Leseprobe_Holm_Holberg Plays Volume I

perspective. The six scripts have been brought to English-language life on two
levels, in three dimensions and by four hands.
The translations are faithful to the original Danish in the sense that they are
not ‘creative’ versions or modern updates; even the orthography of the source text
has been respected as inherent musical-rhythmic punctuation. To aid reading of
the texts, we have made a few additions to the cast listings, in square brackets,
and we have added a few footnotes: brief explanations of terms, references and
contexts with which Holberg’s contemporary audience would probably have been
familiar, but we might not be today.
When translating, especially theatre plays, it is also necessary to be constantly
aware of what you are translating, besides the meaning of the words. A text that has
been written for the stage comes to life on stage and (by this means) in the imagination
of the audience. Thus, a specific semantic and a more abstract emotional level of
language are at work in the text – and both have to be ‘translated’.
Stage life is partly generated through musical registers in the language – the
rhythms and tones – expressing the characters’ emotional fluctuations and shifts,
which are transmitted to the actors’ bodies and breathing, and resonate in the
audience’s ‘participation’. Stage characters must be tuned like instruments playing
as a dynamic ensemble, tension in the complexity and diversity of contrasts
following the contrapuntal lines – the element of the language implying symphonic
and choreographic secrets. It is a matter of vowels and consonants running through
the text and appealing to more or less intuitive or rational states of consciousness
– flexible-open versus reflective-detached approaches to circumstances. Assonance
and alliteration can make for flow or punctuation, which is combined with largo
or staccato sentence constructions like a musical score, encompassing a character’s
breathing and thereby state of mind.
Holberg loved listening to music and playing music. In his young days, he
spent two years studying in Oxford – with barely a penny to his name – and for a
while supported himself by teaching the flute.
Stage life is also created by means of imagery – figurative language, associations
– in the text. Here, too, the translation must fine-tune the stethoscope. The
performed language has to work without footnotes. Jeppe’s protestation that he
is “uskyldig som et barn i moders liv” (innocent as a child in its mother’s womb)
implicates a whole series of images and associations, a root network in the text,
entailing birth-death-paradise and ultimately the protagonist’s thirst, his relentless
craving to be something in someone’s eyes. He satisfies that longing via drunken escape
into a dreamworld, away from the demands and humiliations of his everyday life,
and thus towards a snug state of innocence “as a child in its mother’s womb”. In
terms of semantics, the phrase could be ‘translated’ to any accentuation of Jeppe’s
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