The translation of Marie Grubbe (a book which Brandes has called one of the greatest tours de force in Danish literature) was a task to be approached with diffidence. The author does not reconstruct exactly, in his dialogue, the language of the period; nor have I attempted it. Even had I been able to do so, the racy English of the Restoration would have been an alien medium for the flourishes and pomposities of Jacobsen’s Danish. On the other hand, it would clearly have been unfair to the author to turn his work into ordinary modern English and so destroy that stiff, rich fabric of curious, archaic words and phrases which he had been at such pains to weave. There seemed only one course open: to follow the original, imitating as far as possible its color and texture, even though the resultant language may not be of any particular time or place. The translation has been a task, but also a pleasure. To live intimately for months with Jacobsen’s style is to find beauty within beauty and truth within truth like “rose upon rose in flowering splendor.”
H. A. L.
New York, July 1, 1917.
MARIE GRUBBE
BY
JENS PETER JACOBSEN
To avoid confusion, care should be taken to distinguish between two characters in the book bearing similar names. Ulrik Frederik Gyldenlöve and Ulrik Christian Gyldenlöve.
MARIE GRUBBE
[CHAPTER I]
THE air beneath the linden crowns had flowed in across brown heath and parched meadow. It brought the heat of the sun and was laden with dust from the road, but in the cool, thick foliage it had been cleansed and freshened, while the yellow linden flowers had given it moisture and fragrance. In the blissful haven of the green vault it lay quivering in light waves, caressed by the softly stirring leaves and the flutter of white-gold butterfly wings.
The human lips that breathed this air were full and fresh; the bosom it swelled was young and slight. The bosom was slight, and the foot was slight, the waist small, the shape slim, and there was a certain lean strength about the whole figure. Nothing was luxuriant except the partly loosened hair of dull gold, from which the little dark blue cap had slipped until it hung on her back like a tiny cowl. Otherwise there was no suggestion of the convent in her dress. A wide, square-cut collar was turned down over a frock of lavender homespun, and from its short, slashed sleeves billowed ruffles of fine holland. A bow of red ribbon was on her breast, and her shoes had red rosettes.
Her hands behind her back, her head bent forward, she went slowly up the path, picking her steps daintily. She did not walk in a straight line, but meandered, sometimes almost running into a tree at her left, then again seeming on the point of strolling out among the bushes to her right. Now and then, she would stop, shake the hair from her cheeks, and look up to the light. The softened glow gave her child-white face a faint golden sheen and made the blue shadows under the eyes less marked. The scarlet of her lips deepened to red-brown, and the great blue eyes seemed almost black. She was lovely—lovely!—a straight forehead, faintly arched nose, short, clean-cut upper lip, a strong, round chin and finely curved cheeks, tiny ears, and delicately pencilled eyebrows....