By birth and training a man of the people, he was yet an
aristocrat to the finger-tips, and Byron would have called him
brother, though one trembles to think what he would have called Byron.
First and last, he was an artist, and it is by reason of his technical
mastery that he most of all outstands. Whether in prose or in verse,
he compasses a broken rhythm that is as the very rhythm of life
itself, and a cadence that catches you by the throat, as a terrier
catches a rat, and wrings from you the last drop of pity and awe. His
skill in avoiding `the inevitable word' is simply miraculous. He is
the despair of the translator. Far be it from me to belittle the
devoted labours of Mr. and Mrs. Pegaway, whose monumental translation
of the Master's complete works is now drawing to its splendid close.
Their promised biography of the murdered grandmother is awaited
eagerly by all who take--and which of us does not take?--a breathless
interest in Kolniyatschiana. But Mr. and Mrs. Pegaway would be the
first to admit that their renderings of the prose and verse they love
so well are a wretched substitute for the real thing. I wanted to get
the job myself, but they nipped in and got it before me. Thank heaven,
they cannot deprive me of the power to read Kolniyatsch in the
original Gibrisch and to crow over you who can't.
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