NO MAN FULLY CAPABLE OF HIS OWN LANGUAGE EVER MASTERS ANOTHER

Although - as a member of a Philology Department - I know a few people who are living proof that the above quotation is less than accurate, it is hard to tell to what extent Shaw's words are true - especially because there is no definition of what "fully capable" means. What I can tell you, though, is that these words can be found in Maxims for Revolutionists, a sort of annexe to The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion. This, in turn, is an addendum to Man and Superman, as many of you already know. 

Shaw's interest in foreign languages was rather limited, with the exception of the translation of his plays. Whether because of the incompetence of many of his translators or because he wanted to oversee everything concerning the publication of his works, Shaw exchanged a number of letters over specific words, phrases or passages in translation. His Collected Letters contain many examples of these, particularly with the Hamons (Augustin and Henriette), his French translators, and with Siegfried Trebitsch, the German one. 

On a more personal note, however, Shaw was quite aware of his lack of ability for foreign languages, as he conceded on a number of occasions. Perhaps one of the most oft-quoted anecdotes in this respect is recounted in his letter to Dino Grandi, Italian ambassador to Britain at the time, who had invited the Shaws to dine. (Bernard Shaw Collected Letters Vol. IV, p. 371-2) Shaw politely declined the invitation, partially on the grounds of what had happened the last time: 

"Your lady graciously came and spoke to me. I lost my head completely and tried to speak in Italian (which I cannot speak). The result was a stammering in very bad French (I am the worst of linguistis - not like you, who speak English better than any Englishman). It was evident to the Signora Grande that I was very drunk; and the conversation ended abruptly before I recovered my presence of mind."

Despite these shortcomings, Shaw was regarded by some as a very good speaker of a few foreign languages - although for reasons beyond his actual mastery of any of them. As Archibald Henderson puts it in his Bernard Shaw: A Critical Biography (p. 492):

"[Shaw] speaks no language but his own, and reads no foreign language, save French, with ease. I remember hearing someone ask Rodin whether Shaw really spoke French. "Ah! no!" replied Rodin, with his genial smile and a faint twinkle of the eyes; "Monsieur Shaw does not speak French. But somehow or other, by the very violence of his manner and gesticulation, he succeeds in imposing his meaning upon you!" Shaw is fond of relating the incident which laid the foundation for his reputation as an Italian scholar. “Once I was in Milan with a party of English folk. We were dining at the railway restaurant, and our waiter spoke no language other than his own. When the moment came to pay and rush for the train, we were unable to make him understand that we wanted not one bill, but twenty-four separate ones. My friends insisted that I must know Italian, so to act as interpreter, I racked my memory for chips from the language of Dante, but in vain. All of a sudden, a line from The Huguenots flashed to my brain: Ognuno per se / per tutti il ciel (‘Every man for himself / and heaven for all) I declaimed it with triumphant success. The army of waiters was doubled up with laughter, and my fame as an Italian scholar has been on the increase ever since.”

At any rate, nobody can blame Shaw for trying to pass as a great linguist. As he himself acknowledged in a note he wrote on the occasion of the premiere of The Devil's Disciple at the Raimund Theatre, Vienna (the manuscript is transcribed and annotated in The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Vol. 20, pages 247-252): 

"Like all really able men I am congenitally incapable of acquiring foreign languages; but I have been so steeped in German music, and consequently in German poetry, all my life (having indeed learned more of my art as a writer for the stage from Mozart than from Shakespear, Molière or any literary dramatist) that I cannot help believing that I know German. I sometimes speak it; and my German friends are all agreed that nobody else in Europe speaks it in quite the same manner."

"Shaw and Foreign Languages and Literature." Sounds like something someone should write a book on. 

THE STATESMAN WHO HAS NO OTHER OBJECT THAN TO MAKE YOU VOTE FOR HIS PARTY

A couple of days ago, Lizzie Dunford, assistant house steward at Shaw's Corner and avid blogger, posted an interesting quotation by Shaw on her Facebook timeline: 

"The statesman who has no other object than to make you vote for his party at the next election may be starting you on an incline at the foot of which lies war, or revolution, or a smallpox epidemic, or five years off your lifetime." 

