100 Danish Poems, From the Medieval Period to the Present Day - Bilingual Edition

After the American Century

This is the 300th entry in this blog, and a book came to hand that serves nicely to celebrate this milestone. 

100 Danish Poems: From the Medieval Period to the Present Day  are not just any 100 poems but a careful selection of the best in Danish literature. They present a complex translation problem, as it simply would not do to have all the poems sound as if they were written in 2011, nor would it be a good idea to write in a modern idiom and then sprinkle in a few old words here and there from the appropriate time periods. 

Fortunately, John Irons, who is British, has more than 25 years experience as a translator. He has lived in Scandinavia for more than 40 years, and frequently translates from Norwegian into English as well. He holds a PhD in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge University and is a published poet himself. Irons is sensitive to the language and the rhythms of the poems and to the changes in literature that occurred from the medieval period onwards. In addition, he was able to work closely with both the Danish poet Klaus Høeck and the editors of the volume, Thomas Bredsdorff and Professor Anne-Marie Mai, who selected and edited the poems. She has also written a 43 page introduction that provides the historical and literary context many English readers will require. The poems themselves are presented without headnotes or footnotes that might distract.

Readers who know both Danish and English can decide for themselves whether they like the translations in this beautifully produced, bilingual edition. The original and the translation face each other on every page. Here is a sample, from pages 182-183, the first lines from a poem by Hans Christian Andersen:

Det gamle Træ, o lad det staa

Det gamle Træ, o lad det staa
Indtil det døer af Ælde;
Saamange Ting det husker paa.
Hvad kan det ikke melde.


Irons renders these lines as:

That ancient tree, don't let it fall
Until old age is knelling;
So many things it can recall
What tales it could be telling.

Note that he has retained not only the sense of these lines but also their rhyme and rhythm. He makes it look easy, but it is not.

Here is a second example, the lovely last verse of Jeppe Aakjær's "Maynat" (May Night), 1916 (pp. 200-201).

Saa ensomt bræger det spæde Lam
paa Bakken langt i det fjærne,
og Frøerne kvækker fra Pyt og Dam,
som sang det fra Stjærne til Stjærne.

The lonely young lamb on the hill beyond
can be heard with its plaintive small baa,
and the frogs all croak from puddle and pond,
as if star now were singing to star.


My third and final example, is the opening four lines of a work by Tove Ditlevsen,  from 1947  (pp. 250-251).

Blinkende Lygter

I Barndommens lange og dunkle Nat
brænder smaa blinkende Lygter
som Spor, af Erindringen efterladt,
mens Hjertet fryser og flugter.

In childhood's long night, both dim and dark
there are small twinkling lights that burn bright
like traces memory's left there as sparks
while the heart freezes so and takes flight.

The reader may be tempted to try revising this example, but in doing so will find how difficult it is to preserve simultaneously the rhyme, the meaning, and the rhythm. John Irons retains the rhyme and the meaning, but to do so must sacrifice the original rhythm. I spent some time trying to improve it, but found I could not. Yet the effort helped me to see the Danish original more clearly, which is one of the pleasures of a book that presents both the original and the translation on facing pages.

The book is available in both Denmark (from Museum Tusculanum Press) and the United States (from the University of Washington Press).

This posting is #300 on After the American Century

Obama Correct to Leave Iraq

After the American Century

After months of negotiations, the US and Iraq were unable to agree on how many troops might be left behind to help train and support the coalition government. Reportedly, the US suggested a level of 10,000, but the Iraqis wanted only half that, or even less. President Obama then decided, after repeated attempts to get a clear agreement, to pull the plug.

This seems the right decision, and probably the only option. Would a few thousand American troops really make much of a difference to the country's security? Keeping a symbolic force in the country might well have been a continued provocation to the opposition. Much better to give Iraq a clear message: the US is leaving. Iraq, you are now on your own, as a sovereign nation, to succeed or fail.

Nine years is a long time to intervene in any country, and the United States at some point must have higher priorities than continuing to keep 42,000 troops in Iraq. There were once four times that many, plus troops from the "coalition of the willing."

I was never a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, which was justified by the false claim that it harbored weapons of mass destruction. The country was ruled by a terrible regime, but removal of that regime has cost 700+  billion dollars and an enormous loss of life. The war itself was not difficult to win, but the Bush Administration disgracefully showered huge contracts on its political allies to rebuild the country and treated prisoners disgracefully, angering the entire Arab world against the abuses, displayed in photographs for all to see on the Internet.  An on-line poll conducted by MSNBC has found, as of this writing, that 87% of the respondents do not think the Iraq war was worth it. Many commentators share this view, including the Center for American Progress.

This nine years in Iraq offers quite a contrast with Libya, where the cost was far lower, the time required shorter, and American troops never entered the country. This difference strongly suggests the difference between Bush and Obama, Republicans and Democrats.

