An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway Part 2

_Menenius_: Min G.o.de Ven, nu allerfrst bemaerke.

Agtvaerdig Mave brugte Overlaeg; Ei ubetaenksom den sig overiled Som dens Modstandere; og saa ld Svaret: I Venner som fra mig ei skilles kan!

Det Sandhed er, at jeg fra frste Haand Modtager Naeringen som Eder fder, Og dette i sin Orden er, thi jeg Et Varelager og et Forraads-Kammer Jo er for Legemet; men ei I glemme: Jeg Naeringen igjennem Blodets Floder Og sender lige hen til Hoffet-Hjertet-- Til Hjernens Saede; jeg den flyde lader Igjennem Menneskets meest fine Dele; Og de meest fast Nerver, som de mindste Blandt Aarene fra mig modtager hver Naturlig Kraft, hvormed de leve, og Endskjndt de ikke alle paa eengang-- I G.o.de Venner (det var Mavens Ord) Og maerker dem heel nie....

_Frste Borger_: Det vil vi gjre.

_Menenius_: Endskjndt de ikke alle kunde see, Hvad jeg tilflyde lader hver isaer, Saa kan jeg dog med gyldigt Dok.u.ment Bevise at jeg overlader dem Den rene Kjaerne, selv beholder Kliddet.

Hvad siger I dertil?

_Frste Borger_: Et svar det var-- Men nu Andvendelsen!

_Menenius_: Senatet er Den G.o.de Mave: I Rebellerne.

I undersge blot de Raad det giver Og alt dets Omhue. Overveier nie Alt hvad til Statens Velferd monne sigte, Og da I finde vil, at fra Senatet Hver offentlig Velgjerning som I nyde Sit Udspring bar, men ei fra Eder selv-- Hvad taenker I, som er den store Taae Her i Forsamlingen?

[10. _Coriola.n.u.s_--Malone's ed. London. 1790. Vol. 7, pp. 148 ff.]

Aside from the preponderance of feminine endings, which is inevitable in Scandinavian blank verse, what strikes us most in this translation is its laboriousness. The language is set on end. Inversion and transposition are the devices by which the translator has managed to give Shakespeare in metrically decent lines. The proof of this is so patent that I need scarcely point out instances. But take the first seven lines of the quotation. Neither in form nor content is this bad, yet no one with a feeling for the Danish language can avoid an exclamation, "forskruet Stil" and "poetiske Stylter." And lines 8-9 smack unmistakably of _Peder Paars_. In the second place, the translator often does not attempt to translate at all. He gives merely a paraphrase. Compare lines 1-3 with the English original; the whole of the speech of the first citizen, 17-24, 25-27, where the whole implied idea is fully expressed; 28-30, etc., etc. We might offer almost every translation of Shakespeare's figures as an example. One more instance.

At times even paraphrase breaks down. Compare

And through the cranks and offices of man The strongest and small inferior veins, Receive from me that natural competency Whereby they live.

with our translator's version (lines 50-51)

jeg den flyde lader Igjennem Menneskets meest fine Dele.

This is not even good paraphrase; it is simply bald and helpless rendering.

On the other hand, it would be grossly unfair to dismiss it all with a sneer. The translator has succeeded for the most part in giving the sense of Shakespeare in smooth and sounding verse, in itself no small achievement. Rhetoric replaces poetry, it is true, and paraphrase dries up the freshness and the sparkle of the metaphor. But a Norwegian of that day who got his first taste of Shakespeare from the translation before us, would at least feel that here was the power of words, the music and sonorousness of elevated dramatic poetry.

One more extract and I am done. It is Coriola.n.u.s' outburst of wrath against the pretensions of the tribunes (III, 1). With all its imperfections, the translation is almost adequate.

_Coriola.n.u.s_: Skal!

Patrisier, I aedle, men ei vise!

I hie Senatorer, som mon mangle Al Overlaeg, hvi lod I Hydra vaelge En Tjener som med sit bestemte Skal --Skjndt blot Uhyrets Talerr og Lyd-- Ei mangler Mod, at sige at han vil Forvandle Eders Havstrm til en Sump, Og som vil gjre Jer Ka.n.a.l til sin.

Hvis han har Magten, lad Enfoldighed Da for ham bukke; har han ingen Magt, Da vaekker Eders Mildhed af sin Dvale, Den farlig er; hvis I ei mangle Klogskab, Da handler ei som Daaren; mangler den, Lad denne ved Jer Side faae en Pude.

