An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway | Page 7

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 utfl?ygd 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 h?ge 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:
Two of the fairest stars in all the Heaven, etc.
And equally good are the closing lines beginning:
Aa tala meir, Ljos-Engel med du lyser, etc.
Foersom is deservedly praised for his translation of the same lines, but a comparison of the two is not altogether disastrous to Aasen, though, to be sure, his lines lack some of Foersom's insinuating softness:
Tal atter, Lysets Engel! thi du straaler i Natten saa h?iherlig over mig som en af Nattens vingede Cheruber for d?deliges himmelvendte ?ine, etc.
But lines like these have an admirable and perfect loveliness:
naar han skrid um dan seinleg-sigand' Skyi og sigler yver h?ge Himmels Barmen.
Aasen busied himself for some years with this effort to naturalize his Landsmaal in all the forms of literature. Apparently this was always uppermost in his thoughts. We find him trying himself in this sort of work in the years before and after the publication of _Pr?ver af Landsmaalet_. In Skrifter i Samling is printed another little fragment of Romeo and Juliet, which the editor, without giving his reasons, assigns to a date earlier than that of the balcony scene. It is Mercutio's description of Queen Mab (Act I, Sc. 4). This is decidedly more successful than the other. The vocabulary of the Norwegian dialects is rich in words of fairy-lore, and one who knew this word treasure as Aasen did could render the fancies of Mercutio with something very near the exuberance of Shakespeare himself:
No ser eg vel, at ho hev' vore hjaa deg ho gamle Mabba, N?rkona aat Vettom. So lita som ein Adelstein i Ringen paa fremste Fingren paa ein verdug Raadsmann, ho kj?yrer kring med smaa Soldumbe-Flokar paa Nasanna aat Folk, dan Tid dei s?v. Hjulspikann' henna er av Konglef?ter, Vognfelden er av Engjesprette-Vengjer, og Taumann' av den minste Kongleveven. Av Maanestraalanne paa Vatn er Selen, og av Sirissebein er Svipeskafted og Svipesnerten er av Agner smaa. Skjotskaren er eit nett graakjola My so stort som Holva av ein liten M��l, som minste V?kja krasa kann med Fingren. Til Vogn ho fekk ei holut Haslenot av Snikkar Ikorn elder Natemakk, som altid var Vognmakarann' aat Vettom.[15]
[15. Ivar Aasen: Skrifter i Samling. Christiania. 1911, Vol. I, p. 166.]
The translation ends with Mercutio's words:
And being thus frightened, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again.
In my opinion this is consummately well done--at once accurate and redolent of poesy; and certainly Aasen would have been justified in feeling that Landsmaal is equal to Shakespeare's most airy passages. The slight inaccuracy of one of the lines:
Av Maanestraalanne paa Vatn er Selen,
for Shakespeare's:
The colors of the moonshine's watery beams,
is of no consequence. The discrepancy was doubtless as obvious to the translator as it is to us.
From about the same time we have another Shakespeare fragment from Aasen's hand. Like the Queen Mab passage, it was not published till 1911.[16] It is scarcely surprising that it is a rendering of Hamlet's soliloquy: "To be or not to be." This is, of course, a more difficult undertaking. For the interests that make up the life of the people--their family and community affairs, their arts and crafts and folk-lore, the dialects of Norway, like the dialects of any other country, have a vocabulary amazingly rich and complete.[17] But not all ideas belong in the realm of the every-day, and the great difficulty of the Landsmaal movement is precisely this--that it must develop a "culture language." To a large degree it has already done so. The rest is largely a matter of time. And surely Ivar Aasen's translation of the famous soliloquy proved that the task of giving, even to thought as sophisticated as this, adequate and final expression is not impossible. The whole is worth giving:
Te vera elder ei,--d'er da her spyrst um; um d'er meir heirlegt i sitt Brjost aa tola kvar Styng og St?yt av ein hards?kjen Lagnad eld taka Vaapn imot eit Hav med Harmar, staa mot og slaa dei veg?--Te d?y, te sova, alt fraa seg