Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/Preface and Acknowledgements
Preface and Acknowledgements.
This volume contains about one-fourth of the material in Heidenstam's three volumes: Vallfart och Vandringsår, 1888; Dikter, 1895; and Nya Dikter, 1915—all published by Albert Bonnier, Stockholm. The translations are published with the personal approval and consent of Herr von Heidenstam.
The translator hereby extends his thanks to the proprietors of the following publications for their courteous permission to reproduce such poems or critical material as first appeared in their pages: Harper's Monthly Magazine, The Independent, New York Nation, Bookman, Stratford Journal, Poetry Journal, Pagan, Contemporary Verse, and Youth.
More particular thanks is due to the American-Scandinavian Foundation for the use of poems which appeared in my Anthology of Swedish Lyrics and in the American-Scandinavian Review. To the Foundation I am also indebted for a plebiscite conducted through the Stockholm Dagblad, to which several hundred readers sent the titles of their favorite poems. From this contest Heidenstam emerged in a tie for second place with Axel Erik Karlfeldt, another living poet. First place fell to Gustaf Fröding, of whose selected poems I have already brought out a volume. As, however, Fröding's charm lies so peculiarly in the verbal magic of the Swedish, I believe that it is possible to give readers of English a somewhat better account of Heidenstam, who depends more equally on form and substance. The favorite single poem in the plebiscite was the Pilgrim's Yule Song here published for the first time in translation. The Dagblad's list was of great assistance in making the selections for this volume. In details of the work I have been ably assisted by the revision of the reader of the Yale University Press. Mrs. A. B. Fries and Mr. Edwin Björkman have also helped with knotty passages. In the Introduction I have made use of material in an article by Miss Hanna A. Larson in the New York Evening Mail for Feb. 16, 1918.
No liberties have been taken with the original text except that I have furnished separate titles to the "Thoughts in Loneliness" so as to assist the reader in reference. The order of the poems is the same as in the Swedish, except that the "Thoughts in Loneliness" have been shifted from before "The Happy Artists" to the end of the selections from Pilgrimages. The metres and rhyme-schemes are followed carefully, except in a few minor instances. Although I have endeavored primarily to make my translations good English poetry, with no suggestion that they are other than first-hand, I believe that I have been able to follow the Swedish more closely than in my previous volumes. In the few prose sketches I have tried to suggest the cadence as well as to give the meaning of the Swedish prose.
Verse translation should rank higher as an art than even the most skilful photography. It is perhaps most like making an engraving of a well-known building; the translator may not change the outlines or add anything extraneous, but he must re-create the beauty or majesty of his subject in a new medium. Some of the old-fashioned Nineteenth Century translations are like picture post-cards compared to the vital and delicate renderings that recent English masters have attained. As form is so much an essential of poetry, the test of verse translation should be very largely that applied to original work. I realize that this statement is in the nature of a challenge, but I had rather be condemned as an inferior poet than approved as a good copyist.
"Birdwood," Philadelphia.