30 Poems by Tarjei Vesaas; Kenneth G.

Chapman
Review by: Luther Askeland
Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 45, No. 1 (WINTER, 1973), pp. 81-83
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Society for the Advancement of
Scandinavian Study
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 Reviews 81

Vesaas, Tarjei. 30 Poems. Selected and translated by Kenneth G. Chapman.

Universitétsforlaget,Oslo-Bergen-Tromsö,1971. Pp. 71. Paper.
This volume of facing nynorskand English texts opens with a poem from
Kjeldene (1946), Vesaas' firstpublishedcollection,and then followshis career as a
poet up to and includingthe posthumousLiv ved Straumen (1970). The poems are
precededby a briefessay by ProfessorChapman on Vesaas as a poet. The format
of the book is pleasing,and many readerswill appreciateits bilingualpresentation.
No accolades, on the other hand, are due the binder. As I begin writing this
review,my copy is already in the process of fallingapart. Soon, undoubtedly,it
will resemblean ungovernablepack of cards.
Vesaas' evident translatabilityderives fromhis unstrainedvocabulary and his
characteristicchoice of the simple, direct utterance and the concrete,immediate
image. When these qualities dominate,the poetrycan be rendered,virtuallyintact,
in English. Faced with a stanza such as "Dine kne og mine/og den varme mosen./
Og dei unge âr.," for instance, the translatorinto English will experience few
qualms or hesitations. This is the case with numerous passages in the present
volume. As a result there are even entirepoems- "Tr0ytt tre," "Fridd," "Innby-
ing," "Dine kne og mine"- which retain almost all of the original in Professor
Chapman's translations.
Difficultiesinevitablyarise from the fact, however,that Vesaas' poetic voice
grows fromand extendsthe precisemodalitiesof his language's spoken, colloquial,
non-literaryforms. He can be much more successfulthan would an Americanpoet,
for instance,in employingcommon idiom as the bearer of intensifiedemotion:
"heile heile tida," "og kjenne sa det fer i ein," "slikt str0ymandeav godt." Here
the English translatormay be forced to choose between a dead poetic cliché
(Chapman's "Forever, ever more"), a suspect colloquializing banality ("to feel
with a thrill"), or a marrowlessaestheticism("such streamingof sweet"). Certain
importantand characteristicconstructions - "Det ror og ror" and "Det syg frâ
osen"- are also very difficult. Chapman's "There is the sound of rowing" and
"There is a pulling fromthe mouth of the river" could at least be improved, I
believe, in the directionof compactness,but we would never have the original
intact.
In addition to these unavoidable discrepancies,however, there are numerous
otherswhich I thinkcould have been avoided. They derive froma too frequently
observable tendencyto rewritethe texts in a way which diminishestheir poetic
forceand value, so that the reader who has littleor no Norwegianwill be unneces-
sarily frustratedin his attemptto discoverVesaas the poet. In traditionalmetrical
verse the poet oftenachieves his effectthroughthe tensionhe establishesbetween
his actual rhythmsand the conventionalaccentual pattern. Similarly,Vesaas, like
othermodernpoets,is oftenat his best when his words,phrases,images,and syntax
disruptconventionand frustrateexpectation,thoughhe seldom does this drastically
or inexplicably.The firstobservable consequence of this is that he becomes more
difficultto read and comprehendthan, for example, a newspaper. The more
importantand enduringresult,however,is that he is able to say more economically

