Ooooh, I didn't notice that about the English and Spanish translations, but now that you mention it--you're right! And you're so right about the effect it produces, too--the only human presence in those versions is the distant voices, no narrator.

"Dans la montagne tout est solitaire" also strikes me as a beautiful way to put it, but again, I don't actually speak French. :P

The book sounds absolutely perfect to me; I'm the kind of geek who enjoys reading Ralph Hexter's line-by-line commentary on Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey as much as, if not more than, actually reading Fitzgerald's translation itself. (now that's sad.)