Sc. 2) the phrase
"bend you to remain" is rendered by the categorical "se til at bli
herhjemme," which is at least misleading. Little inaccuracies of this
sort are not infrequent.

But, after all, a translator with a new variorum and a wealth of
critical material at hand cannot go far wrong in point of mere
translation. The chief indictment to be made against Blom's translation
is its prosiness, its prosy, involved sentences, its banality. What in
Shakespeare is easy and mellifluous often becomes in Blom so vague that
its meaning has to be discovered by a reference to the original.

We gave, some pages back, Ivar Aasen's translation of Hamlet's
soliloquy. The interesting thing about that translation is not only that
it is the first one in Norwegian but that it was made into a new dialect
by the creator of that dialect himself. When we look back and consider
what Aasen had to do--first, make a literary medium, and then pour into
the still rigid and inelastic forms of that language the subtlest
thinking of a great world literature--we gain a new respect for his
genius. Fifty years later Blom tried his hand at the same soliloquy. He
was working in an old and tried literary medium--Dano-Norwegian. But he
was unequal to the task:

At vaere eller ikke vaere, det
problemet er: Om det er storre av
en sjael at taale skjaebnens pil og slynge
end ta til vaaben mot et hav av plager
og ende dem i kamp? At do,--at sove,
ei mer; og tro, at ved en sovn vi ender
vor hjerteve og livets tusen stot,
som kjod er arving til--det maal for livet
maa onskes inderlig. At do,--at sove--
at sove!--Kanske dromme! Der er knuten;
for hvad i dodsens sovn vi monne dromme,
naar livets laenke vi har viklet av,
det holder os igjen; det er det hensyn,
som gir vor jammer her saa langt et liv' etc.

K

Much more interesting than Blom's attempt, and much more significant,
is a translation and working over of _As You Like It_ which appeared
in November of the same year. The circumstances under which this
translation were made are interesting. Fru Johanne Dybwad, one of the
"stars" at the National Theater was completing her twenty-fifth year
of service on the stage, and the theater wished to commemorate the event
in a manner worthy of the actress. For the gala performance, Herman
Wildenvey, a poet of the young Norway, made a new translation and
adaptation of _As You Like It_.[38] And no choice could have been more
felic