Nathan the Wise (with Related Documents)

As Ronald Schechter observes in the preface to his translation of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, American courses in Western civilization and the humanities often overlook the achievements of the German Aufklärung in their almost exclusive focus on the French Enlightenment. This is particularly unfortunate when one considers not only Lessing’s many contributions to Enlightenment thought, but also the relevance of his promotion of religious tolerance in Nathan der Weise to a post-9/11 world. Schechter’s volume will undoubtedly help to remedy this oversight and raise the profile of German literature and thought among students of the Enlightenment, as well as enrich courses on German and Jewish history and culture. It contains an informative introduction, well-chosen historical documents, helpful teaching tools, and a fine translation whose principal strength relative to other translations of Nathan the Wise is its accessibility to a modern audience.

The volume appears in the Bedford Series in History and Culture, which is edited by Natalie Zemon Davis, Ernest R. May, Lynn Hunt, and David W. Blight. As the series editors note in their foreword, the series “is designed so that readers can study the past as historians do” (v), and to this end each volume presents an important historical document or documents supplemented by a substantive introduction and relevant background materials, all of which might together form a one-week unit in an undergraduate course. Both in his introduction and in his choice of supplementary documents, Schechter has admirably fulfilled the aim of the series. His lucid introduction is divided into subsections which examine Lessing’s life and works, the condition of Jews in eighteenth-century Europe, Enlightenment notions of tolerance, and Lessing’s friendship with Moses Mendelssohn. Schechter also provides a brief summary of the plot and an overview of the play’s reception from the eighteenth century to the present. In keeping with his efforts to combat the marginalization of the German Enlightenment, Schechter juxtaposes Lessing’s views with those of French Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and Voltaire instead of treating Lessing in isolation. He successfully situates Lessing within a broader spectrum of thought while highlighting the distinctiveness of his views on religious diversity and pointing to the events and issues specific to his promotion of tolerance.

Nevertheless, although Schechter traces Lessing’s indebtedness to Leibniz and emphasizes his friendship with Mendelssohn, there is no mention of Lessing’s protracted theological debate with Johann Melchior Goeze apart from a brief reference to “his quarrels with the established religious authorities of the day” (15). Similarly, because Lessing’s respect for all three religions represented in the parable of the rings can, as Schechter notes, “be better understood in the context of his philosophy of religion” (15), one wishes that an excerpt from Lessing’s philosophical and theological texts would be among the related documents which Schechter appends to the text of the play. These appendices include translated excerpts from Johann Andrea Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judenthum [Jewry Revealed]; Christian Wilhelm von Dohm’s Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden [On the Civic Improvement of the Jews]; François-Louis-Claude Marin’s Histoire de Saladin; Moses Mendelssohn’s comments on Lessing in Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes [Morning Hours or Lectures on the Presence of God]; and Leibniz’s Theodicy. But this should not detract from the considerable merits both of the introduction and of Schechter’s otherwise fine choice of historical documents. In addition to these documents, the supplementary materials in the volume include a list of questions for students, a bibliography of selected secondary literature, a short chronology, and an index which students will find particularly helpful when locating important passages in the play.

In a prefatory note, Schechter also explains the meter of the original text to students unfamiliar with blank verse and justifies his decision to translate the play in prose. With regard to this decision, Schechter admits that purists might object to his abandonment of Lessing’s poetry; however, he points to the nuances and connotations lost in keeping to the original meter, drawing examples from two verse translations of Nathan der Weise, one of which is the translation by Bayard Quincy Morgan still in print in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnhelm, and Other Plays and Writings (edited by Peter Demetz, New York: Continuum, 1991). Schechter’s translation is based on the Reclam edition, edited by Peter von Düffel, which follows the standard edition in Lessings Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe in fünfundzwanzig Teilen. Teil 2 (edited by Julius Petersen and Waldemar von Olshausen, Berlin: Bong, 1925). The translation is both highly readable and, apart from a few mostly minor faults, authoritative, and it is accompanied by detailed and helpful notes.

In certain passages, the translation might strike some as too colloquial, as when Nathan says to the Dervish, “Let me hug you, man” (33), where Lessing writes, “Laß dich umarmen, Mensch.” Lines later, Schechter translates Lessing’s “ein Kerl” as “a guy,” as the Dervish tells Nathan, “And what if I’d become a guy who works for the state and whose friendship was awkward for you?” (33). When reading these passages, some readers might prefer Bayard Quincy Morgan’s “embrace” to Schechter’s “hug,” and Morgan’s “fellow” to Schechter’s “guy.” In other passages, however, readers will surely find Schechter’s word choice more natural than the occasionally stilted formulations in Morgan’s translation.

Schechter also succeeds in giving a faithful rendering of Lessing’s meaning in all but a few passages, and the minor glitches listed in what follows constitute rare exceptions in what is otherwise a solid translation. His translation of “Grausame Schwärmerinnen!” in Act I, Scene 2, as “Cruel worshippers!” (31) fails to convey the connotations of effusiveness and zealotry in the original. Thus, Schechter unduly softens Nathan’s reproof of Daja and Recha’s zealous adoration of the Templar, whom Recha believes to be an angel sent to rescue her from Nathan’s burning house. In the same passage, Nathan attempts to cure Recha of her immortalizing of the Templar by positing that he is in fact a mortal whose recent absence might indicate that he is ill. Seeking to reassure Recha that the Templar has suffered no such fate, Daja insists that Nathan has merely suggested illness as one possible explanation for his absence: “Das wäre möglich, meint ja Nathan nur.” Bayard Quincy Morgan correctly translates this as “It’s possible, that’s all that Nathan means,” but Schechter changes the meaning of the original by translating it as “Only Nathan thinks it possible” (31). Moreover, whereas Lessing describes the Patriarch as approaching the cloister “mit allem geistlichen Pomp” in the stage direction which opens Act IV, Scene 2, Schechter has him approach “with the highest degree of priestly splendor” (83), a translation which does not convey the negative connotations of pomp (in both English and German) with ostentation.

The authority of the translation is also compromised by a few omissions in the opening pages. Absent from the title page of the translated text are both the motto which Lessing chose for the play (Introite, nam et heic Dii sunt!) and Lessing’s description of the play as “ein dramatisches Gedicht, in fünf Aufzügen” (though Schechter refers to this description in his introduction). The sentence “Die Szene ist in Jerusalem,” which follows the list of characters, has also been omitted. A far graver omission is the complete absence of Act III, Scene 10 (in which Daja divulges Recha’s Christian origins to the Templar), in the initial printing of the volume. The scene is available on Bedford/St. Martin’s web site (http://bedfordstmartins.com/history/act3scene10.pdf) and has been included in a subsequent printing of the volume.

Since this error has now been rectified, it should not overshadow the many strengths both of Schechter’s translation and of the volume as a whole. With the inclusion of the missing scene, Schechter’s volume offers an eminently readable translation of the complete text of Lessing’s play, whereas the translation by Bayard Quincy Morgan omits six scenes. With its insightful introduction and many useful supplementary materials, the volume will also offer students a well-rounded introduction to a major figure whose thought continues to be relevant today. As a textbook for undergraduate students, the volume can thus be highly recommended. Together both with recent productions of Nathan the Wise on American stages and with the forthcoming Cambridge edition of Lessing’s philosophical and theological writings (translated by H.B. Nisbet), Schechter’s edition of Nathan the Wise promises to make Lessing better-known in the English-speaking world.