by Sandy McIntosh
Translation is too difficult.
We don't expect our American tourists to speak Norwegian so we learn English.
One language can do violence to the other. Pick its pocket, so to speak.
For instance, Oslo gets many meters of snowfall. Knut Hamsun, in Hunger, has his character sleeping in the snowed-in streets of Kristiania. (Oslo used to be Kristiania in 1899.) Hamsun knew those streets. But then your Robert Bly comes along with his egregious English translation and messes up the map so that it neither resembles Kristiania nor Oslo. A tourist could get lost in the snow and die following Bly's map!
Knut Hamsun was our breakthrough novelist and maybe deserves more respect, though he was often down and out.
Henrik Ibsen was our breakthrough dramatist--hardly down and out!--but you wouldn't know it from the English translations. For instance, in Ghosts, Mrs. Alving refers to her husband lying around reading "bank journals," which doesn't make any sense in English.
But Norwegians know instantly that "bank journals" really means "Pornography."
Ibsen drank and dined at the Cafe every night. His dinner was always an open sandwich, beer and schnapps. And often a pjolter, which is our word for Whisky and Soda. And he could get drunk.
Hamsun and Ibsen lived here in Kristiania at the same time, and I think they met only once, poverty and wealth being discrete languages.
One night Ibsen was too drunk to sit. He insulted the waiters and we had to translate him into the street. Hamsun was down and out, living in a wooden box outside the Cafe. Ibsen landed next to him and decided to take a little nap. Then you could see Hamsun's arm reach out of the box and pick Ibsen's pocket!
Then Hamsun translated himself into the Cafe and ordered a splendid supper!
Kunut Hamusun
Robert Bly
Henrik Ibsen
Kunut Hamusun
Robert Bly
Henrik Ibsen
