J
One might be tempted to believe from the foregoing that the propagandists of "Maalet" had completely monopolized the noble task of making Shakespeare accessible in the vernacular. And this is almost true. But the reason is not far to seek. Aside from the fact that in Norway, as elsewhere, Shakespeare is read mainly by cultivated people, among whom a sound reading knowledge of English is general, we have further to remember that the Foersom-Lembcke version has become standard in Norway and no real need has been felt of a separate Norwegian version in the dominant literary language. In Landsmaal the case is different. This dialect must be trained to "Literaturfähigkeit." It is not so much that Norway must have her own Shakespeare as that Landsmaal must be put to use in every type of literature. The results of this missionary spirit we have seen.
One of the few translations of Shakespeare that have been made into Riksmaal appeared in 1912, Hamlet, by C.H. Blom. As an experiment it is worthy of respect, but as a piece of literature it is not to be taken seriously. Like Lassen's work, it is honest, faithful, and utterly uninspired.
The opening scene of Hamlet is no mean test of a translator's ability—this quick, tense scene, one of the finest in dramatic literature. Foersom did it with conspicuous success. Blom has reduced it to the following prosy stuff:
Bernardo:
Hvem der?
Francisco:
Nei, svar mig først; gjør holdt og sig hvem der!
Ber:
Vor konge længe leve!
Fra:
De, Bernardo?
Ber:
Ja vel.
Fra:
De kommer jo paa klokkeslaget.
Ber:
Ja, den slog tolv nu. Gaa til ro, Francisco.
Fra:
Tak for De løser av. Her er saa surt, og jeg er dødsens træt.
Ber:
Har du hat rolig vagt?
Fra:
En mus har ei
sig rørt.
Ber:
Nu vel, god nat.
Hvis du Marcellus og Horatio ser,
som skal ha vakt med mig, bed dem sig skynde.
Fra:
Jeg hører dem vist nu. Holdt hoi! Hvem der.
(Horatio og Marcellus kommer.)
Horatio:
Kun landets venner.
Marcellus:
Danekongens folk!
Fra:
God nat, sov godt!
Mar:
Godnat, du bra soldat!
Hvem har løst av?
Fra:
Bernardo staar paa post.
God nat igjen. (Gaar.)
It requires little knowledge of Norwegian to dismiss this as dull and insipid prose, a part of which has accidentally been turned into mechanical blank verse. Moreover, the work is marked throughout by inconsistency and carelessness in details. For instance the king begins (p. 7) by addressing Laertes:
Hvad melder De mig on Dem selv, Laertes?
and two lines below:
Hvad kan du be mig om?
It might be a mere slip that the translator in one line uses the formal De and in another the familiar du, but the same inconsistency occurs again and again throughout the volume. In itself a trifle, it indicates clearly enough the careless, slipshod manner of work—and an utter lack of a sense of humor, for no one with a spark of humor would use the modern, essentially German De in a Norwegian translation of Shakespeare. If a formal form must be used it should, as a matter of course, be I.
Nor is the translation itself so accurate as it should be. For example, what does it mean when Marcellus tells Bernardo that he had implored Horatio "at vogte paa minutterne inat" (to watch over the minutes this night)? Again, in the King's speech to Hamlet (Act I, Sc. 2) the phrase "bend you to remain" is rendered by the categorical "se til at bli herhjemme," which is at least misleading. Little inaccuracies of this sort are not infrequent.
But, after all, a translator with a new variorum and a wealth of critical material at hand cannot go far wrong in point of mere translation. The chief indictment to be made against Blom's translation is its prosiness, its prosy, involved sentences, its banality. What in Shakespeare is easy and mellifluous often becomes in Blom so vague that its meaning has to be discovered by a reference to the original.
We gave, some pages back, Ivar Aasen's translation of Hamlet's soliloquy. The interesting thing about that translation is not only that it is the first one in Norwegian but that it was made into a new dialect by the creator of that dialect himself. When we look back and consider what Aasen had to do—first, make a literary medium, and then pour into the still rigid and inelastic forms of that language the subtlest thinking of a great world literature—we gain a new respect for his genius. Fifty years later Blom tried his hand at the same soliloquy. He was working in an old and tried literary medium—Dano-Norwegian. But he was unequal to the task:
At være eller ikke være, det
problemet er: Om det er større av
en sjæl at taale skjæbnens pil og slynge
end ta til vaaben mot et hav av plager
og ende dem i kamp? At dø,—at sove,
ei mer; og tro, at ved en søvn vi ender
vor hjerteve og livets tusen støt,
som kjød er arving til—det maal for livet
maa ønskes inderlig. At dø,—at sove—
at sove!—Kanske drømme! Der er knuten;
for hvad i dødsens søvn vi monne drømme,
naar livets lænke vi har viklet av,
det holder os igjen; det er det hensyn,
som gir vor jammer her saa langt et liv' etc.