The arts of peace are more nuanced and difficult than the arts of war. Let us hope that Iraq will do better governing itself than it has under the occupation. But for the US, it is time to spend its scarce resources elsewhere. Think what that $700 billion might have been used for.

The Politics of Energy Efficiency: Blue States Lead the Red States

After the American Century

What a surprise. These are the states that are the most energy efficient: Massachusetts (1), California (2), followed by New York, Oregon, Vermont, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Maryland. This information comes from The American Council for Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). To give a sense of what this means, in Maryland, number 10 on the list, "Marylanders have already saved over 700,000 MWh of electricity and over $91 million dollars since 2009." These are savings that can be spent or saved, every year.

Not a single state in the American South is in the top ten.  Was this an accident? Consider the bottom group, states with the highest per capia use of energy:  North Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Missouri, Alabama, and South Dakota.  These are all in the South and trans-Mississippi West. The citizens of these states are spending more on gasoline and heat and air conditioning than the efficient states, which are investing in alternative energies, giving tax incentives to improve insulation, and investing in energy efficiency projects. Illinois alone has invested $600 million, creating jobs and saving energy at the same time.

The ACEEE study shows that Republican-dominated states have a poor record. Look at the Presidential election of 2008.

 

All ten of the most energy-efficient states voted Democratic.

All ten of the least energy-efficient states voted Republican.

This is not a coincidence. It tracks the repeated Republican denials of global warming and their heavy financial support from the oil, gas, and coal industries. 

Can the Euro Crisis Be Solved? Not in Greece

After the American Century

The Euro Crisis has not gone away. Several times there have been meetings and pledges of more money. The Greek Governemtn keeps making cutbacks, and the Greeks themselves keep protesting. The EU keeps up the pressure with one hand and gives the Greeks money with the other. Nothing seems to change for the better, and the financial fallout continues.

Who would have thought that all European consumers would be nervous because the Greeks profligately overspent? Why should this matter to other countries? Because the banks are all inter-related, and in Greece they are over-exposed. What is now possible is a kind of gigantic domino effect, in which the fall of Greece will topple some banks abroad, which will in turn have a knock on effect right across Europe and across the globe. 

Once upon a time the world was less connected, and some countries made a regular practice of overspending and then devaluting their currency. Take Mexico as an example. Starting in the 1950s for two decades the exchange rate was 12.5 pesos to one American dollar. But in 1976 this rate became impossible to maintain, and Mexico lowered the value of its currency to 20.4 pesos to the dollar. By June, 1982 the rate was 25 to the dollar, but things rapidly got much worse reaching 150 to the dollar by the end of the year. This was a serious crisis for Mexico. It got worse in the following decade, but it did not drag other larger economies to ruin.

By comparison, Greece has a smaller economy than Mexico, but it is much more tied into the economies of its neighbors. Mexico's peso fell pretty much on its own, but Greece has the same currency as much of Europe. 

So how bad is it in Greece? Worse than it was a year ago. The yearly deficit is getting bigger, not smaller, despite passage of austerity measures. It reached 19.2 billion euroes ($26.1 billion) for the first three quarters of 2011 compared to 16.65 billion euros for the same period last year. That is considerably worse than the EU Commission predicted in 2009, as can be seen in the chart above. The EU thought the deficit would be "only" about 12.3 billion for all of this year, but it looks to be about twice that once we have all four quarters. The cumulative deficit is growing even faster than the annual deficit, because it includes interest payments. The Greek rat hole is getting much larger, not smaller, as the size of the debt is exploding. Worse still, the cutbacks now being feverishly passed in Greece will reduce economic activity, in turn reducing revenues from taxation. It is a vicious circle, and nothing suggests that the Greeks are going to be able to avoid catastrophe. 

It may be time to give up on saving them and instead bail out the banks outside Greece, so that the European economy can continue to function. The banks should not be allowed to make a profit on their incompetence, of course, but it looks as though we must save them from ruin. I suggest this not for any love of banks, but because it seems the only plausible course of action to protect the rest of the EU. 

I said the European banks have been irresponsible. How so? Consider a chart from the Financial Times.

Far more than any other EU nation Greece has relied on foreign banks to buy its debt. This was smart of Greece, perhaps, but just plain stupid on the part of the banks. I would suggest an EU regulation that created a sliding scale for the amount of debt any member country could sell to outsiders. In other words, the worse the deficit, the less debt could be externally financed. A nation with almost no deficit would be able to borrow more and far more easily. Frugal virtue would be rewarded, profligacy punished, and punished much sooner than has happened in the present crisis.

Going off the cliff with Greece could ruin the EU economy for some years, and the Europe that might emerge after such a collapse will have fallen well behind Asia and the United States. Decoupling the banks from Greece will not be pretty, and the Euro will fall, but it will fall less and fall for a shorter time.In such a scenario, any Christmas bonuses for bankers would be obscene.