Translator’s Introduction: The Wild Orchid and Christendom in the Novels of Sigrid Undset (1930) by Ida Coudenhove (Görres)

Abstract

Translator’s IntroductionThe Wild Orchid and Christendom in the Novels of Sigrid Undset (1930) by Ida Coudenhove (Görres) Jennifer Sue Bryson (bio) Keywords Ida Frederika Görres, Ida Coudenhove, Sigrid Undset, The Wild Orchid, Gymnadenia, Die Schildgenossen, Kristin Lavransdatter, The Master of Hestviken What follows is a translation of Ida Coudenhove. “‘Gymnadenia und das Christentum in den Dichtungen der Sigrid Undset.” Die Schild genossen 10 (1930): 461–468. It is published with permission from the estate of Ida Friederike Görres. During her lifetime, Ida Coudenhove (1901–1971) was a prominent Catholic writer in German-speaking Europe. She is most well known by her married name, Görres.1 She usually went by Ida Friederike Coudenhove and then later Ida Friederike Görres. Die Schildgenossen was a German-language Catholic journal affiliated with the Catholic Youth Movement in Germany. The Catholic Youth Movement was closely associated with Fr. Romano Guardini, [End Page 140] who was a copublisher of Die Schildgenossen from 1924 to 1941.2 Heinz Kuehn, a scholar of Guardini translates the title Die Schildgenossen as “Comrades of the Shield,” and describes it as “a national Catholic periodical devoted to theological, liturgical and cultural subjects.”3 The Nazi government shut down Die Schildgenossen in 1941. Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) was a Norwegian novelist, Catholic convert, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. The German edition of this article in Die Schildgenossen contained no citations (other than one parenthetical mention of a page number, apparently in an Undset novel, with no further information). For this English edition, I have added citations. To the extent possible, I have identified the sources of the quotations in this article, and I have quoted them from established English translations. Where there is no citation for a quotation, it is either Coudenhove giving voice to what she has heard from others or I was unable to find the source, and the quotation is thus my translation from the German text. In this article, Coudenhove discusses how the novel The Wild Orchid by Undset (first published in German as Gymnadenia in 1929) relates to the following works by Undset, listed here with the translators (tr.) of the English editions and the date of the first edition in English. (For the bibliographical details of these works, please see the citations.) 1911 Jenny, tr. W. Emmé, 1921 and tr. by Tiina Nunnally, 2001. 1917 Images in a Mirror, tr. Arthur G. Chater, 1938. 1920–1922 Kristin Lavansdatter: A Trilogy, tr. Charles Archer and J.S. Scott, 1922–1925 and Tiina Nunnally, 1997–2000. 1925–1927 The Master of Hestviken: A Tetralogy, tr. Arthur G. Chater, 1928–1930. 1931 The Wild Orchid, tr. Arthur G. Chater, 1931. 1932 The Burning Bush, tr. Arthur G. Chater, 1932. [End Page 141] Jennifer Sue Bryson Jennifer Sue Bryson has a PhD in Near Eastern languages and civilizations and an MA in history from Yale University, and a BA in political science from Stanford University. She has worked for the Department of Defense and several think tanks. She learned German while she was in high school in Austria and while studying Marxism-Leninism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig in the former German Democratic Republic during college. She developed an interest in translation theory during graduate school at Yale. Bryson is a visiting researcher at Hochschule Heiligenkreuz in Austria. She is currently preparing her translations of several books by Ida Friederike Görres for publication. Copyright © 2022 The University of St. Thomas