An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway | Page 5

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 Coriolanus' outburst of wrath against the pretensions of the tribunes (III, 1). With all its imperfections, the translation is almost adequate.
_Coriolanus_: Skal! Patrisier, I ?dle, men ei vise! I h?ie Senatorer, som mon mangle Al Overl?g, hvi lod I Hydra v?lge En Tjener som med sit bestemte Skal --Skj?ndt blot Uhyrets Taler?r og Lyd-- Ei mangler Mod, at sige at han vil Forvandle Eders Havstr?m til en Sump, Og som vil gj?re Jer Kanal til sin. Hvis han har Magten, lad Enfoldighed Da for ham bukke; har han ingen Magt, Da v?kker 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 v?lge deres egen ?vrighed, Og saadan Een, der s?tte t?r sit Skal, Ja sit gemene Skal mod en Forsamling, Der mer agtv?rdig er end nogensinde Man fandt i Gr?kenland. Ved Jupiter! Sligt Consulen fornedrer! Og det smerter Min Sj?l at vide, hvor der findes tvende Autoriteter, ingen af dem st?rst, Der kan Forvirring lettelig faae Indpas I Gabet, som er mellem dem, og h?ve Den ene ved den anden.
C
In 1865, Paul Botten Hansen, best known to the English-speaking world for his relations with Bj?rnson 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 resumé 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. _Illustreret 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