Plebeier ere I, hvis Senatorer De ere, og de ere mindre ei Naar begge Eders Stemmer sammenblandes Og naar de kildres meest ved Fornemhed.

De vaelge deres egen vrighed, Og saadan Een, der saette tr sit Skal, Ja sit gemene Skal mod en Forsamling, Der mer agtvaerdig er end nogensinde Man fandt i Graekenland. Ved Jupiter!

Sligt Consulen fornedrer! Og det smerter Min Sjael at vide, hvor der findes tvende Autoriteter, ingen af dem strst, Der kan Forvirring lettelig faae Indpas I Gabet, som er mellem dem, og haeve Den ene ved den anden.

C

In 1865, Paul Botten Hansen, best known to the English-speaking world for his relations with Bjrnson and Ibsen, reviewed[11] the eleventh installment of Lembcke's translation of Shakespeare. The article does not venture into criticism, but is almost entirely a resume of Shakespeare translation in Norway and Denmark. It is less well informed than we should expect, and contains, among several other slips, the following "...in 1855, Niels Hauge, deceased the following year as teacher in Krager, translated _Macbeth_, the first faithful version of this masterpiece which Dano-Norwegian literature could boast of." Botten Hansen mentions only one previous Danish or Norwegian version of Shakespeare--Foersom's adaptation of Schiller's stage version (1816).

He is quite obviously ignorant of Rosenfeldt's translation of 1790; and the Rahbek-Sanders translation of 1801 seems also to have escaped him, although Hauge expressly refers to this work in his introduction. Both of these early attempts are in prose; Foersom's, to be sure, is in blank verse, but Foersom's _Macbeth_ is not Shakespeare's. Accordingly, it is, in a sense, true that Hauge in 1855 did give the Dano-Norwegian public their first taste of an unspoiled _Macbeth_ in the vernacular.[12]

[11. _Ill.u.s.treret Nyhedsblad_--1865, p. 96.]

[12. _Macbeth--Tragedie i fem Akter af William Shakespeare_.

Oversat og fortolket af N. Hauge. Christiania. 1855. Johan Dahl.]

Hauge tells us that he had interested himself in English literature at the risk of being called an eccentric. Modern languages then offered no avenue to preferment, and why, forsooth, did men attend lectures and take examinations except to gain the means of earning a livelihood? He justifies his interest, however, by the seriousness and industry with which Shakespeare is studied in Germany and England. With the founts of this study he is apparently familiar, and with the influence of Shakespeare on Lessing, Goethe, and the lesser romanticists. It is interesting to note, too, that two scholars, well known in widely different fields, Monrad, the philosopher--for some years a sort of Dr.

Johnson in the literary circles of Christiania--and Unger, the scholarly editor of many Old Norse texts, a.s.sisted him in his work.

The character of Hauge's work is best seen in his notes. They consist of a careful defense of every liberty he takes with the text, explanations of grammatical constructions, and interpretations of debated matters.

For example, he defends the witches on the ground that they symbolize the power of evil in the human soul.

Man kan sige at Shakespeare i dem og deres Slaeng har givet de nytestamentlige Daemoner Kjd og Blod.

(We may say that Shakespeare in them and their train has endowed the demons of the New Testament with flesh and blood). Again, he would change the word _incarnadine_ to _incarnate_ on the ground that _Twelfth Night V_ offers a similar instance of the corrupt use of _incardinate_ for _incarnate_. The word occurs, moreover, in English only in this pa.s.sage.[13] Again, in his note to Act IV, he points out that the dialogue in which Malcolm tests the sincerity of Macduff is taken almost verbatim from Holinshed. "In performing the play," he suggests, "it should, perhaps, be omitted as it very well may be without injury to the action since the complication which arises through Malcolm's suspicion of Macduff is fully and satisfactorily resolved by the appearance of Rosse." And his note to a pa.s.sage in Act V is interesting as showing that, wide and thorough as was Hauge's acquaintance with Shakespearean criticism, he had, besides, a first-hand knowledge of the minor Elizabethan dramatists. I give the note in full. "_The way to dusty death--_

Til dette besynderlige Udtryk, kan foruden hvad Knight og Dyce have at citere, endnu citeres af Fords _Perkin Warbeck_, II, 2, "I take my leave to travel to my dust."

