An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway | Page 9

Norwegian soil.
The new language was hewing out new paths.
Som Soli Augunn' inkje skjin, og som Koraller inkje Lipunn' glansar,
og snjokvit hev ho inkje Halsen sin, og Gullhaar inkje Hove hennar
kransar,
Eg baae kvit' og raue Roser ser--, paa Kinni hennar deira Lit'kje
blandast; og meire fin vel Blomsterangen er, en den som ut fraa Lipunn'
hennar andast.
Eg høyrt hev hennar Røyst og veit endaa, at inkje som ein Song dei
læter Ori; og aldrig hev eg set ein Engel gaa-- og gjenta mi ser støtt eg
gaa paa Jori.
Men ho er større Lov og Ære vær enn pyntedokkane me laana Glansen.
Den reine Hugen seg i alting ter, og ljost ho smilar under
Brurekransen.[18]
[18. "Ein Sonett etter William Shakespeare." _Fram_--1872.]
Obviously this is not a sonnet at all. Not only does the translator ignore
Shakespeare's rime scheme, but he sets aside the elementary definition
of a sonnet--a poem of fourteen lines. We have here sixteen lines and
the last two add nothing to the original. The poet, through lack of skill,
has simply run on. He could have ended with line 14 and then,

whatever other criticism might have been passed upon his work, we
should have had at least the sonnet form. The additional lines are in
themselves fairly good poetry but they have no place in what purports
to be translation. The translator signs himself simply "r." Whoever he
was, he had poetic feeling and power of expression. No mere poetaster
could have given lines so exquisite in their imagery, so full of music,
and so happy in their phrasing. This fact in itself makes it a poor
translation, for it is rather a paraphrase with a quality and excellence all
its own. Not a line exactly renders the English. The paraphrase is never
so good as the original but, considered by itself, it is good poetry. The
disillusionment comes only with comparison. On the whole, this
second attempt to put Shakespeare into Landsmaal was distinctly less
successful than the first. As poetry it does not measure up to Aasen; as
translation it is periphrastic, arbitrary, not at all faithful.
F
The translations which we have thus far considered were mere
fragments--brief soliloquies or a single sonnet, and they were done into
a dialect which was not then and is not now the prevailing literary
language of the country. They were earnest and, in the case of Aasen,
successful attempts to show that Landsmaal was adequate to the most
varied and remote of styles. But many years were to elapse before
anyone attempted the far more difficult task of turning any considerable
part of Shakespeare into "Modern Norwegian."
Norway still relied, with no apparent sense of humiliation, on the
translations of Shakespeare as they came up from Copenhagen. In 1881,
however, Hartvig Lassen (1824-1897) translated The Merchant of
Venice.[19] Lassen matriculated as a student in 1842, and from 1850
supported himself as a literateur, writing reviews of books and plays for
Krydseren and Aftenposten. In 1872 he was appointed Artistic Censor
at the theater, and in that office translated a multitude of plays from
almost every language of Western Europe. His published translations of
Shakespeare are, however, quite unrelated to his theatrical work. They
were done for school use and published by Selskabet for
Folkeoplysningens Fremme (Society for the Promotion of Popular

Education).
[19. _Kjøbmanden i Venedig_--Et Skuespil af William Shakespeare.
Oversat af Hartvig Lassen. Udgivet af Selskabet for Folkeoplysningens
Fremme som andet Tillægshefte til Folkevennen for 1881. Kristiania,
1881.]
To _Kjøbmanden i Venedig_ there is no introduction and no
notes--merely a postscript in which the translator declares that he has
endeavored everywhere faithfully to reproduce the peculiar tone of the
play and to preserve the concentration of style which is everywhere
characteristic of Shakespeare. He acknowledges his indebtedness to the
Swedish translation by Hagberg and the German by Schlegel. Inasmuch
as this work was published for wide, general distribution and for
reading in the schools, Lassen cut out the passages which he deemed
unsuitable for the untutored mind. "But," he adds, "with the exception
of the last scene of Act III, which, in its expurgated form, would be too
fragmentary (and which, indeed, does not bear any immediate relation
to the action), only a few isolated passages have been cut. Shakespeare
has lost next to nothing, and a great deal has been gained if I have
hereby removed one ground for the hesitation which most teachers
would feel in using the book in the public schools." In Act III, Scene 5
is omitted entirely, and obvious passages in other parts of the play.
It has frequently been said that Lassen did little more than
"norvagicize" Lembcke's Danish renderings. And certainly even the
most cursory reading will show that he had Lembcke at