Our remark respecting the loss of the principal charms which all
poetical productions have to undergo, when clothed in a foreign dress,
applies as well to popular poetry as to the works of literature, and
even more. Indeed, if any kind of poetry must needs lose half its
beauties in a translation, the truth of the Latin saying, _Dulcius ex
ipsa fonte bibuntur aguae_, will never be more readily acknowledged,
than in respect to the idiomatic peculiarities of popular ballads.
This holds good principally of merely lyric productions, the only kind
of songs which are left to some of the Slavic tribes. They are grown
into the very bone and marrow of the language itself; and a congenial
spirit can at the utmost imitate, but never satisfactorily translate
them. And yet they are the most essential features in the physiognomy
of a people; or, as Goerres expresses it, they are like pulse and
breath, the signs and the measure of the internal life. "While the
great _epic_ streams," as this ingenious writer justly says, "reflect
the character of a whole wide-spread river-district, in time and
history, these lyric effusions are the sources and fountains, which,
with their net-work of rills, water and drain the whole country; and,
bringing to light the secrets of its inmost bowels, pour out into lays
its warmest heart's blood.
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