| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther: kind I have tried for, although unfortunately not always
successfully. The literal Latin is a great barrier to speaking
proper German.
So, as the traitor Judas says in Matthew 26: "Ut quid perditio
haec?" and in Mark 14: "Ut quid perditio iste unguenti facta est?"
Subsequently, for these literalist asses I would have to translate
it: "Why has this loss of salve occurred?" But what kind of
German is this? What German says "loss of salve occurred"? And
if he does understand it at all, he would think that the salve is
lost and must be looked for and found again; even though that is
still obscure and uncertain. Now if that is good German why do
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: hardly hold it fast. Higher and higher still they flew, nearer and nearer to
the stars, when suddenly the mirror shook so terribly with grinning, that it
flew out of their hands and fell to the earth, where it was dashed in a
hundred million and more pieces. And now it worked much more evil than before;
for some of these pieces were hardly so large as a grain of sand, and they
flew about in the wide world, and when they got into people's eyes, there they
stayed; and then people saw everything perverted, or only had an eye for that
which was evil. This happened because the very smallest bit had the same power
which the whole mirror had possessed. Some persons even got a splinter in
their heart, and then it made one shudder, for their heart became like a lump
of ice. Some of the broken pieces were so large that they were used for
Fairy Tales |
