Tales And Translation: The Grimm Tales From Pan-Germanic Narratives To Shared International Fairytales (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Tales And Translation: The Grimm Tales From Pan-Germanic Narratives To Shared International Fairytales Roger Russi (bio) Tales And Translation: The Grimm Tales From Pan-Germanic Narratives To Shared International Fairytales. By Cay Dollerup. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999 This remarkable study of the Grimms' Children and Household Tales and their Danish translators has much to offer. Its most significant finding, to my mind, may be that it shows the close relationship between Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Danish translators, and Hans Christian Andersen in the creation of what now is called the Grimms' fairy tale or, as Cay Dollerup coins it, "the international fairy tale." A brief introduction outlines the foci of this study that intersects Dollerup's interests in translation studies, linguistics, folklore, and children's literature. Its emphasis rests on translation as cross-cultural communication. The author seeks to highlight the close, dialectic ties between the work of the Brothers Grimm, their Danish translators, and Hans Christian Andersen's literary fairy tales. Finally, he proposes that as translating involves a "certain reorientation of texts," problems, lacunae, or inexplicable passages in the Grimms' Tales may be explained by examining the close relationship between the Grimms' work and the research of Danish linguists and translators (ix). In particular, Dollerup looks at the development of the Grimms' and Andersen's tales into the international fairy tale. Excellent chronological tables, maps, and illustrations from numerous Grimms' Tales collections accompany Dollerup's discussion, which he begins with a brief outline of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's biography. In a concise, very helpful overview he delineates the personal as well as public history of the Grimms, Hessia, and Denmark. A brief review of the complex publication history of the Tales follows, highlighting the fact that predominantly Wilhelm edited and re-edited the tales by always drawing on the most recently published versions. Of particular appeal to me was Dollerup's excellent use of Endnotes as well as a complete translation of Wilhelm Grimm's 1819 Introduction: On the Nature of Fairytales in his argument. As the author is in agreement here with the majority of Grimm scholars, his emphasis on the connection between the increasing number of children as target audience and Wilhelm's persistent re-editing is worthy of note. In the subsequent analysis of tale variants, Dollerup insists that considerably more changes were implemented than folklore scholars usually agree upon. For example, he points to the difficulty of tracing the numerous variants due to the fact that manuscripts tended to be destroyed upon the publication of a given printed version. The interactions among the numerous storytellers, recorders, scholars, and the Grimms were highly complex and difficult to trace. Dollerup refers to all of these editorial factors as "filters" and discusses them systematically on structural, linguistic, and content-levels. The second section offers an exhaustive listing of the various Danish translations of the Grimms' Tales variants. It illustrates the remarkable history of over 170 years of translating the Grimms into Danish. A comprehensive, where pertinent, annotated list of their tales in the Appendix organized according to their KHM numbers with English and Danish translations complements Dollerup's analysis. Dollerup offers a history of the Grimms' Tales in Denmark in the book's third section. Only four years after the Grimms published their first volume of Tales (1812), the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger translated the tales into Danish, starting what may be nothing short of an avalanche of translations. Dollerup carefully examines how the Danish contemporaries of the Grimms shared their beliefs in the tales as folk artifacts, and shows at the same time how Oehlenschläger and the translators after him acted as critics and filters. The Tales were adapted to Danish standards. For example, much of the religious sentiments added to the tales by Wilhelm made some of the Catholic Danish translators avoid the most explicit tales (for example, the Virgin Mary's Child) or excise these elements. By contrast, the majority of the Danish translators did not take issue with the cruelty found in the tales. The history of translating practices is very fascinating. Dollerup points out that especially during the nineteenth century, it was not always clear upon...