[13. This is, of course, incorrect. Cf. Macbeth, Variorum Edition. Ed. Furness. Phila. 1903, p. 40. Note.]

Hauge was a careful and conscientious scholar. He knew his field and worked with the painstaking fidelity of the man who realizes the difficulty of his task. The translation he gave is of a piece with the man--faithful, laborious, uninspired. But it is, at least, superior to Rosenfeldt and Sander, and Hauge justified his work by giving to his countrymen the best version of _Macbeth_ up to that time.

Monrad himself reviewed Hauge's _Macbeth_ in a careful and well-informed article, in _Nordisk Tidsskrift for Videnskab og Literatur_, which I shall review later.

D

One of the most significant elements in the intellectual life of modern Norway is the so-called Landsmaal movement. It is probably unnecessary to say that this movement is an effort on the part of many Norwegians to subst.i.tute for the dominant Dano-Norwegian a new literary language based on the "best" dialects. This language, commonly called the Landsmaal, is, at all events in its origin, the creation of one man, Ivar Aasen.

Aasen published the first edition of his grammar in 1848, and the first edition of his dictionary in 1850. But obviously it was not enough to provide a grammar and a word-book. The literary powers of the new language must be developed and disciplined and, accordingly, Aasen published in 1853 _Prver af Landsmaalet i Norge_. The little volume contains, besides other material, seven translations from foreign cla.s.sics; among these is Romeo's soliloquy in the balcony scene.[14]

(Act II, Sc. 1) This modest essay of Aasen's, then, antedates Hauge's rendering of _Macbeth_ and const.i.tutes the first bit of Shakespeare translation in Norway since the _Coriola.n.u.s_ of 1818.

[14. Ivar Aasen--_Skrifter i Samling_--Christiania. 1911, Vol. 11, p. 165. Reprinted from _Prver af Landsmaalet i Norge, Frste Udgave_. Kristiania. 1853, p. 114.]

Aasen knew that Landsmaal was adequate to the expression of the homely and familiar. But would it do for belles lettres?

Han laer aat Saar, som aldri kende Saar.-- Men hyst!--Kvat Ljos er dat dar upp i glaset?

Dat er i Aust, og Julia er Soli.

Sprett, f.a.gre Sol, og tyn dan Maane-Skjegla, som alt er sjuk og bleik av berre Ovund, at hennar Taus er f.a.grar' en ho sjlv.

Ver inkje hennar Taus; dan Ovundsykja, so sjukleg grn er hennar Jomfru-Klaednad; d'er berre Narr, som ber han. Sleng han av!

Ja, d'er mi Fru, d'er dan eg held i Hugen; aa, giv ho hadde vist dat, at ho er dat!

Ho talar, utan Ord. Kvat skal ho med dei?

Ho tala kann med Augom;--eg vil svara.

Eg er for djerv; d'er inkje meg ho ser paa, d'er tvo av fegste Stjernom dar paa Himlen, som gekk ei aerend, og fekk hennar Augo te blinka i sin Stad, til dei kem atter.

Enn um dei var dar sjlve Augo hennar.

Kinn-Ljosken hennar hadde skemt dei Stjernor, som Dagsljos skemmer Lampen; hennar Augo hadd' straatt so bjart eit Ljos i Himmels Hgdi, at Fuglar song og Trudde, dat var Dag.

Sjaa, kor ho hallar Kinni lint paa Handi, Aa, giv eg var ein Vott paa denne Handi at eg fekk strjuka Kinni den.--Ho talar.-- Aa tala meir, Ljos-Engel, med du lyser so klaart i denne Natti kring mitt Hovud, som naar dat kem ein utflygd Himmels Sending mot Folk, som keika seg og stira beint upp med undrarsame kvit-snudd' Augo mot han, naar han skrid um dan seinleg-sigand' Skyi og sigler yver hge Himmels Barmen.

It was no peasant jargon that Aasen had invented; it was a literary language of great power and beauty with the dignity and fulness of any other literary medium. But it was new and untried. It had no literature.

Aasen, accordingly, set about creating one. Indeed, much of what he wrote had no other purpose. What, then, shall we say of the first appearance of Shakespeare in "Ny Norsk"?

First, that it was remarkably felicitous.

Kinn-Ljosken hadde skemt dei Stjernor som Dagsljos skemmer Lampen, hennar Augo, etc.

That is no inadequate rendering of: