The Songs of Ensign Stål/Introduction

The kindly reception by the Swedish literati of the writer's English translation of Tegnér's Frithiof's Saga (1910), followed by many requests that he turn his efforts to another equally renowned Northern work, has at length induced him to make the attempt,—the outcome being the first complete English translation of Runeberg's Fänrik Ståls Sägner.

As there exists practically no literature in our language pertaining either to the Finnish war of 1808–9 or to this great Swedish-Finnish work setting forth its battles, its episodes and its characters in song, this skaldic cycle is unknown and unread here except by Finns and Scandinavians.

Of Frithiof's Saga there have been fourteen English and American interpreters; of Fänrik Ståls Sägner, none. A few detached cantos only have been reproduced; and Isabel Donner has produced "A Selection from the Series of Poems Entitled Ensign Stål's Songs"—17 of the 35 cantos—in English, which was published by G. W. Edlund, Helsingfors, 1907, with an introduction translated from the author's Swedish manuscript, and with explanatory notes.

As Frithiof's Saga is the national Epic of Sweden, so The Songs of Ensign Stål (Fänrik Ståls Sägner) form the National Military Song-Cycle of Finland. Its original edition appeared at Borgå and Helsingfors, December 1848.

​Its author is the renowned Finnish poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877), and its vehicle is the Swedish language, employed for long as the literary language of Finland. Such it continued to be until 1835, when Lönnrot brought out the epic, Kalevala, in Finnish, at once and permanently creating for it a literary audience in Finland, "the land of a thousand lakes," now rich in periodicals and literature in its own language. Here dwelt also Topelius, Tavaststjerna, and other celebrated poets whose writings were almost entirely in Swedish.

Runeberg was in 1831 Lecturer on Roman Literature in Helsingfors University. In 1837 he accepted the chair of Latin in Borgå College, there residing during the remainder of his life, and from 1847 to 1850 being Rector of the college. His only journey out of his native land was a brief visit to Sweden in 1851.

He was content to read of foreign lands without visiting them. His nature exemplified the dictum of Longfellow, "To stay at home is best." The globe-trotter becomes too cosmopolitan to experience an unmixed devotion to his native land. A wanderer could not have written Vårt Land, the first canto of the Fänrik Stål cycle. Only a portion of its native soil adheres to the roots of a transplanted tree. Perhaps the Northlander longest retains the home-longing in distant realms where strange stars float over the heavens; but Runeberg must have spent his life in the North to have penned so powerfully the patriotic poems that bind in one the hearts of the Finnish and Swedish nations.

Tegnér, in Frithiof's Saga, made the High-priest once say:

​And Horatius, long ago, portrayed the comsummation of the wanderer's repose when at last at last from long and weary years of pilgrimage, he returns to his childhood's home, once more "to rest upon the longed-for couch."

Runeberg did more than to return to his own land,-he did not leave it.

While the twenty-four Cantos of Frithiof's Saga, each in its own metrical and strophic form, constitute a connected hero-song, the thirty-five cantos of the present work are wholly detached, each complete in itself, and delineative of episodes having no connection, except incidentally, with each other. It would be difficult to weave so many characters into one Romance.

These portrayals of heroic exploits and martial scenes in the war of 1808-9 between Sweden and Russia (in which the latter country wrested Finland from the former), are strikingly projective of northern ideals, and have long inspired the national heart with patriotic fire.

While a few of the personages described are fictitious creations of Runeberg, they each yet represent concepts of Finland's military life and valor, and as substrata for the projection of heroic attributes must be of equal value with the historic characters.

All poems are great as they speak to our own hearts. This is perhaps a poem's apology for existence. It seems to me Runeberg's Sägner are tangent at enough points to the world-thought to bridge over the chasms of language, race, time and place, and show that heroism, chivalry, codes of honor, depth of thoughts and feelings,—are international and universal. His characters radiate the atmosphere of living subjects, and with them he makes us acquainted.

​Runeberg is the interpreter of Finland's ideals, its racial qualities, and its traditions of heroism; but in this very office he becomes cosmopolitan. In painting northern moods, he paints moods that abide. In portraying past valor, he portrays also the valor of the present times. Sometimes he sets forth what we have not been able to say, but deeply feel when it is said; for therein we constantly find ourselves. He has removed the barriers of education, view-point and heredity, and thus has helped produce world-literature. In Finnish heroism we perceive all heroism. Like the Knights of Arthur, each hero for the time transcends every other. We must reverence his lance. We must regard his cause as just, we must recognize his enemy as unjust and worthy of death. When he kills his foe, we must believe it was the will of Heaven; if he himself falls, it was the temporary triumph of Hell.

Runeberg is mighty in his charming simplicity. Always the simplest words prevail. The labor of translating is thus greatly augmented. Rather than elaborate, he even repeats the same monosyllabic word or words-the same plain thought. No mental exhaustion results from the attempt to enucleate his meaning. No interminable periods exasperate the reader's patience.

In the greater number of the cantos there is required no preparatory study on the part of the reader. The great common mind understands them at once,-whether they be comedies or tragedies,-whether they are set forth in the lyric or epic strain. And freedom from frothy verbiage is imperative, if one would portray the national Finnish character in its blunt simplicity, its silent calmness, its laconic and sententious utterances,-as set forth vividly in the picture of Munter in the elegiac Canto Twenty Eighth.

​And the startling originality of the poet parallels his directness and artlessness. Invention is one of his striking attributes.

Like Tegnér, Runeberg is a master of versification. As in Frithiof's Saga, so each Canto of Fänrik Ståls Sägner stands before us in a strophic form unlike that of any other canto. This ever-varied stanza-scheme would of itself forefend against monotony; but each mold seems specially fitted to its subject. Some of these stanzaic forms are borrowed from the English ballad; but our poet was quick to perceive in other literatures the forms that best serve his purpose here. His apprehension of poetic beauty and metrical fitness was clear and keen. Many of the numbers are designed for music, and have received melodic settings, as will be noticed en passant. All the cantos except the third (The Cloud's Brother) are strophic. Nine of the 35 cantos are iambic.

In multitudes of versified products we might question the appropriateness of a metrical treatment at all. In all languages a large percentage of subjects possessing no inherent poetic quality would have been better set forth in prose. Except that Songs must be metrical, this remark would perhaps in a few cases apply to the Runeberg work, -for example in Cantos Eighth, Tenth, Sixteenth, Twenty-Sixth and Thirtieth, where only a minimum of poetic imagery inheres in the subject itself; but the same is true of much of Dryden, Wordsworth, Pope, Cowper, occasionally of Longfellow, rarely of Tennyson,—almost never of Poe. Yet in defense of the stanza-form of writing, we must recognize wherein lie its powers. Meter, versification, regularity of form, order, the banishment of chaos, ​the elimination of confusion, the establishment of law,all are potent. Even in prose there must be an approximate rhythm, a more or less regular recurrence of accent. Very unrhythmic prose is annoying, disturbing, offensive.

There is a charm per se in ictus, in the ear-satisfaction that results from equal-timed pulsations, in the pleasure of constantly finding something where we expected it, and in a promise fulfilled,—the promise of the evenly recurring accent.

The poet chooses this pulse as does the mouth-pipe of a great organ, which converts an irregular series of airdisturbances or pulsations into its own proper and appropriate tone; - or as a stone-mason out of a heterogeneous heap of stones constructs a cemented wall of regular and artistic proportions.

The quality of satisfying this almost universal rhythmic sense, carrying us along with its currents of measured motion, can therefore be claimed by all verse, even if sometimes unpoetic in imagery; and with the incorporation of rhyme, alliteration, consonance, assonance, and other artifices, the metrical form constitutes for pure poetic thought the most beautiful vesture.

By these processes, and his innate perception of truth and beauty, Runeberg seems to have discovered and set forth for ear and thought every poetic element lying latent within his subjects, often surprisingly infusing it even into his character-portrayals.

But many of the Sägner are highly poetic in matter and loftily classic in treatment. In Canto Third, The Cloud's Brother, we constantly discern the Homeric and Virgilian touch. Elaborate in its finesse, and stately in its development, ​its similes are the re-incarnation of the long slumbering Southern epic, and speak to us over the chasm of thousands of years. An excerpt from this Canto will exemplify:

Let us collate this simile with the following from Dryden's Aeneid, Lib. X:

And with another from Chapman's Iliad, Lib. XI:

Again with a third simile from Pope's Odyssey, Lib. X:

Were the metrical vehicles identical in the Runeberg Canto and the three classical quotations given, how easily one could imagine the four to be excerpts from one and the same epic! And had the translators of the classics employed the better meter, the trochaic pentameter of this canto of Runeberg, instead of the iambic pentameter (the customary but inadequate metrical vehicle of the great epics), they would, though with greatly augmented labor, have approached much nearer to the effect of the original spondaic and dactylic hexameter, since at least the traditional accent then would have been retained on the initial syllable of each poetic foot. The Runeberg meter affords a much closer parallel than theirs to the classic form, although both lack the dactyls.

But what our Poet borrowed he made thoroughly his own. Not for a moment is his individuality lost in these Virgilian and Homeric moulds. When he employs them, it is because no others would be so appropriate.

Frequent touches of classicism and sublimity appear throughout the cycle. Sveaborg, Döbeln at Juutas, The Ensign's Greeting, and Adlercreutz, all move with lofty tone and majestic tread.

And where can purer lyricism, deeper sensibility, or more sincere emotion be found than in The Cottage Maiden, The Dying Warrior, The Soldier Boy, The Stranger's Vision, or The Brothers? And what poet of any nation or time has portrayed martial characters and scenes more vividly than Runeberg in the songs ​not specifically mentioned? And where, in all literature, has a mightier love for native land been pictured than in Our Land and The Fifth of July? Or a more admirable tribute awarded to military prowess than in Kulneff, Munter, or Wilhelm von Schwerin?

Runeberg's language is so simple (often monosyllabic) that a corresponding simplicity in translation often becomes incompatible with the demands of rhythm and rhyme; and to this consideration must be added the fact that many of the songs embody localisms and expressions pertaining to certain stations in life, where the lofty epic style, which must be maintained thoughout Frithiof's Saga, would not here be at all in keeping. And as our English two-syllable rhymes are so sparse, a true translation of a poem like Munter, where every line must end with such a rhyme, becomes possible only in so far as our language will permit it; for if the English rhymes exist, they need not escape the translator; and if they do not exist, he must not be censured. Nor must he be confined to Anglo-Saxon derivatives, since all our derivatives are Anglicized, and all are so imperatively required in his task. As the difficulty of translation always lies at this end of the line,—in the language into which the original is to be brought over,—translations are therefore no more difficult from one language than from another. A Swedish poem is as translatable into English as a German or French poem is,―no more so, no less so. Yet we constantly hear the dictum that "Swedish cannot be rendered in English."

If the original words have representatives as poetical in the new language as in the old, the translation should be as good; if less poetical, it would not be so good; if more ​poetical, which may sometimes be the case, a literal reproduction might excel the original. This might happen without other credit than literality to the translator. One can readily see how a literal translation of a certain particular line from any language to another could surpass the original. Should these language-conditions, then, be charged to the translator? A good translation of some lines might be far easier than an inferior translation of other lines. To ferry some lines across the Stygian language gulf in the English skiff without capsizing, might prove an enigma to the skillful Charon himself.

In comparing a translation with its original, when we have from earliest childhood had the original sounding in our ears, we are not quite prepared to listen to the reproduction of it in the new tongue.

We are constantly awaiting a recurrence of the vowel sounds of the original, especially in the rhyming syllables; we are almost as constantly expecting the same consonant sound at the corresponding point in a line. And we are constantly disappointed. We are subconsciously unwilling to let a new series of oral elements or processes carry the poem. We resent the intrusive accents of a strange voice. We cannot quite tolerate the sacrifice of the familiar vowel and consonant succession; for poetry is to us a matter of sound as well as of thought, and of course a translated poem cannot sound like the original. A man does not look natural when clad in a totally different garb, though to one who sees him for the first time in this garb, there appears nothing strange about him. In order impartially to estimate a poem in a new tongue, all remembrance of the vowel-consonant successions of the old would have to be forced out of memory-an extremely difficult and practically ​impossible process. For if this succession is not new, then the poem would still be in the original language, I believe.

As to whether a poem is a good literary and poetic product in the new language, one who knows it in the original is, caeteris paribus, predisposed to judge it adversely, since he cannot divest his ear of the sound of the old; it still lingers; the old-time impression holds; continual disappointment supervenes;—but as to whether it is a correct reproduction of the original, he and he alone is prepared to determine. So I trust the Swedish scholars will extend to this offering due indulgence on these various points.

The desire of the translator in this effort, as in the case ot Tegnér's Frithiof's Saga, of Wallin's Dödens Ängel, and of The Lyric Poetry of Sweden, is to contribute toward bringing over into our language some of the wonderful poetic literature of the North.

In conclusion I wish to thank Mr. Ernst Skarstedt, Mr. Oliver A. Linder, Dr. Peter Froeberg, Prof. Frans Ericson, Rev. S. G. Hägglund and Rev. L. F. Nordstrom, for valuable suggestions given during the preparation of this work.

New York, January 1924.