The quotation, as Lizzie rightly notes, belongs to a 1911 piece. Specifically, to the Preface to Three Plays by Brieux, a book containing the English translation of three works by French playwright Eugène Brieux. The book was published by Brentano and contained two different versions of Maternity - one of them translated by Charlotte Shaw, and the other by John Pollock. Together with the two versions of Maternity, the volume also included The Three Daughters of M. Dupont (trans. by St. John Hankin) and Damaged Goods (trans. by John Pollock). 

What seems odd about this quotation - at least when taken out of context - is that one may get the impression that Shaw is yet again grinding the axe of Fabian socialism and political reformation. Although that is partially the case, for Shaw never wrote a single line "for art's sake," the expanded context clarifies that Shaw is, by and large, trying to illustrate how the true dramatist, the man of genius, has a moral obligation to "interpret life." In other words, those who have got it must exert their "power of accurate observation" in order to educate, rather than "amuse themselves or their audiences." 

I reproduce the whole paragraph below for the amusement (and enlightenment) of my readers, in an attempt to "pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings, and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant." 

"But the great dramatist has something better to do than to amuse either himself or his audience. He has to interpret life. This sounds a mere pious phrase of literary criticism; but a moment's consideration will discover its meaning and its exactitude. Life as it appears to us in our daily experience is an unintelligible chaos of happenings. You pass Othello in the bazaar in Aleppo, lago on the jetty in Cyprus, and Desdemona in the nave of St. Mark's in Venice without the slightest clue to their relations to one another. The man you see stepping into a chemist's shop to buy the means of committing murder or suicide, may, for all you know, want nothing but a liver pill or a toothbrush. The statesman who has no other object than to make you vote for his party at the next election, may be starting you on an incline at the foot of which lies war, or revolution, or a smallpox epidemic, or five years off your lifetime. The horrible murder of a whole family by the father who finishes by killing himself, or the driving of a young girl on to the streets, may be the result of your discharging an employee in a fit of temper a month before. To attempt to understand life from merely looking on at it as it happens in the streets is as hopeless as trying to understand public questions by studying snapshots of public demonstrations. If we possessed a series of cinematographs of all the executions during the Reign of Terror, they might be exhibited a thousand times without enlightening the audiences in the least as to the meaning of the Revolution: Robespierre would perish as "un monsieur" and Marie Antoinette as "une femme." Life as it occurs is senseless: a policeman may watch it and work in it for thirty years in the streets and courts of Paris without learning as much of it or from it as a child or a nun may learn from a single play by Brieux. For it is the business of Brieux to pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings, and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant, thus changing us from bewildered spectators of a monstrous confusion to men intelligently conscious of the world and its destinies. This is the highest function that man can perform — the greatest work he can set his hand to; and this is why the great dramatists of the world, from Euripides and Aristophanes to Shakespear and Moliere, and from them to Ibsen and Brieux, take that majestic and pontifical rank which seems so strangely above all the reasonable pretensions of mere strolling actors and theatrical authors."

THE MONEY IS A LIFEBELT THROWN TO A SWIMMER WHO HAS REACHED SHORE IN SAFETY

These were the words Shaw wrote to the Nobel Prize administrators in a letter dated Nov. 18 1926. A transcript of the letter can be read in Vol. 4 of Dan H Laurence's Bernard Shaw Collected Letters (p. 34). He considered that the award was a great honor, but the prize was quite a different thing. In his own words, 

My readers and audiences provide me with more than sufficient money for my needs; and as to my renown it is greater than is good for my spiritual health. 

That is why he ventured "to propose to you that the money which accompanies the award be funded by the Royal Academy or by the Swedish Minister in London and the annual proceeds be used to encourage intercourse and understanding in literature and art between Sweden and the British Isles."

As we all know, this initial idea is what led to the instauration of The Bernard Shaw Prize for Swedish Translations. Although no award was given this year, you can find a list of past winners here.