Translating Poetry

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 16, § 183 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): All this might stem from the fact that poetry by nature is untranslatable. For in it thoughts and words are so intimately and firmly intertwined, like the uterine and foetal parts of the placenta, that we cannot substitute foreign words without affecting the thoughts. After all, everything with metre and rhyme is inherently a compromise between thought and language; however, by its nature this can only be accomplished on its own native soil of thought, not on a foreign soil in which we would like to transplant it, let alone in one so barren as the minds of translators usually are. What greater contrast could there be, really, than the free outpouring of the poet’s inspiration, which on its own and instinctively comes into being dressed in metre and rhyme, and the painstaking, calculating, cold, syllable-counting and rhyme-seeking agony of the translator?…