THE KALEVIPOEG
In the year 1838 some Esthonian scholars founded a society called " Die gelehrte Ehstnische Gesellschaft, " and set themselves to collect the popular literature of their country. Doubtless encouraged by the recent publication of the Kalevala in Finland, Dr. Fählmann undertook specially to collect any fragments of verse or prose relative to the mythical hero of Esthonia, the son of Kalev, intending to weave them into a connected whole. He did not live to complete the work; but after his death Dr. Kreutzwald carried out his design, and the book was published, accompanied by a German translation by Reinthal and Bertram, from 1857 to 1861.
The materials were defective, and were augmented and pieced together, not always very successfully or artistically, [1] by Dr. Kreutzwald, and the story is interrupted by long lyrical passages, especially at the beginning of some of the cantos, which are tedious and out of place in a narrative poem. Consequently, a complete translation would hardly be sufficiently attractive; but there is so much that is curious and beautiful in the poem, that I think that a tolerably full prose abstract may perhaps be found both useful and interesting, as opening up an almost new subject to English readers.
Besides Reinthal's translation, there are two condensed abstracts of the poem in German, one by C. C. Israel, in prose, published in 1873, and the other by Julius Grosse, in hexameters, published in 1875.
But while the Kalevala has been translated into six or seven languages, and into several of them two or three times, extremely little has been published on the Kalevipoeg outside of Esthonia and Finland.
The metre is the eight-syllable trochaic, which is the commonest metre used by the Esthonians and Finns. In the Kalevipoeg the verse usually flows continuously, while in the Kalevala it is arranged in distichs, almost every second line being a repetition of the first in other words; nor is the Kalevipoeg quite so full of alliteration as the Kalevala.
Longfellow adapted this metre in his Hiawatha from Schiefner's German translation of the Kalevala, and as it was then a novelty in English, it was set down at the time as Longfellow's own invention, and was much ridiculed. A similar metre, however, was used before the appearance of Hiawatha in some parts of Kenealy's Goethe, which was published in 1850, and subsequently condensed and completed under the title of "A New Pantomime." I quote a passage from this wonderful but eccentric poem ( Goethe, p. 301) to show the manner in which Kenealy has used it in the lighter parts of his work; but in some of the darker passages it shows itself as a versatile metre of great power in English: —
"We have come, enchanting ladyes,
To sojourn awhile, and revel
In these bowers, far outshining
The six heavens of Mohammed,
Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu,
Or the Gardens of Adonis,
Or the viewless bowers of Irim,
Or the fine Mosaic mythus,
Or the fair Elysian flower-land,
Or the clashing halls of Odin,
Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma,
Or the marble realms of Siva,
Or the grandly proud Walhalla."
I do not find this metre used in either of the two cognate poems, Faust and Festus.
To return to the Kalevipoeg, the poem consists of twenty cantos and about 19,000 verses. Some of the legends are found also in the Kalevala, and the giant-hero whose life and adventures form its subject is evidently the same as the Kullervo of the Kalevala, as will be seen in our notes on various passages in the poem.
Of the other heroes of the Kalevala, besides an occasional reference to Vanemuine and Ilmarine (Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen), we find no trace; but three heroes, apparently cousins of the Kalevipoeg, appear suddenly in the poem. These are usually called by their patronymics, Alevide, Sulevide, and Olevide, but sometimes simply Alev, Sulev, and Olev.