An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway - Martin Brown Ruud (book club reads .TXT) 📗

sminket smiger

  hvem vi er, og hvor vi os befinder.

  Ja, livet her er ei ly for verdens ondskap,

  er stolt og frit og fuldt av rike glæder:

  hver graasten synes god og kirkeklok,

  hvert redetræ er jo en sangers slot,

  og alt er skjønt, og alt er saare godt.

 

  _Amiens_:

  Du er en godt benaadet oversætter,

  naar du kan tolke skjæbnens harske talesæt

  i slike sterke, stemningsfulde ord...

 

  (En hofmand, derefter Jacques og tjenere kommer.)

 

  _Hertugen_:

  Godmorgen, venner--vel, saa skal vi jage

  paa vildtet her, de vakre, dumme borgere

  av denne øde og forlate stad...

 

  _Jacques_:

  Det er synd at søndre deres vakre lemmer

  med pile-odd.

 

  _Amiens_:

      Det samme sier du altid,

  du er for melankolsk og bitter, Jacques.

 

A careful comparison of the translation with the original will reveal

certain verbal resemblances, notably in the duke's speech:

 

  Din spøk er vel en saadan sanger værd, etc.

 

But, even allowing for that, it is a rephrasing rather than a

translation. The stage action, too, is changed. Notice that Jacques

appears in the scene, and that in the episode immediately following, the

second part of the first lord's speech is put into Jacques' mouth. In

other words, he is made to caricature himself!

 

This is Wildenvey's attitude throughout. To take still another example.

Act IV, 2 begins in the English with a brief dialogue in prose between

Jacques and the two lords. In Wildenvey this is changed to a rhymed

dialogue in iambic tetrameters between Jacques and Amiens. In like

manner, the blank verse dialogue between Silvius and Phebe (Silvius and

Pippa) is in Norwegian rendered, or rather paraphrased, in iambic verse

rhyming regularly abab.

 

Occasionally meanings are read into the play which not only do not

belong in Shakespeare but which are ridiculously out of place. As an

illustration, note the dialogue between Orlando and Rosalind in II, 2

(Original, III, 2). Orlando remarks: "Your accent is something finer

than could be purchased in so remote a dwelling." Wildenvey renders

this: "Eders sprog er mer elevert end man skulde vente i disse vilde

trakter. De taler ikke Landsmaal." Probably no one would be deceived by

this gratuitous satire on the Landsmaal, but, obviously, it has no place

in what pretends to be a translation. The one justification for it is

that Shakespeare himself could not have resisted so neat a word-play.

 

Wildenvey's version, therefore, can only be characterized as needlessly

free. For the text as such he has absolutely no regard. But for the fact

that he has kept the fable and, for the most part, the characters,

intact, we should characterize it as a belated specimen of Sille Beyer's

notorious Shakespeare "bearbeidelser" in Denmark. But Wildenvey does not

take Sille Beyer's liberties with the dramatis personae and he has,

moreover, what she utterly lacked--poetic genius.

 

For that is the redeeming feature of _Livet i Skogen_--it does not

translate Shakespeare but it makes him live. The delighted audience

which sat night after night in Christiania and Copenhagen and drank in

the loveliness of Wildenvey's verse and Halvorsen's music cared little

whether the lines that came over the footlights were philologically an

accurate translation or not. They were enchanted by Norwegian verse and

moved to unfeigned delight by the cleverness of the prose. If Wildenvey

did not succeed in translating _As You Like It_--one cannot believe that

he ever intended to,--he did succeed in reproducing something of "its

imperishable woodland spirit, its fresh breath of out-of-doors."

 

We have already quoted the opening of Act II. It is not Shakespeare but

it is good poetry in itself. And the immortal scene between Touchstone

and Corin in III, 2 (Shak. III, 2), in which Touchstone clearly proves

that the shepherd is damned, is a capital piece of work. The following

fragment must serve as an example:

 

  _Touchstone_:

  Har du været ved hoffet, hyrde?

 

  _Korin_:

  Visselig ikke.

 

  _Touch_:

  Da er du evig fordømt.

