(no subject)

[pegkerr]

Right now, I'm reading The Ropemaker, by Peter Dickinson, but I've been listening to Ruth MacKenzie's "Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden" (really cool music--I saw the show and loved it) and I've been thinking maybe I should read the Kalevala next. I know that it was a huge influence on Tolkien. Anyone out there done that? What translation should I choose?

Comments

[silvestra.livejournal.com]

I should read Kalevala, seeing as I am Finnish :P But have never got around to it, once tried to read it in Latin using a dictionary as help, but it took me a bloody hour just to translate the foreword which was a couple of pages :D

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I think we used this one in the World Epics class I took.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The one I'm using for my Finnish mythology/vacuum tube computing/Cold War spies fantasy novel is translated by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. It's not perfect, but some of the translations seem to try to edit the oddities out of the language or assume that too much is "a Finnish metaphor" when it was a storyteller's metaphor. Which is the last thing I want when I'm researching a fantasy novel, for heaven's sake.

I'll try to see if I can remember from my notes which was the version that excised the milk from hell. You don't want that one. Gotta have the milk from hell.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I should read it, too. The meter is one that will be familiar to you, as Longfellow borrowed it for "Song of Hiawatha." If you come up with a likeable translation, please let me know.

K.

Re:

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's hard to get the rhythms to translate along with everything else, though, so sometimes meter falls by the wayside in an otherwise good translation. As always with poem translations, I suppose, and Doug Hofstadter wrote a book on it so I don't have to meander aimlessly. The Magoun is not very metric, is what I'm getting at here.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The anti-recommendation I had was of the Kirby translation, but I haven't read the whole of that, so I can't say for certain. But since I'd managed to find out what version it was, I thought I'd let you know.

I have become a hard-core Finnophile since I started this book and will gladly babble as long as anyone will listen to me. Or, sadly, longer.

Kalevala Translation

[mgs.livejournal.com]

It may be difficult to find, but you want to read the translation by John Martin Crawford. This is the translation that Lin Carter uses an exerpt from in Dragons, Elves and Heroes. The publication details are not given in the copyright page. I found it in the Yale University library and read it when I was in high school. It was a late 1800's book thus I suppose in public domain, hence not being listed on the copyright page. I'd check project Gutenberg first and then the U of M library. Good Luck!