THE AMERIC AN-SC AN DIN AVI AN REVIEW 
687 
Books 
A Booh of Danish Verse. Translated in the 
Original Metres by S. Foster Damon and 
Robert Silliman Hillyer. Selected and 
Annotated by Oluf Friis. Scandinavian 
Classics, Volume XIX. New York: The 
American-Scandinavian Foundation. 1922 . 
After the first reading of this volume the 
sensitive reader feels that the motto of the 
book ought to be: Infinite riches in a little 
room. Even the amateur in the Danish 
language, he who does not know it academ¬ 
ically, but who knows Denmark and the at¬ 
mosphere of Denmark, must feel a thrill when 
he finds this book before him. He has prob¬ 
ably heard many times in Danish Roses 
Proudly Glow in Dana’s Bowers, and he has 
tasted the flavor of it, and fondly believed 
that it was as difficult to put the lilt of it into 
English as it is to translate adequately 
Goethe’s Kenst du das Land wo die Citronen 
Bliihn, and here is Adam Oehlenschlager’s 
There Is a Charming Land carried into 
English with that special rhythmic effect 
which it once seemed impossible to imitate. 
When one realizes the sympathy and skill 
of these translators—or rather, poetic in¬ 
terpreters—one regrets that they have not 
attempted to put into English that delightfully 
melodic operetta of Drachmann’s, Once Upon 
a Time. 
Leaving the older poets, one naturally turns 
to Drachmann—the greatest of all lyric poets 
in a country of lyric poets—to Johannes V. 
Jensen, and to Johannes Jorgensen, as tests 
of the technique of the translators. We are 
grateful to them for giving us Jensen’s 
Columbus, a poem in which he withdrew no 
allegiance to Leif the Red, but in which he 
represented the noble attitude of a great soul, 
scorned and betrayed. But the rendering of 
Columbus is easy compared with the arduous 
work needed to make Jorgensen’s Autumn 
Dream or Drachmann’s Sahuntala appealing 
and convincing. 
Let us take The Sleeper by Emil Aare- 
strup. It is a pastel; a careless brush of the 
finger would spoil all the beauty; but S. F. D. 
has given it to us complete and almost per¬ 
fect. 
Take again the simplicity of Christ’s Man¬ 
hood by Oehlensclager: 
“I know not where thou art , 
Where hast thou gone, dear child. 
Thou who from earth’s young heart 
Hast looked to Heaven and smiled? 
Ah, in the scorched field 
I search for thee in vain, 
But in the woods concealed, 
I find thee once again.” 
The interpretation of Hauch’s Ballads, 
hitherto only known by mere snatches in 
English, should be of interest to many readers. 
They are done with unusual spirit and force. 
The objection may be made that the selec¬ 
tions from Bishop Grundtvig might have been 
more numerous, that they are scarcely in¬ 
dicative enough of the poetic utterances of 
this greatly distinguished patriot; but this 
objection will probably be made by the Dane 
familiar with his sacred poetry; and this 
volume might easily be overfilled with hymns, 
many of them medieval paraphrases much 
better done by other writers. The weird The 
Harrowing of Hell is included. It shows the 
almost fierce simplicity and directness of the 
faith of this fervent clergyman. By the way, 
it might be asked why do the translators pre¬ 
fer to use “Dana” instead of “Dania”? 
The first satisfactory translation of Poul 
Moller’s The Master Among the Rioters is 
given us by S. F. D. This book would lack 
much if it did not include Christian Winther’s 
Fly, Bird, Fly, which is a little masterpiece, 
and which it is hard to divorce from memories 
of Peter Cornelius’ singing of it. 
“Fly, bird, fly over Furresoen’s billows; 
Twilight is gathering grey. 
Palely the light in the waterside willows 
Slants to the westward aivay. 
Winds in the darkening forest are warning 
Younglings and mate of the night; 
Fly to them now, but come back in the 
morning, 
Tell what you saw in your flight.” 
A careful analysis of these translations, in 
comparison with some of the famous originals 
at hand, shows small faults of exactitude, but 
these defects are almost negligible in view of 
the difficulty of the task; and when one be¬ 
comes accustomed to the regular beat of Dan¬ 
ish verse—so strong, yet never monotonous— 
like the quick strikes of a war-drum or the 
softer beats of a tambourine, one occasionally 
misses something of the Danish rhythm which 
cannot be reproduced in any other language 
in its fullness, but which these translators 
have marvelously imitated. It is a veritable 
triumph; for the true translator or interpreter 