 

  _Korin_:

  Det haaber jeg da ikke.

 

  _Touch_:

  Visselig, da er du fordømt som en sviske.

 

  _Korin_:

  Fordi jeg ikke har været ved hoffet? Hvad mener I?

 

  _Touch_:

  Hvis du ikke har været ved hoffet, saa har du aldrig set gode seder,

  og hvis du ikke har set gode seder, saa maa dine seder være slette,

  og slette seder er synd, og syndens sold er død og fordømmelse. Du

  er i en betænkelig tilstand, hyrde!

 

And the mocking verses all rhyming in _in-ind_ in III, 3 (Shak. III, 2):

"From the East to western Ind," etc., are given with marvelous

cleverness:

 

  Fra øst til vest er ei at finde

  en ædelsten som Rosalinde.

  Al verden om paa alle vinde

  skal rygtet gaa om Rosalinde.

  Hvor har en maler nogensinde

  et kunstverk skapt som Rosalinde?

  Al anden deilighet maa svinde

  av tanken bort--for Rosalinde.

 

Or Touchstone's parody:

 

  Hjorten skriker efter hinde,

  skrik da efter Rosalinde,

  kat vil katte gjerne finde,

  hvem vil finde Rosalinde.

  Vinterklær er tit for tynde,

  det er ogsaa Rosalinde.

  Nøtten søt har surhamshinde,

  slik en nøtt er Rosalinde.

  Den som ros' med torn vil finde,

  finder den--og Rosalinde.

 

With even greater felicity Wildenvey has rendered the songs of the play.

His verses are not, in any strict sense, translations, but they have a

life and movement which, perhaps, interpret the original more fully than

any translation could interpret it. What freshness and sparkle in "Under

the Greenwood Tree!" I give only the first stanza:

 

  Under de grønne trær

  hvem vil mig møte der?

  Hvem vil en tone slaa

  frit mot det blide blaa?

  Kom hit og herhen, hit og herhen,

  kom, kjære ven,

    her skal du se,

    trær skal du se,

  sommer og herlig veir skal du se.

 

Or what could be better than the exhilirating text of "Blow, blow, thou

winter wind," as Wildenvey has given it? Again only the first stanza:

 

    Blaas, blaas du barske vind,

    troløse venners sind

    synes os mere raa.

    Bar du dig end saa sint,

    bet du dog ei saa blindt,

    pustet du ogsaa paa.

  Heiho! Syng heiho! i vor skog under løvet.

  Alt venskap er vammelt, al elskov er tøvet,

    men her under løvet

    er ingen bedrøvet.

 

_Livet i Skogen_, then, must not be read as a translation of _As You

Like It_, but is immensely worth reading for its own sake. Schiller

recast and rewrote _Macbeth_ in somewhat the same way, but Schiller's

_Macbeth_, condemned by its absurd porter-scene, is today nothing

more than a literary curiosity. I firmly believe that Wildenvey's

"bearbeidelse" deserves a better fate. It gave new life to the

Shakespeare tradition on the Norwegian stage, and is in itself,

a genuine contribution to the literature of Norway.

 

 

SUMMARY

 

If we look over the field of Norwegian translation of Shakespeare,

the impression we get is not one to inspire awe. The translations are

neither numerous nor important. There is nothing to be compared with the

German of Tieck and Schlegel the Danish of Foersom, or the Swedish of

Hagberg.

 

But the reason is obvious. Down to 1814 Norway was politically and

culturally a dependency of Denmark. Copenhagen was the seat of

government, of literature, and of polite life. To Copenhagen cultivated

Norwegians looked for their models and their ideals. When Shakespeare

made his first appearance in the Danish literary world--Denmark and

Norway--it was, of course, in pure Danish garb. Boye, Rosenfeldt,

and Foersom gave to their contemporaries more or less satisfactory

translations of Shakespeare, and Norwegians were content to accept the

Danish versions. In one or two instances they made experiments of their

own. An unknown man of letters translated a scene from _Julius Caesar_

in 1782, and in 1818 appeared a translation of _Coriolanus_. But there

is little that is typically Norwegian about either of these--a word or a

phrase here and there. For the rest, they are written in pure Danish,

and but for the title-page, no one could tell whether they were

published in Copenhagen or Christiania and Trondhjem.

