GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [September? 1845]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [September? 1845]
Title
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [September? 1845]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1845-09
Place
FOLESHILL
Letter Content
GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [September? 1845]
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
Foleshill | Tuesday.
My dear Sara,
With a most awful pain in my Eingeweide which scarcely leaves me the power of thinking, I can only recall one instance among the very numerous ones in which Strauss has used the terms Materielle and Formelle in what I have translated. They correspond you know to our substance and accident more nearly than to any other words of ours, but I have generally I believe translated by some periphrasis or where the ideas were less prominent somehow thus -- Substantially or essentially the narration of M -- is correct, though in accessory details, or subsidiary circumstances or unessential points he has been misled by etc. It will not do to translate the words always the same though that might seem the proper plan at first. For sometimes the introduction of them is of real and obvious use and has an influence on the sense, and at another time they are a mere pleonasm or else could not be strictly represented in English without committing an arrant Germanism. I could not say how I would translate them unless I saw the passage in which they occur. I am sorry my memory does not serve me well to-day, but your words on the scrap of envelope were send immediately so I do not wait for a more propitious hour. I wish a spirit of Charity would animate you for 5 minutes and set your fingers at work on a bit of scribble to me. When shall I see the first sheet just as a specimen?
Mary Ann.
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
Foleshill | Tuesday.
My dear Sara,
With a most awful pain in my Eingeweide which scarcely leaves me the power of thinking, I can only recall one instance among the very numerous ones in which Strauss has used the terms Materielle and Formelle in what I have translated. They correspond you know to our substance and accident more nearly than to any other words of ours, but I have generally I believe translated by some periphrasis or where the ideas were less prominent somehow thus -- Substantially or essentially the narration of M -- is correct, though in accessory details, or subsidiary circumstances or unessential points he has been misled by etc. It will not do to translate the words always the same though that might seem the proper plan at first. For sometimes the introduction of them is of real and obvious use and has an influence on the sense, and at another time they are a mere pleonasm or else could not be strictly represented in English without committing an arrant Germanism. I could not say how I would translate them unless I saw the passage in which they occur. I am sorry my memory does not serve me well to-day, but your words on the scrap of envelope were send immediately so I do not wait for a more propitious hour. I wish a spirit of Charity would animate you for 5 minutes and set your fingers at work on a bit of scribble to me. When shall I see the first sheet just as a specimen?
Mary Ann.
Signature
Mary Ann.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Foleshill, [September? 1845], Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/93911