The Magic Mountain, TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. The Violet in the Crucible 紫羅蘭頭於坩鍋 In A Defence of Poetry By Shelley. Music when Soft Voices Die

In A Defence of Poetry, Shelley writes at one point about how meaning is tied up in language, and how the language of poetry has its own particular sound. This leads him to the following conclusion on translating poetry:

“Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel.”

彭淮棟翻譯《魔山》台北：遠景：1979
翻譯底本為The Magic Mountain, translated into English by H T Lowe-Porter with an afterword by the author, 1927, Secker and Warburg,
所以這方面也翻譯出來：

The Violet in the Crucible 紫羅蘭頭於坩鍋 In A Defence of Poetry By Shelley

Music when Soft Voices Die (To --)

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Music, when soft voices die, 

Vibrates in the memory— 

Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 

Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 

Are heaped for the belovèd's bed; 

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 

Love itself shall slumber on.

----

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 


The translator wishes to thank, in this place, a number of scholars, 
authorities in the various special fields entered by The Magic 
Mountain , without whose help the version in all humility here 
offered to English readers, lame as it is, must have been more lack- 
ing still That they gave so generously is not to be interpreted 
otherw ise than as a tribute to a work of genius. But with all their 
help, the great difficulty remained: the violet had to be cast into 
the crucible, the organic w ork of art to be remoulded in another 
tongue. Shelley’s figure is perhaps not entirely apt here. Yet, since 
in the creative act word and thought are indivisible, the task was 
seen to be one before which artists would shrink and logical minds 
recoil. 

But of the author of The Magic Mountain it can be said in a 
special sense that he has looked into the seeds of Time. It was in- 
dispensable that we should read his book; intolerable that English 
readers should be barred from a work whose spirit, whatever its 
vehicle, is universal. It seemed better that an English version should 
be done ill than not done at all. 


H. T. L.-P. 

“How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.” 
―from THE SEA, THE SEA (1978, Booker Prize)