Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything. The thing was to discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means the worst in life is overcome — it is no longer even seen. So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I call them the three Christian precautionary measures.
One must be careful not to fall back on opaque black — on deliberate wrong — and even more one has to avoid the white of a whitewashed wall, which means hypocrisy and everlasting Pharisaism. I must tell you that with evangelists it is the same as with artists. There is an old academic school, often detestable, tyrannical, the accumulation of horrors, men who wear a cuirass, a steel armor of prejudices and conventions; Their God is like the God of Shakespeare’s drunken Falstaff, le dedans dune eglise [the inside of a church].
The sects in the Church might be judged by a comparison of their favorite holidays. And so might eras in history be judged. It is matter of real interest, then, to see how all poets and prophets of all divisions of the Church unite on this day, to proclaim it the Sunday of Sundays, the High Holy Day of the year. For this is to say that poet and prophet, of every sect and those least sectarian, have found out at last that the Christian Religion stands for Life. Life instead of form; Life instead of Laws; Life instead of Grave-clothes; Life instead of Tombs; Life instead of Death ; — that is what Christianity means, and what it is for. You would be tempted to say that the Saviour had already enforced this completely in what he said to men; tempted to say that Easter morning was not needed either for illustration or enforcement. Certainly the gospel texts are full of the lesson. "Because I live, ye shall live also." "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." "This is Life Eternal — to believe on thee." And central text of all, the text we have chosen for the motto of this church, "I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." If texts alone ever did anything, these and a thousand more would show what The Truth is, and The Way. But one is tempted, in bitter moods, to say that texts never do anything, that words never achieve or finish anything. One is tempted to remember how he said that any man who prepared God’s way is greater than any man who only proclaims it, how prophets and prophesying were done with, mere talk was over — praise the Lord! and energy, action, force had come in instead, praise the Lord! Yet, if anybody did still trust in talk, he might take a lesson from these Gospels.
Every one knows that strictly speaking most words are almost untranslatable. It is always hard to find an exact equivalent for any word which has much meaning. There are no exact synonyms for such words in their own language and nothing precisely corresponding to them in another. But this difficulty is immensely increased when these words have any subtle aroma any particular charm any delicate sentiment attached to them. Then they become absolutely untranslatable. The very quality which distinguishes them disappears when they are transferred into a different phrase. This makes the desperate nature of the attempt to translate poetry from one language into another for a large part of the charm of poetic language lies in the subtle associations connected with each word. We read Virgil or Horace in the best English translations and wonder how they can ever have been considered such great writers. Their peculiar aroma has evaporated while they were being poured from one receptacle into another. The reverse takes place which was suggested in the parable for the old wine has burst the new bottles and the wine has been spilled.
Hence it happens that foreign words are so often transported bodily from one language into another or left untranslated when quoted for any purpose. Words which cannot be translated from the Latin, Greek, French, German are adopted into English and naturalized. Thus every language is enriched by the best phrases of every other. This no doubt often leads to pedantry conscious or unconscious. Foreign words are used when English ones would do as well or better So we have introduced the German word hand book when we already had a word with precisely the same meaning manual and with a better sound But generally these immigrations from foreign parts enrich our own literature.
Sometimes words are left untranslated because they seem untranslatable. Shakspeare has done this as when the dying Cæsar reproaches Brutus with the words. “And thou, too, Brutus!” Shakspeare has left it in the Latin Et tu, Brute! Then die Cæsar.” There seems something incongruous in putting a Latin and an English clause together in the same line But Shakspeare no doubt found something in the Latin to which no English words not even his own could do justice The English and German Bibles as translations are as nearly perfect as anything can be. I mean as a whole and in their impression on the mind.
There are errors no doubt which ought to be corrected but the simplicity pathos sublimity of the language cannot be surpassed In these great Teutonic tongues strength and tenderness blend as in the original writings Unfortunately the language which was spoken by Jesus and his disciples in Galilee has disappeared There is no gospel extant in the words which were uttered on the lake shore or in Capernaum A few fragments however of that old speech remain in the New Testament certain words so full of tender and heavenly associations that they were left untranslated in the Greek gospels and still remain untranslated in our English Testament Of these I will mention five four of thein uttered by Jesus and one by Mary Magdalene Two of these were expressions of power one was a cry of anguish another was an utterance of ununspeakable tenderness the last of the most ardent faith We read that Jairus the ruler of the synagogue came to Jesus earnestly praying him to come and heal his little daughter who was at the point of death Jesus comes to the house goes into the room with only three of his disciples Peter James and John and the father and mother of the little girl who was twelve years old Having put out those whom he found in the room he called saying Maid arise This is what Luke says who of course was not present Matthew
Leo Tolstoy, Смерть Ивана Ильича, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (1886).
Go
Considered to be one of the finest examples of a novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich tells the story of a high-court judge in 19th-century Russia and his sufferings and death from a terminal illness.
Go
Manliness means perfect manhood, as womanliness implies perfect womanhood. Manliness is the character of a man as he ought to be, as he was meant to be. It expresses the qualities which go to make a perfect man, — truth, courage, conscience, freedom, energy, self-possession, self-control. But it does not exclude gentleness, tenderness, compassion, modesty.
William Hayes Ward, "What i Believe and Why — Eleventh Paper", in The Independent, Volume 79 (Independent Publications, Inc.: July 27, 1914), pp. 126-7.
We know the world of existences and forces under three forms, that of matter, that of life, and that of thought. In preceding articles I have indicated how the world of matter and the world of life appear to me to bear witness to a superior Intelligence which has created or guided them. I now come to consider whether the world of thought has a similar origin, or has merely grown, in an evolutionary way, out of the worlds of matter and life. ¶ The forces of matter, life and thought are totally diverse from each other. Life is a phenomenon of tremendous significance. It marks an absolutely different stage in the operation of nature. Physical forces can give us rocks, mountains, continents, rivers, oceans, winds, lightning and rain, and their continued operation would reduce the earth to a degradation of morass and sea. But life brings a new force which fights physical forces, produces forms vegetable and animal, which operate and direct to their own ends all physical forces and exercize a dominance over them. But there is a third stage in the operations of nature. As organic life is of a different order from inert matter, so mind is of yet another order from either, and vastly higher than they. With the animal kingdom there came in mind, not possest by the physical elements, and no more by the vegetable kingdom. It is, in some degree, a characteristic of all animal life. The lowest forms have intelligence enough to feel for their food. As higher forms appear they learn to avoid danger, to search abroad for their sustenance, to swim, to fly, to run, till conscious reason appears in man and is supreme over the course of nature.
I prefer painting people’s eyes to cathedrals, for there is something in the eyes that is not in the cathedral, however solemn and imposing the latter may be — a human soul, be it that of a poor beggar or of a street walker, is more interesting to me.
So we poked along back home, and I warn’t feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame somehow — though I hadn’t done nothing. But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.