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represent the beauty of any given language, and a language is
called richer in as far as it is able to exhibit more specific instances
of this kind of beauty. We are at present living in a climate of
general zeal to polish and enrich the newer languages. It would
therefore be good for those who know languages to concern
themselves with giving to a language that lacks this or that
powerful locution or particular expression whatever characteristic
beauty another language possesses. If languages were decked out
with these ornaments this unknown treasure would soon be
common to all nations and every language would, therefore, be
substantially enriched. It would also come close to achieving a
degree of perfection never hoped for.
I know of course that analogy, syntax, and similar elements do
not allow themselves to be transferred from one language into
another. However, these elements are to languages what the shell is
to the kernel because its value is never measured according to the
size, color, etc. of that shell. Their contribution to the real treasure-
house of language is therefore minimal. If one language differed
significantly from another only because it had its own way of
putting sentences together and using them in a particular manner,
those who know languages would find themselves badly paid
indeed with the profit they could derive from this. But there are
specific instances of beauty in each language that deserve all our
attention and they consist primarily of certain specific locutions
that have been found suitable to express this thought or that. The
differences between nations themselves, the countries they inhabit,
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their occupations, determine that these locutions should differ from
one language to another.
Man, who has nothing but images about him wherever he
looks, from childhood on, grows used to shaping an image of a
thing as soon as he thinks of it. He even goes so far as to make
himself an image of things he has never seen or heard described,
simply on the basis of the images he is already familiar with, and
he thereby claims to have some familiarity with the unknown. The
difficulty we all encounter when we begin to study philosophy and
to think in the abstract, without the support of substantial objects,
shows sufficiently how deeply this inclination to think in images is
ingrained in man s soul. Yet that thinking is very different
according to the different occasions every man has for shaping his
concepts. The peasant does not speak like the courtier, nor the
soldier like the merchant. The peasant, whose house is designed
for shelter only, whose food is destined to merely satisfy his
hunger, whose furniture is limited to bare essentials, will produce
little that is dainty or elegant in his speech. His locutions will be
taken from simple things, from whatever is his everyday concern.
The courtier, on the other hand, who spends all his days in
splendid palaces, who sees nothing about him but art and
treasures, whose food is prepared in the most special ways to whet
his appetite and whose stomach, sick with looking on abundance,
must be cured with foreign wines will this lascivious and repulsive
existence not fill his head in such a way that everything he says
will be rich and soft and that all his thoughts are likely to appear
in artificial images?
Whole nations are also subject to what can be observed in single
individuals or classes: a rough, warlike nation and a weak,
effeminate one will betray their different life-styles in their
languages. Everyone admires the virile, generous nature
characteristic of the English nation and expressed in its language. It
is easy to see why it has taken so many figurative expressions from
blood, death, and so on. The English fashion easy-to-use images of
things other nations abhor. From childhood on they observe the
casual way with which suicide is treated, the general contempt for
life, the many fights among men and animals. For this reason an
English writer of tragedies is under the obligation, so to speak, of
putting the tragic ending of his story (or at least the effects of it) on
the stage, before the spectator s eyes, whereas the shocked eyes and
weak hearts of the French would never allow this. Where else might
126 Translation/History/Culture
figurative expressions about ships and their construction and about
navigation in general have come from, if not from those nations
that are most concerned with those occupations and who spend
their lives on ships? They are the ones who have shaped most of
these concepts.
Even though different life-styles and different occupations cause
people to express their thoughts in different ways, this does not
prevent these expressions, dissimilar though they may sound, from
being powerful and easy to use. They are that way, presumably,
because they have grown out of an accurate knowledge of the
image that has been their model. This becomes all the more
obvious if we take a little time to notice that all figurative
expressions, which make up the greater part of all languages, are
nothing but similes. The better I know an image, the easier it will
be for me to determine to what extent it is likely to give a clear
shape and expression to my thoughts. The essence of a language is
attained to the highest degree whenever an expression utterly
exhausts the thought and when, moreover, the coloring and image
a speaker uses to communicate what he is thinking to his neighbor
are so powerful and so accurate that they convey the same ideas
the speaker originally had of something and wanted to arouse in
others. It is easy to see that the essential beauty of a language does
not consist of empty sounds; rather it is rooted in the nature of
things. The nature of things is the same in all countries, but both
man s perception and his observation of it are different. Whoever
fails to think of an appropriate word or even a decent image to
express his thoughts may therefore be excused the first time, but if
he happens to find the same thought powerfully expressed, be it
literally or figuratively, in another language later on, and if he still
refuses to speak in that way in the future he will render himself
liable to the most severe punishment. Excuses to the effect that the
expression is strange to him, or unheard of, should not be allowed
to stand. Even if he has no concept of it he will at least stand to
gain a small enrichment of his stock of words and images. If, on
the other hand, he understands the expression, he will find that he
has never yet fully grasped the thing in question, or at least not
from the point of view from which he now finds it represented. He
may therefore learn from it how endless representations and as
many expressions may be shaped in speech on the basis of one
well-known image. Whoever undertakes an intensive study of these
peculiar expressions will soon find that the number of those for
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which we are completely without a concept is very limited and that
most have come from those general concepts in which the nature
of things instructs all men everywhere in the same way. Concepts
such as fire, water, a king, are the same everywhere and everyone
will soon understand in his own language what the flames of love
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