Theodore Brown Hewitt · 129 of 194

Commentary

Few of the English versions of German hymns which appear in the old Moravian hymn books rise above a mediocre grade; many on account of their crudity deserve only passing mention, others are interesting merely by way of comparison with later renderings. The editions up to that of 1886 published no authors' names and it is now largely a matter of conjecture as to who may have written these earlier versions. Rarely did the translators succeed in giving even a fair impression of the original, and we suspect that irnperfect knowledge of the exact meaning of the German or even indifference to the effect their versions produced may too often have been the cause of the crude and even grotesque language.

The translator of this Christmas hymn has, however, been a notable exception; choosing from Gerhardt's discursive strophes the most significant ideas, he has developed a poem of seven stanzas superior to most contemporary hymns from the German. The correspondence of strophes is as follows:

Especially happy are the epithets in lines 3 and 4:

The modern reader will enjoy the orthography in the lines:

though he will recoil at the pronunciation of the first two lines of stanza 5:

Stanza 6, a free paraphrase of stanza XI in the original, reproduces admirably the childlike confidence with which Gerhardt writes. The translator appreciates keenly the personal tone which pervades the poem when he sings:

In her Chorale Book and set to the old tune "Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag," Miss Winkworth gives the following arrangement of her ten-stanza version:

Stanza 9 shows how successfully she can imitate Gerhardt's simplicity and fervor; even the alliteration finds a partial correspondence in her third line:

So also in stanza 10 (Gerhardt XX) for Gerhardt's favorite expression "für und für" we find a very happy equivalent, and also an exact rhyme which the German lacks:

Miss Cox, whose translation of Gellert's Easter hymn

is so well known, has given us one of the best modern versions of this Christmas hymn of Gerhardt's. Her stanzas correspond as follows:

Miss Cox makes a less personal appeal to the worshipper and thereby loses much that is so excellent and characteristic of Gerhardt; instead of keeping the pronoun in the singular, "So fasz ich" (stanza XVIII) "Du bist mein Haupt" (stanza XIX) and "Ich will dein Alleluja" (stanza XX), she has respectively "Our love grows bold," "Thou art our Head," and "Our hallelujahs." If her poem is rather more polished, Gerhardt's is certainly the more direct, as witness these stanzas:

The concluding stanza is inferior to the others and suffers by comparison with the excellent lines of Miss Winkworth cited above: it is a very free paraphrase and leaves the impression of having been hastily constructed: