Vondel's Lucifer Part 44

"Literary societies, university extension circles, and reading clubs are all here furnished with a fresh winter theme whose stages are already plotted out for the worker."--Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Vondel's Lucifer is one of the most important contributions ever made to the catholic literature of the English-speaking world. * * * As a specimen of book-making the volume is a model."--St. Louis Church Progress.

"We may consider Mr. Van Noppen's translation as a key that has unlocked a literary treasure and put within our reach a cla.s.sic of Teutonic literature."--Detroit Free Press.

"The English-speaking literary world is under great obligations to the translator and publisher of this uniquely printed, ill.u.s.trated, and bound volume."--Richmond Dispatch.

"The present rendering of Lucifer is by Leonard C. Van Noppen, who has made a translation which will link his name with that of the master as Edward Fitzgerald has bound his up with that of Omar Khayyam."--Buffalo News.

"A most meritorious translation of the Dutch poet's sublime tragedy, with a great deal of critical and biographical matter in the introductory sections."--Philadelphia Press.

"This careful translation of the great masterpiece of Dutch literature is one of the important books of the year."--Chicago Tribune.

"As Lucifer is the greatest work of the Dutch poet's, the fine translation and its elegant setting in the beautiful book is most gratifying."--Chicago Inter-Ocean.

"The translation is as literal as it can be made, and the sonorous tongue of its original author is heard through it all"--Chicago Times-Herald.

"The translation is an earnest and faithful rendering of the poet's ideas, and the verse is technically excellent; in fact, the translation may bid for the exalted place of the original in many libraries."--Times-Union, Albany.

"The stately sweep of the original verse has not been lost in the transference from one tongue to another. Mr. Van Noppen has, in addition to his translation of the poem, furnished a sympathetic and interesting memoir of the Life and Times of Vondel, and an elaborate, critical and scholarly Interpretation of the Lucifer."--Brooklyn Times.

"This delightfully printed book is a real work of art, and is a worthy contribution to the history of literature."--Boston Globe.

"Leonard Charles Van Noppen, the translator, has given to English literature another great cla.s.sic."--Dramatic Magazine, Chicago.

"It is a very interesting event that we have Vondel's Lucifer in a scholarly, an accurate, and an admirable rendering into English."--Wilmington (N.C.) Messenger.

"If we were asked to give our opinion of this version we should express it in one word--'masterly.' The powers of expression and the richness of Vondel's thought, together with the rhythmical beauty of the poem, have been preserved in full. It is a masterpiece, and should have a place in every library."--De Grondwet (Dutch paper), Holland, Mich.

"In the essay on Vondel's Life and Times we have a singularly able and deeply interesting account of the conditions under which Vondel developed. * * * For the poem itself, like many more of the writings of Vondel, it has been recognized as a cla.s.sic. n.o.body can read it and not feel the sublimity of the inspiration that produced it."--San Francisco Chronicle.

"The whole thing is new and interesting--introduction, biography and poem. It opens up Dutch literature, the society of the Eglantine, a social field of poets and writers."--Baltimore Sun.

"Translator, artist and publishers are to be highly commended for the handsome and satisfactory manner in which they have combined to present this celebrated Dutch cla.s.sic to American readers."--New Orleans Times-Democrat.

"The translator is Leonard Charles Van Noppen, and he is a poet himself in English. This intellectual and temperamental tendency enabled him to make a literal rendering that is not only highly accurate, but that also most admirably conserves the spirit of the original. The book is beautifully ill.u.s.trated by the Dutch artist, John Aarts. From Mr. Van Noppen's interesting introductory essay on Vondel--a clear, comprehensive, and convincing exposition, as admirable in style as it is valuable in matter--we learn many interesting things concerning this old poet, this unknown t.i.tan, whom the ablest students of literature place on the same plane with Milton, Dante, and aeschylus."--The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, Philadelphia.

"In almost every, if not in every individual particular, the book is a model of what such a book should be. Intelligent and scholarly editing, thoughtful consideration for all the several needs of students as well as readers, liberal and judicious provision in the matter of accessories, a cultivated and refined taste in decoration, and a true feeling for typographical elegance in each respect of paper, type, margins, edgings, ill.u.s.trations and binding unite to give this volume a character of genuine excellence and an aspect of chaste elegance such as are not often seen in a single example. The total is a result of such importance and value that we shall describe it item by item."--The Literary World, Boston.

"Mr. Van Noppen's introductory study of the Life and Times of Vondel is masterly in knowledge of the whole literary atmosphere of the day, with its grand galaxy of writers. * * * Therefore this book will serve another purpose besides that of introducing Anglo-Saxon readers to the beauties of Vondel's masterpiece: it will unfold to them as well the history of Holland's great literary period in all its wealth and beauty.

In this translation of the drama itself, which is strictly faithful to the original in spirit, he has succeeded in reproducing to a considerable extent the virility, the majesty, of the original."--The Critic,

From Signed Reviews.

"Mr. Van Noppen has laid the student of Milton as well as the student of Dutch literature under weighty obligations by a translation of the drama of Lucifer which is not only true to the sense of its original, but also not unworthy of its fame."--Mayo W. Hazeltine, in New York Sun.

"Vondel's Lucifer is just as readable to-day as it was two hundred and fifty years ago, and in this translation the energetic simplicity of it abides."--George W. Smalley, in New York Herald.

"We prefer to accept Mr. Van Noppen's translation as he offers it for the worth of the poem itself, and that is sufficient for many a century."--George Henry Payne, in The Criterion.

"Mr. Van Noppen's translation of the Lucifer in this book is one for which he claims literalness to a close extent; but its fluency is not the less to be noted. Some of the best and most brilliant pa.s.sages scarcely seem like a translation, so naturally and choicely do the words proceed."--Joel Benton, in The New York Times' "Review of Books."

"I spent one whole evening comparing Mr. Van Noppen's translation with the original. As far as exactness goes, as far as intimate verbal interpretation of Vondel's verse is concerned, it equals Andrew Lang's wonderful prose translation of the Iliad. By far the most difficult part of this translation must have been that of the lyrics and choral pa.s.sages (after the Greek mode) with which the drama abounds. Mr. Van Noppen has preserved (at what pains) not only the metre and the rhythm, but also the rhymes, often involute and curiously doubled."--Vance Thompson, in Musical Courier.

"The work evinces not only a mastery of seventeenth century Dutch, but an insight into metrical effects and facility in reproducing them in English. This version could not have come from one who had not drilled himself for years in the theory and practice of English verse. We bespeak for the handsome volume before us a wide circulation. That such a translation has been sorely needed every student of comparative literature knows. That this need has been adequately met every impartial student of Mr. Van Noppen's version will, we believe, readily admit."--Prof. C. Alphonso Smith, Ph.D., in Modern Language Notes, Baltimore, Md., Dec, 1898.

"The intrinsic value of the work makes the publication of Mr. Van Noppen's translation an event of peculiar literary interest."--John D.

Barry, in Boston Literary World.

The London Press.

"The dramatic masterpiece of the great Dutch poet of the seventeenth century has found a skilled and vigorous translator in Mr. Leonard Charles Van Noppen, and the sustained volume is further enriched by a careful memoir of the author of Lucifer and by an elaborate critical Interpretation of the poem. Justice is thus at last rendered to a poet of unquestionable genius and inspiration, of whom everything like a fair estimate has. .h.i.therto been hardly possible to an English reader. * * *

There is no appeal to the groundlings in the style and quality of the verse, which in Mr. Van Noppen's spirited translation has a march of sustained, or, at least, of rarely failing dignity throughout, and in its intercalated choric pa.s.sages is by no means wanting in lyrical charm. * * * But after half a dozen, a dozen, a score, of similar parallelisms the odds against chance and in favor of design become so overwhelming that the least mathematically minded of men will reject the former hypothesis. The 'long arm of coincidence' is not so long as all that. And, most a.s.suredly, it is not long enough to cover the fact that Milton's Samson Agonistes followed in due course on Vondel's Samson, and that it abounds in evidences that in the matter of dramatic construction, at any rate, to leave the poetry out of the question, he was content to take his Dutch contemporary as his closely followed model."--London Literature.

"It is interesting that the first English translation of Vondel's famous play should be made in America and put forth in the old Dutch city of New York. The volume is a handsome one, elaborately gotten up."--London Daily Chronicle.

"Lucifer is a large, majestic drama, and adorned with several beautiful choric odes."--W.L. Courtney, in London Daily Telegraph.

* * * Milton undoubtedly behaved in a light-fingered fas.h.i.+on at the expense of Vondel, not once or twice, but often. * * * After a long lapse of time this matter is reopened by Mr. Leonard Charles Van Noppen, whose volume in praise and explanation of Vondel is a book of quite uncommon merit and charm, and one absolutely indispensable to students of Milton. * * * Of Mr. Van Noppen's success as a translator there can be only one opinion. We have read his version with surprise and delight.

Vondel's Lucifer, in nearly all respects, will prove a veritable treasure for the genuine book-lover."--The London Literary World.

Board of the Queen Wilhelmina Lectures.h.i.+p, Columbia University

GENTLEMEN:

We, members of the "Board of the Queen Wilhelmina Lectures.h.i.+p, Columbia University," Professor Doctor G. Kalff, of the University of Leiden; Member Royal Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam; Leiden. President; J.

Heldring, of Heldring & Pierson, Bankers, the Hague; J.W. IJzerman, President of the Royal Netherland Geographical Society at Amsterdam, the Hague; Wouter Nijhoff, President of the Dutch Publishers' a.s.sociation, the Hague; Doctor H.J. Kiewiet de Jonge, President of the General Dutch Alliance, Dordrecht, Hon. Secretary, herewith plead for your co-operation with our endeavors to spread in America a knowledge of our civilization and inst.i.tutions. Notwithstanding the tremendous influence of Holland upon England and the American Colonies--an influence as yet hardly guessed--the study of the Dutch and their history in the colleges and universities of America is still universally neglected. So little in fact is known of this subject and of Holland's part in civilization that there is even among scholars but little appreciation of the importance of this subject. Only at Columbia University is there any evidence of interest. Here our literary representative, Leonard C. Van Noppen, whom we have selected as the pioneer to blaze the way, has inaugurated several courses in Dutch Literature and given besides lectures on the various periods of its development. Since Columbia has been the first to co-operate with us, will not your inst.i.tution be the second? If so, will you kindly address Prof. Leonard C. van Noppen, Queen Wilhelmina Lecturer, Columbia University, N.Y.? Mr. Van Noppen will be glad at any time to introduce you to this subject and to lecture on such phases of it as you may deem the most interesting.

We invite your students to our universities. Here is a field which will enrich scholars.h.i.+p with many discoveries. The selection of the Hague as the Capital of Peace has given Holland a new international importance.

Your universities have established chairs in Icelandic, Chinese and Russian, subjects whose importance and value are incalculably less than that of Dutch. Is it not time that a beginning be made in this direction? Not even the study of the Spanish, the Italian and the French is so fertile of results as that of the civilization of the Netherlands, which, as the mother of the Teutonic Renaissance, influenced the civilization of the English-speaking world so largely. Prof. Butler will, upon application, be glad to give Mr. van Noppen leave of absence to lecture at your university. Mr. Van Noppen has given courses of lectures on this subject at the Lowell Inst.i.tute, Brooklyn Inst.i.tute, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Cincinnati and many other colleges and universities.

We add the following notice of his lecture at Davidson College, N.C.:

"Davidson, April 20.--It is altogether too seldom that our Southern colleges, certainly it is true of Davidson, are privileged to have with them a lecturer of the type seen in Professor Leonard Charles van Noppen of the Queen Wilhelmina Chair of Dutch Literature in Columbia University, who spoke last evening in Shearer Hall and who speaks again this evening and to-night.

"Doctor van Noppen was introduced by Professor Thomas W. Lingle, who in a brief speech told of the lecturers right by virtue of birth and training to speak on the topic selected and for a few minutes in an instructive way pointed out what Holland had contributed to Western civilization and particularly to American life and history, an introduction so full of facts marked with such accurate historical perspective that the Columbia lecturer in making acknowledgment said he felt inclined to take his seat and let Doctor Lingle continue, so familiar did he seem with the subject he himself was to present.

"To say that Doctor van Noppen's lecture was popular, in the ordinary sense of the word, would do it great injustice. It was too comprehensive in its reach, and strong in its grasp, too scholarly, too suggestive of research and prolonged investigation and study, too elaborate in phrase and too masterful in its discriminating use of choice English and ornate diction for any one to call it popular. Its purpose and its value is not of this order. Rather, after listening to such a paper, the scholar is glad that it is doubtless to appear in permanent or book form, where he can study it at leisure. To the college student it serves as a stimulus, an inspiration, an ideal to show him that in his daily routine of cla.s.s room work he is only laying a foundation on which to build and with which he may begin the higher intellectual life, may start out for himself to read, to investigate and in time reduce to consistent and articulated form the results of his own weeks and months not to say years of patient toil in the great libraries.

"In a very strict sense Doctor van Noppen's first lecture was scholarly and showed clearly that it breathes a university atmosphere and is intended primarily and ultimately for the lecture hall of the Johns Hopkins University, where he is soon to deliver the series. He is just now returning from a lecture tour in the West.

"Beginning with a clever characterization of the people of Holland as a practical one, first reclaiming from the sea a land to live on, and then anchoring it to the continent, in rapid review he showed what a wonderful contribution this little country, less than Maryland, and small in everything but in history, has made to modern Christian civilization. Washed out of the soil of Germany on toward the sea--and no wonder that Germany looks with envious eyes upon it--it is the richest country imaginable. It has a per capita wealth of $12,000 as against America's $4,000. In proportion to population it has done more for civilization than any other nation, not even Greece excepted. Then followed in rapid review the facts of history in substantiation of the claim.