entire book that hardly come into consideration, hardly a few passages where we had the feeling that the translator had not quite reached the level of a free poet. On the whole, we must say that the uplifting enjoyment that the psalms are supposed to bring can be achieved through the book. Jordan has succeeded in poetically reproducing the changing moods within the sublime basic tone of the poetry, so that the content is also taken into account in every respect in the external form. For this reason, the translation is to be recommended to all those for whom reading the psalms is a religious or aesthetic need.