 

In the meantime Foersom had begun his admirable Danish translations,

and the work stopped in Norway. The building of a nation and literary

interests of another character absorbed the attention of the cultivated

world. Hauge's translation of _Macbeth_ is not significant, nor are

those of Lassen thirty years later. A scholar could, of course, easily

show that they are Norwegian, but that is all. They never succeeded in

displacing Foersom-Lembcke.

 

More important are the Landsmaal translations beginning with Ivar

Aasen's in 1853. They are interesting because they mark one of the most

important events in modern Norwegian culture--the language struggle.

Ivar Aasen set out to demonstrate that "maalet" could be used in

literature of every sort, and the same purpose, though in greatly

tempered form, is to be detected in every Landsmaal translation since.

Certainly in their outward aim they have succeeded. And, despite the

handicap of working in a language new, rough, and untried, they have

given to their countrymen translations of parts of Shakespeare which

are, at least, as good as those in "Riksmaal."

 

Herman Wildenvey stands alone. His work is neither a translation nor

a mere paraphrase; it is a reformulating of Shakespeare into a new work

of art. He has accomplished a feat worth performing, but it cannot be

called translating Shakespeare. It must be judged as an independent

work.

 

Whether Norway is always to go to Denmark for her standard Shakespeare,

or whether she is to have one of her own is, as yet, a question

impossible to answer. A pure Landsmaal translation cannot satisfy, and

many Norwegians refuse to recognize the Riksmaal as Norwegian at all. In

the far, impenetrable future the language question may settle itself,

and when that happy day comes, but not before, we may look with some

confidence for a "standard" Shakespeare in a literary garb which all

Norwegians will recognize as their own.

 

CHAPTER II (S)hakespeare Criticism In Norway

 

The history of Shakespearean translation in Norway cannot, by any

stretch of the imagination, be called distinguished. It is not, however,

wholly lacking in interesting details. In like manner the history of

Shakespearean criticism, though it contains no great names and no

fascinating chapters, is not wholly without appeal and significance. We

shall, then, in the following, consider this division of our subject.

 

Our first bit of Shakespearean criticism is the little introductory note

which the anonymous translator of the scenes from _Julius Caesar_ put at

the head of his translation in _Trondhjems Allehaande_ for October 23,

And even this is a mere statement that the passage in the original

"may be regarded as a masterpiece," and that the writer purposes to

render not merely Antony's eloquent appeal but also the interspersed

ejaculations of the crowd, "since these, too, are evidence of

Shakespeare's understanding of the human soul and of his realization

of the manner in which the oration gradually brought about the result

toward which Antony aimed."

 

This is not profound criticism, to be sure, but it shows clearly that

this litterateur in far-away Trondhjem had a definite, if not a very new

and original, estimate of Shakespeare. It is significant that there is

no hint of apology, of that tone which is so common in Shakespearean

criticism of the day--Shakespeare was a great poet, but his genius was

wild and untamed. This unknown Norwegian, apparently, had been struck

only by the verity of the scene, and in that simplicity showed himself a

better critic of Shakespeare than many more famous men. Whoever he was,

his name is lost to us now. He deserves better than to be forgotten,

but it seems that he was forgotten very early. Foersom refers to him

casually, as we have seen, but Rahbek does not mention him.[1] Many

years later Paul Botten Hansen, one of the best equipped bookmen that

Norway has produced, wrote a brief review of Lembcke's translation. In

the course of this he enumerates the Dano-Norwegian translations known

to him. There is not a word about his countryman in Trondhjem.[2]

 

    [1. "Shakespeareana i Danmark"--_Dansk Minerva_, 1816 (III)

151 ff.]

 

    [2. _Illustreret Nyhedsblad_, 1865, pp. 96 ff.]

 

After this solitary landmark, a long time passed before we again find

evidence of Shakespearean studies in Norway. The isolated translation

of _Coriolanus_ from 1818