being, not any more than a disease of the body can affect a wellbuilt soul. Thus, language, dialect, idiosyncracies, style, and finally writing, should be regarded as the body of any work of the spirit.”* For Goethe, a work’s content was spirit, its form only the body, a physical manifestation of the spirit. As a result, he felt poetry should be translated as prose, totally stripped of its form, lest the spirit be lost. The translation of poetry into prose became especially popular in the nineteenth century. Sometimes scholars will translate poetry as prose, usually as a “trot,” or series of word-for-word equivalences to teach language students—usually in Latin and Greek—the meaning of foreign words. There are also several English prose translations of Homer and Dante, to name just a couple of frequently translated authors, and these translations are still being made. Translation into prose horrifies most poetry translators. But there are good arguments for it. For example, D. S. Carne-Ross argued for prose translations of Homer: “If translation is to be more than an academic exercise, it has to be related to living literary interests. Pope could turn the Iliad into an Augustan epic because the civilization he belonged to still believed that the epic was [great] . . . the only great living form today is the novel.”* In addition, a prose translation is an approach that can more effectively be done by someone who does not have the ability to write poetry. Why translate at all if you can’t do it right? Well, that would relegate most practitioners of most professions and arts to the unemployment line. Most important, however, is the fact that there is a relatively large audience for prose translations of the classics, just as there is an audience for free verse translations of formal verse. One of the major reasons prose translations came to be made is that socially minded intellectuals wanted to introduce the classics to the working class. Then publishers realized that this opened up a huge market. Then professors and teachers joined in when they realized a prose translation is easier to teach and easier to get students to read. Many people who would never attempt or be able to handle the strangeness or difficulties of a poetic Homer or Dante will be capable of and will enjoy reading prose translations. Goethe wrote
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