Note 3 — Dr. B. STEVENSON STANOYEVICH
John Bowring translation
Sir John Bowring, although a remarkable transversifier and at times a true interpreter of popular songs of the Slavs, has taken too much of that licentia poetica in his rendering of this, one of the most beautiful lyrics ever composed by Serbian peasant women. The reader may judge for himself, when comparing Sir John Bowring's liberal transversification with the following verbatim translation (which he, himself, felt absolutely indispensable to reproduce) what a great injustice is inflicted upon the popular songs of any people by even the most conscientious transversifier and how infinitely less untrue to the original a rendering can be. (Edit.)
Of this little poem, which Goethe calls "wonderful," the following is an almost literal translation:
Full of wine, white branches of the vine-trees To white Buda's fortress white had clung them: No! it was no vine-tree, white and pregnant! No! it was a pair of faithful lovers, From their early youth betrothed together. Now they are compell'd to part untimely. One address'd the other at their parting, "Go! my soul! burst out and leave my bosom! Thou wilt find a hedge-surrounded garden, And a red-rose branch within the garden; Pluck a rose from off the branch, and place it, Place it on thy heart, within thy bosom; Then behold!—ev'n as that rose is fading, Fades my heart within thy heart thou loved one!" And thus answer'd then the other lover: "Thou, my soul! turn back a few short paces. There thou wilt discern a verdant forest; In it is a fount of crystal water; In the fount there is a block of marble; On the marble block a golden goblet; In the goblet thou wilt find a snow-ball. Love! take out that snow-ball from the goblet, Lay it on thy heart within thy bosom; See it melt—and as it melts, my lov'd one! So my heart within thy heart is melting." (S. J. B.)