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82 Scandinavian Studies

and effectivelywhat he wanted to say, and that the language is recreated and
enriched. This central aspect of Vesaas' poetic achievement,where he is being
most creative and most trulya poet in his use of language, is often unnecessarily
concealed in Professor Chapman's translations. There is a marked tendency
throughoutthe volume to make the implicitexplicit,to elongate and so let the
steam out of what is poetically concentrated,to conventionalizethe deliberately
unconventional,to deformthe compact,emotion-ladenutterancein the directionof
dry registrationof fact or sense data, to simplifythe richly ambiguous, not to
translate,but to gloss. The poems, as a result,are modifiedin the directionof the
easy and one-dimensional;they possess a surface claritythe original often lacks,
but much of the poetryhas unnecessarilybeen lost.
This tendencyoftenmanifestsitselfon the level of the single word or phrase.
"Bylgjer . . . kringvakre kne" is not translated,but glossed and conventionalized
as "waves . . . lapping at beautifulknees." The new and invigorating"nattgras"
is weakened, unnecessarily,to "night-wetgrass." "Lygna kringkrigen" is glossed
"The lie about the glory of war"; here the willed ambiguityand totality of the
originalis effacedand the use of "glory" dates the phrase in a way which rendersit
strangelyirrelevantto the holocaustsof the atomic age of which Vesaas is speaking.
Of the victimsof Hiroshima who became steam and mist in the "rising milewide
veil," Vesaas writes with unexpected, forcefulliteralness,"dei var i det." The
translation,however,is abstract and conventional: "they were part of it."
Strikingand central images are sometimesconventionalizedand diluted, and
their poetic effect diminished,in a similar manner. The bold "steinskallane i
stranda" in D0d sj0 becomes "boulders stickingup along the shore," and it is only
laterin the translationthat theyare referredto as heads, not skulls. In Innskriftene
the unexpectedand forceful"innskrifter som det er eld i" becomes the familiar"in-
scriptionswrittenin fire." In Stül er yta ProfessorChapman translatesthe impor-
tant lines "Menneske dregst till menneske/i eldhunger over tusen mil" with
"People are drawn to people by a hunger for fire across thousands of miles."
The unfamiliarand difficultcompoundis ambiguous and poeticallyrich,suggesting
not only hungerfor fire,but the hunger of the fire which burns under the calm
surface of men for contact or union with the "fires" of others. (Thus Vesaas
speaks in the poem's final line of "eldars ville m0te," incorrectlytranslatedas "the
fire's wild meeting.") Vesaas concentratesthis hunger of fire for fire into one
complex and ambiguous term,and this could be closely approximatedin English
with the equally new, difficult,and suggestive"fire-hunger."Instead, Professor
Chapman gives the line an easy, one-dimensional,clear surface,but the resonance
of the image and a centralelementof the poem's conceptionare lost.
The same tendencyalso obscuresVesaas' masterlyuse of language to create a
vivid and precise sense of significantsituation or process. In Det var eingong- a
bird comes to the birch, which has been made giddy by the May wind, and
mysteriouslyintimatesthe birch's impendingtransformation:"Ein fugi kom sette
seg/pâ naken kvist/og sa det var no- ." A directtranslationwould give quite fully
the quick last line's sense of uncertainty,of mystery,of almost everythingbeing

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 Reviews 83

leftunsaid, of ecstaticanticipationof a miracle. In the translation,however,con-

ventionalizationand unnecessaryelongation of the line allow much of its impact
to evaporate: "A bird came and settled/on a naked branch/ and said the time
had come- ." In the last stanza of / ansvars naud, "Tr0ytt/kj0ler du panna/ og
ma i kamp." the final line suggestswith perfectprecision the still immobile du's
recognitionthat he must take up an unwanted,possibly unbearable burden. This,
too, could be translatedquite directly.ProfessorChapman's "Weary/ you cool your
brow/ and prepare for battle." releases this tension-riddenimmobilityinto action
and dissolves the poem's basic mood.
Finally,the effectof Vesaas' poetrysometimeshinges on the disruptionof the
conventionalrules of grammar. In Snp og granskogthe fourthstanza begins with
the line, "Og har i oss ein lovnad," with the subject understood from the third
stanza in spite of the fact that that stanza ends with a full stop. Vesaas does this
in order to achieve an unanticipatedsense of continuityand accumulation. But
ProfessorChapman correctshim,introducingthe fourthstanza with a self-contained
"grammatical"sentencewhich dispersesthe desired effect. Even more effectively,
the lines "Men det som bind/ bind,/er den trassigevona/ pâ omslag:" in Dpd Sj0
give expressionto the poem's implacable"trassigevona" by theirdetermined,resist-
ance-breakingretentionof the understoodgrammaticalsubject throughthe stop.
This defianceof grammaris not renderedin the translation,and the perfectmir-
roringof theme in language is unnecessarilylost.
Of the examples I have given, some are crucial to the underlyingmood or
conceptionof a poem, othersare not. All of them,however,are illustrationsof a
basic and pervasive tendencyto rewritethe poems in a way which unnecessarily
lessens them. For this reason Vesaas' poetryhas not been as successfullyrendered
in English in this volume as would have been possible.

Luther Askeland
Universityof Minnesota

Johnson,Eyvind. 1914. Translated fromthe Swedish by Mary Sandbach. Adam

Books (28, Emperors Gate, London, S. W. 7), 1970, Pp. 127. 21 s.

When Nu var det 1914 appeared in November, 1934, the major critics (as can
also be seen from20 romanerbedömda av samtida, edited by Karl Erik Rosengren
and Jan Thavenius, Lund, 1967) were generous with praise. Holger Ahlenius in
MT, Nov. 14, called the book "an unusual and really importantwork of art," and
TorstenFogelqvistclaimedthat Nu var det 1914 was artistically"a resoluteadvance
in the author's production." (DN, Nov. 29, 1934). Anders österling wrote in
Sv. D.j Nov. 17, that the book "beyond a doubt is one of the young literature's
most genuine works and would have prospectsof standingthe test of time, after
most of the marketableliterarycommoditieshave been swept aside withoutleaving
any trace whatsoever." Writingof the chapteron the brickworksösterlingfeltthat
"one cannot get closer to the immediateexperience: the suggestionis complete."

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