Walter gives us translations from Faust: >Steve Schwartz seems partial to the Bayard Taylor translation: > >All things transitory >But as symbols are sent: >Earth's insufficiency >Here grows to Event: >The Indescribable, >Here it is done: >The Woman-soul leadeth us >Upward and on! Actually, not that passage. >Here's my attempt: > >All that is fleeting >Is but an example. >What wants completing >Now becomes ample. >What speech cannot course >Has turned into acts. >Th' all womanly force >Our striving attracts. Here's Louis MacNeice: All that is past of us Was but reflected; All that was lost in us Here is corrected; All indescribables Here we descry; Eternal Womanhead Leads us on high. "Eternal Womanhead?" Anyway, Thomas Mann's favorite Faust translator, George Madison Priest: All earth comprises Is symbol alone; What there ne'er suffices As fact here is known; All past the humanly Wrought here in love; The Eternal-Womanly Draws us above. The variance of meaning among the examples drives me back to the original: Alles Vergaengliche ist nur ein Gleichnis; Das Unzulaengliche, hier wird's Ereignis; das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist getan; das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan. Goethe's poetry here is both concentrated and vague, which plays merry hell with translators. To me the following is a close literal translation: Everything transitory is only an image; that potential (incomplete, yet-to-be-done) here becomes experience; the indescribable is here done; the Eternal-Feminine draws us on. I would take a little something from each translator. All that is fleeting is symbol alone; what wants completing as fact here is known; all indescribables are here done; the Eternal-Feminine draws us on. Steve Schwartz