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The most difficult thing about translating from one language into another is the tempo of its style, which is rooted in the character of the race - physiologically speaking, in the average tempo of its "metabolism." There are honestly intended translations which, as involuntarily coarse versions of the original, are almost misrepresentations, simply because its brave and cheerful tempo, which springs over and neutralizes everything dangerous in things and words, cannot be translated. A German is almost incapable of presto [quick tempo] in his language and thus, as you can reasonably infer, is also incapable of many of the most delightful and most daring nuances of free and free-spirited thinking. Just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him, in body and conscience, so Aristophanes and Petronius are untranslatable for him. Everything solemn, slow moving, ceremonially massive, all lengthy and boring varieties in style are developed among the Germans in a lavish diversity. You must forgive me for the fact that even Goethe’s prose, with its mixture of stiffness and daintiness, is no exception, as a mirror image of the "good old time" to which it belongs, and as an expression of German taste in an age when there still was a "German taste," a rococo taste in moribus et artibus [in customs and the arts].³ Lessing is an exception, thanks to his play-actor’s nature, which understood a great deal and knew how to do many things. He was not the translator of Bayle for nothing and was happy to take refuge in Diderot’s or Voltaire’s company - and even happier among the Roman writers of comic drama. In tempo, Lessing also loved free-spiritedness, the flight from Germany. But how could the German language - even in the prose of a Lessing - imitate the tempo of Machiavelli, who in his Prince allows one to breathe the fine dry air of Florence and cannot not help presenting the most serious affairs in a boisterous allegrissimo [very quick tempo], perhaps not without a malicious artistic feeling about what a contrast he was risking - long, difficult, hard, dangerous ideas, and a galloping tempo and the very best, most high-spirited of moods.⁴ Finally, who could even venture a German translation of Petronius, who was the master of the presto - more so than any great musician so far - in invention, ideas, words. Ultimately what is so important about all the swamps of the sick, nasty world, even "the ancient world," when someone like him has feet of wind, drive, and breath, the liberating scorn of a wind which makes everything healthy, as he makes everything run! And so far as Aristophanes is concerned, that transfiguring, complementary spirit for whose sake we excuse all Hellenism for having existed, provided that we have understood in all profundity everything that needs to be forgiven and transfigured; - I don’t know what allows me to dream about Plato’s secrecy and sphinx-like nature more than that petit fait [small fact], which fortunately has been preserved, that under the pillow on his death bed people found no "Bible," nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic - but something by Aristophanes. How could even a Plato have endured life - a Greek life, to which he said no - without an Aristophanes!-