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Poetry
Publisher:
Gyldendal
Translator:
Marjam Idriss
Release year:
2021
«Biden’s court poet works very poorly in Norwegian.»
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I admit it: I enjoyed Amanda Gorman’s poetry reading at Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
The fact that Gorman, who had not yet turned 23, performed his experimental nation-building poem there, gave the ceremony something the slightly oversized coverage of the American election had lacked: something that had less to do with red and blue states, turnout and voters, and more with a form of political idealism.
The young poet seemed brilliant in many ways in the performance itself, and although I could probably hear that the poem she read had certain weaknesses, it sounded good and worked well in the context. Then the Norwegian version of the poem, which is now out in book form, is considerably worse off.
The family tragedy that became a poem
New rhymes
The Norwegian retelling signed by Marjam Idriss is characterized by really wanting to be a retelling, to the extent that it is composed in Norwegian where the original is less dictatorial. For example here: “And then, before we fully understand, is our morning.” Here we find a Norwegian rhyme, where there is no rhyme in the original.
The original rhymes in the next line again, and the Norwegian retelling apparently tries to compensate for a lack of rhyme there by introducing a rhyme in the verse line before. But the Norwegian stanza as a whole does not sound good at all:
And so, before we fully understand, is our morning.
We can do it, despite.
Despite, we endure, we see
a nation that is not crushed, just not
finished.
Only this “despite, we endure, we see” is really not good language. It is first and foremost helpless.
Read the poem “everyone” is talking about
Parodi
Even later, the Norwegian version has rhymes where there is no rhyme in the original, as here: “We do no harm, we work for peace.” The wording sounds mostly like a parody of a confirmation poem. The same can be said about the beginning of the very last stanza:
When the day dawns, it is
the shadow we shun
fearless, in fire.
This puts shame on the original. The original has its weaknesses, but it is not a parody.
Spoken word
Gorman’s poem is in the tradition of so-called spoken word poetry, and is in other words written precisely to be performed orally. Unlike, for example, the poetry of Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück, which is fundamentally written and contemplative, Amanda Gorman’s poetry is a poetry that is ready to be listened to there and then. It is a poem for the special occasion. It does not withstand the transition to the book format very well.
The main problem with the original is in my eyes that it is far too prosaic: It has the poem’s traditional high-pitchedness, but otherwise few poetic qualities. You get a good impression of this in some places in the Norwegian edition, such as here:
we know that to put
our future first, we must first
put our differences aside
This is most similar to the tone of a political speech. And yes, maybe that’s actually what Amanda Gorman’s great quality is, and what makes her have been hailed worldwide: She’s more of an ideologue than a poet. It must be law. But the political message seems distant from Norwegian conditions, specifically related as it is to American society and history.
Perfect crime!
Abstract words
The most striking thing, however, is that the original and the Norwegian version appear as different as poems. In the original it is called a place:
Because being American is more than a
pride we inherit –
It’s the past we step into and how we
repair it.
In the original context these words were performed, it was possible for them to be hopeful-sounding words. In Idriss’ retelling, they appear first and foremost as overly large and abstract words;
The American is more than pride
and past –
that’s all we see and all we do
with what was before.
Oprah Winfrey’s barely two pages long preface to the original publication has also been translated into the Norwegian book. It’s not a little pompous. Here it is said, among other things, about Gorman’s poems: “Her words washed over us, healed our wounds and revived the soul.” This is how you may feel at a given moment, but it is and will be a very idealizing view of what a single poem can bring about.
His book has cult potential
For youth
The Norwegian edition of Gorman’s poem is strikingly published by Gyldendal’s children and youth department. Norwegian young people are often so Americanized that they identify with everything that may come from the United States. The hope is perhaps that a publication like this can finally get these young people to open a poetry book. But then they probably have to go to the original “The Hill We Climb” rather than to the Norwegian “The mountain we climb”. In defense of the Norwegian publication, it must be stated that the entire English original text is printed in it, according to the Norwegian version.
Here I have seen it as my task to assess the quality of the Norwegian retelling of Amanda Gorman. Simply put, it has primary value as a curiosity. The literary value is virtually absent.
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