If I have not been consciously concerned with a stylistic whole, I have been extremely conscious of Andersen’s use of poetic language in many of the later stories, and with his delightful sense of play and fun in his use of Danish. To this end I found Fritse Jacobsen’s H. C. Andersens ordspil (H. C. Andersen’s Puns; Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen Center for Translation, DAO 9, 2000) very useful. Unfortunately, it has not always been possible to convey Andersen’s jokes and puns, with specific Danish cultural references, successfully through English. In some cases I have compensated for this loss by adding a joke of my own or slightly twisting Andersen’s original (my favorites include giving the darning needle “the bends,” and the deliberate misspelling of “do” in the story “In the Duckyard”). In some cases I have found that the best English solutions for jokes and puns have already been discovered. Those familiar with earlier translations will hear echoes of Leyssac, Hersholt, Spink, Haugaard, and Keigwin in my work. Scholars of all disciplines build on the work of others, and there is no reason why translators should not appropriate best solutions. The goal, after all, is the most perfect possible rendering of Danish to English, and despite Viggo Pedersen’s attempts to find influence between translators by comparing short sentences or paragraphs, there really are a finite number of possible ways to translate a set Danish sentence to a corresponding English one.
Many people helped in one way or another with my work. I would like to acknowledge and thank Gracia Grindal, Dennis Omoe, Ole Stig Andersen, Kathie Crawford, Erik Horak-Hult, Michael Hult, Jeffrey Broesche at Fine Creative Media, and my entire email address book for responding to my English language usage survey. I am deeply grateful to Anne Hvam for her countless hours of work on the poetic sections of “The Galoshes of Fortune.” I am confident that “Mormors briller” has never been rendered as well in English. Finally, I am enormously indebted to Jack Zipes for his careful corrections, enlightening commentary, and valuable suggestions throughout the project, and not least for his observations on the art of translating. All remaining errors in the “many delightful stories in this book” are my own.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
September 28, 2005
Marte Hvam Hult holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian languages and literatures from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Framing a National Narrative: The Legend Collections of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, published by Wayne State University Press in 2003. She is working on a translation of Asbjørnsen’s Huldreeventyr.
THE ARTIST AND SOCIETY
THE NIGHTINGALE
OF COURSE YOU KNOW that in China the emperor is Chinese, and all the people around him are Chinese. It was many years ago, but just because of that, it’s worth while hearing the story before it’s forgotten! The emperor’s palace was the most splendid in the world, completely made of fine porcelain—so expensive, but so brittle, so fragile to touch that you had to be really careful. There were the most remarkable flowers in the garden, and to the most beautiful were tied silver bells so that you couldn’t walk by without noticing the flower. Everything was so artful in the emperor’s garden, and it was so big that even the gardener didn’t know where it ended. If you kept walking, you would enter the loveliest forest with high trees and deep lakes. The forest went right down to the deep, blue sea. Big ships sailed right under the branches, and in the branches lived a nightingale that sang so sweetly that even the poor fisherman, who had so much else to do while pulling up his nets, lay still and listened when he was out at night and heard the nightingale. “Dear God, how beautifully it sings,” he said, but then he had to pay attention to his task and forget the bird. But when it sang again the next night, and the fisherman was out again, he said the same: “Dear God, how beautifully it sings!”
Travelers came to the emperor’s city from all the countries of the world, and they were astounded by it alclass="underline" the palace and the garden, but when they heard the nightingale, they all said, “this is the best of all!”
And the travelers talked about the bird when they got home, and scholars wrote many books about the city, the palace, and the garden. But they didn’t forget the nightingale. It was placed at the very top of the wonders, and those who could write poetry wrote the most beautiful poems, all about the nightingale in the forest by the deep sea.
The books circulated around the world, and in the course of time one reached the emperor. He sat on his golden throne and read and read. He nodded his head constantly because he was pleased to hear the magnificent descriptions of the city, palace, and garden. “But the nightingale is the best of all!” it said in the book.
“What?!” said the emperor. “The nightingale! I don’t know anything about that bird at all! Is there such a bird in my kingdom, even here in my own garden? And I’ve never heard about it? I have to read about this?!”
And he called his chamberlain, who was so distinguished that when someone who was inferior to him dared to speak to him, or asked about something, he didn’t say anything but “P!” and it didn’t mean anything.
“There’s supposed to be a highly remarkable bird called a nightingale here,” said the emperor. “They say it’s the best thing in my entire kingdom! Why hasn’t anyone told me about it?”
“I’ve never before heard it mentioned,” said the chamberlain. “It’s never been presented at court.”
“I want it to come here this evening and sing for me,” said the emperor. “The whole world knows what I have, and I don’t know it myself!”
“I’ve never heard anything about it before,” said the chamberlain, “I’ll go find it.”
But where to find it? The chamberlain ran up and down all the steps, through the rooms and hallways. None of those he met had heard anything about the nightingale, and the chamberlain ran back to the emperor and said that it must have been a fable made up by those who wrote books. “Your royal majesty should not believe what is written! They are mostly made up, and something called black magic.”