Stolen Spring. Neglected Spring. (or translations are weird)
I’m at a cafe in Christiania, talking to a man who spontaneously asked me if he and his friends could share my table. We’re talking about Danish literature; I have a Karen Blixen novel next to my coffee. As a side note, the amount of coffee I drink in Denmark is truly obscene.
He’s explaining to me that Karen Blixen isn’t actually as popular in Denmark as she is outside of Denmark. Her most famous novel, Out of Africa, is quite emphatically not about Denmark. It’s about how much she loves Africa, how happy she was to move from her Danish roots to an African plantation.
I try quickly to explain that I’ve read some other Danish novels as well.
“You can read Danish?” he asks, looking at me disbelievingly. I don’t blame him. I can’t even say my own last name in Danish. Jeg taler lidt dansk, men ikke maler. Emphasis on the ikke maler.
“No, no, of course not,” I tell him, “I’ve read the translations.” His friend, who is actually reading a Danish novel as we speak, makes a face. I’ve noticed that many of the Europeans I’ve talked to don’t really believe in the art of translation. But the guy I’m actually talking to gets excited.
“Oh!” he exclaims, “what have you read?”
I struggle to remember the titles. The History of Danish Dreams by Peter Høeg. The Elephant Keeper’s Children by Peter Høeg. The Danish Lady by David Ebershoff (which is not actually a Danish novel, but I thought it was). Stolen Spring by Hans Scherfig.
“Wait,” he stops me. “What?”
“Stolen Spring?”
“What?”
“It was a novel about Danish school boys, back in 1940,” I try to explain. He looks puzzled for a moment. Then he turns to the friend who is reading the Danish novel.
“Det Forsømte Forår?” he asks. The friend nods and the two start speaking Danish more rapidly than I can follow. After a few moments, he turns to me again. “In Danish, the title is different,” he explains. “It is the same word that you would use to describe a child who has been mistreated.” I think about what he has said for a few moments.
“Neglected?” I venture. The man and his friend both get excited. I’ve come up with the English word they want.
It’s a funny distinction, but an important one. A stolen spring is a spring someone has taken away from you. A neglected spring is one you didn’t pay proper enough attention to.
The novel in question was published in 1940. It’s about a group of school boys and doesn’t have a main character. Instead it follows an entire class, starting at a class reunion where all of the men, who by now have become important officials in Danish society, are 43. It winds back to their first year of school, hinting that one of the students will eventually kill Head Teacher Blomme the whole time.
But, by the time the author actually reveals the murderer, you don’t care. By that time, you’ve gotten too wrapped up in all of the boys, and the description of their lives, to be still hooked on the bait of the True Crime.
The lives Scherfig described are horrible. Literally, all they ever do is study. The teachers yell and scream at them, make fun of their weight, call them stupid, drive their knuckles deeply into the boys’ ears. They are not allowed to have interests outside of school—when one boy develops enough of an interest in Natural History to correct the teacher, he’s given a failing grade. Not because he doesn’t know the material. Because he’s embarrassed the teacher.
The boys are not boys. They grew up with the opposite of the “good childhood” that modern Danes are supposed to have. It was stolen. Or neglected.
“It’s funny,” I remark to the guy at the cafe. “I always forget that European schools, they all used to be like this. You know? A lot of authors that I admire—Orwell, Camus, Huxley, —they all grew up like that. They all went to schools like that.”
“I know,” he replies with a laugh, “how were they not fucked up?” I laugh as well. Seriously. How indeed were they not all fucked in the head?
Well, I guess you can make the argument that they were. What came out of Orwell’s brain doesn’t necessarily point to a guy who felt totally comfortable and wasn’t at all paranoid about being watched. Or being punished.
But he turned out okay. He functioned. From what I know about him, he seemed like a pretty normal, albeit wildly successful, guy. Even if he had a stolen spring. Or a neglected spring.
This idea of the stolen spring, it’s a very American idea to me. The idea that unless someone (or something) comes in and does something drastic, takes something from you, your childhood will be fine. As long as it isn’t stolen, it’s okay. Plus when something is stolen, it can be returned.
The neglected spring, on the other hand, seems like a very Danish idea to me. A good childhood must be cared and watched over, guided even, otherwise it will wither and die. If you, or an adult around you, is not careful enough about it, you will definitely not have a good childhood. When a childhood is neglected, it wilts and withers. There is no point where you can return to it and care for it again. When it is gone, it’s gone.
So maybe that’s how these guys weren’t fucked up. Because they thought of their childhoods as stolen, not neglected. Because they thought they could fix it, change it. Or maybe it’s because a good childhood isn’t actually as important as we think it is. Maybe it’s okay if your spring is stolen, but not neglected. Maybe it’s okay if it’s neglected, not stolen.
Then again, I might be harping too much on a single word. Det Forsømte Forår. The neglected spring. The stolen spring. However it’s translated doesn’t change what schools, and childhoods, actually used to be like. But translations are weird. They cast a different light over how you think about a story, a word, changing it imperceptibly. The guy who was reading the Danish novel, the one who laughed a little when I said I was reading the translations was right. I’m not getting the full beauty of any of the novels I’ve read.
What I’m getting is something else. Translations force me to think about the imperceptible way that words themselves are coloring my understanding. This thought process is sometimes curiously absent from my novel reading. Translations force you to think about the process, to toss the words through your mouth and your brain enough time until the imperceptible is perceptible. A translation forces you to think about the world that words come from just as much as the world they paint.