Translation Fidgets
Fairy Tales. By Hans Christian Andersen. Vols. 1, 2 and 3, World Edition. (Edmund Ward, 12s. 6d. each.) Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. (Dent, 10s. 6d.) The True Book About Nelson. By Richard Houghton. (Muller, 8s. 6d.) More Strange People: The Early Hanoverians (1714-1760). By Philip Rush. (Hutchinson, 9s. 6d.) Gamble for a Throne. By Henry Garnett. (The Bodley Head, 12s. 6d.) The Borrowers. By Mary Norton. (Puffin Books, 2s. 6d.)
WHAT makes this bunch particularly interesting are the two new translations of Hans Andersen. He is a very difficult genius to catch in transla- tion, being apt to sound too jaunty and too pious. One has to be careful. The new World Edition is translated from the Danish (instead of from the German, as too often happens) by R. P. Keigwen. It comes from Denmark and has an introduction by Elias Bredsdorf, Lecturer in Danish at Cam- bridge University, in which all other translations are severely dealt with. (Surely the old Everyman was pretty good?) The pictures are taken from originals in the Odensee Museum. The other, Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, is translated by Reginald Spink and has pictures, not too good, by Hans Baumhauer. Now for some translation fidgets, always so fascinating. When Kay gets the ice splinter in his heart, Mr. Keigwen makes him say `Ow,' Mr. Spink 'Ooh' and old Everyman `Oh,' which I prefer. Mr. Keigwen gives Gerda's hymn like this : 'The valley glows with many a rose, and there we meet the Sacred Child,' which is rather flat; Mr. Spink gives a rhyme, which children like, but slips in just the hint of a brave new heresy : 'Then seek your Saviour down below. For roses in the valleys grow.' Old Every- man (1 must have him for fairness, these new men are so proud) says : 'Where roses deck the flowery vale, There, Infant Jesus, we thee hail,' which is very Hans Andersen in feeling besides providing our darlings with a pretty exercise in syntax. In that testing point for all translators-what the Emperor says about the nightingale in 'The Swine- herd'-Mr. Spink comes easily top with : 'It's more than pretty, it's nice' (Mr. Keigwen : 'It's more than pretty, it's handsome.' Old Everyman : `It's more than beautiful, it's neat'). But in 'The Tinder Box' Mr. Spink makes the old lady put on her `waders' to run after the princess. Mr. $ Keigwen's `overboots' seems better, for how can you run in waders, and does he mean Wellingtons or salmon-fishing boots? Which just shows how difficult it is. The great drawback with Mr. Spink is that, being confined to one volume and large- printed, he leaves many favourite stories out, notably The Marsh King's Daughter' (that beauty), 'The Wild Swans' and 'The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf.' Chiefly for its title, I miss 'A. Rose from Homer's Grave' from Mr. Keigwen's three volumes.
When horrors crop up, both translators are admirably unmufiling. The Little Mermaid has her full agonies-the sharp needles, the visit to the dreadful witch who has snakes climbing on `her spongy breast'; Elsie, in 'The Wild Swans,' must pick the nettles and keep silent, and pick them in the graveyard where the witches are dig- ging up the dead men to eat them; and loaf- treading proud Inger be punished . . . as Mr. Keigwen perfectly puts it : 'In this way Inger came to hell. People can't always go straight down but they can get there in a roundabout way if they have talent,' and "If it goes on much longer I shan't be able to bear it," she said; but she had to bear it and it still went on.' All the same, coming back to `The Snow Queen' again, why must he let Kay turn American and call the ice- flowers 'cunning' and why must he give our brats
bad grammar in 'The Wild Swans' and say 'in- stead of them getting their usual fill of cakes . . Yet his is the edition I like best because it gives us so much and the more you read of Andersen the more you want. It is a mood you sink into, with shadows across it of great suffering and great endurance, and the sweet sickly Christian feelings coming in that seem so Victorian, with stuffed chairs on the mind in close rooms with heavy curtains, and outside the snow and the rain the noble wretched poor . . . and always the laughter, the odd commonsensical laughter, that pats and slaps upon the infant hand. One can see little English children of the past reading these stories and getting creepy pleasures from then► and the notions (Christian, of course) of fortitude and nemesis. But it is not a mood of today and what our own children, both tougher and more pampered, make of it I do not know.
The True Book About Nelson gives such a fine picture of this greatest of sailors . . . going bravely to sea as a child of twelve with toothache and seasickness and homesickness, too, and grov• ing up to the hazards of wars and politics and the difficult loves. The battle scenes are good, and are helped with maps and diagrams, all the draw• ings are 'good, that of Lord St. Vincent really fine. More Strange People includes such famous, if not entirely edifying, eccentrics as Mary Read the female pirate, Hannah Snell the soldier, Peter 'the wild boy' brought up by animals, 'Frantic' Lord Ferrers and Bampfylde Moore Carew, King of the Gypsies, in brief account but lively. Gamble for a Throne is an exciting story of trying to get Cromwell out and Charles II in. The little ones will have to know the truth about the Stuarts one day. Lastly, The Borrowers, that classic of macabre invention, detailed to the last pin, open- ing for your lucky children a world between the floorboards, is now in Puffin Books. By Mary Norton (of course) and beautifully illustrated by Diana Stanley.
STEVIE SMITH
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