er, dag for dag,
til siste ord i livsens sogubok;
og kvart "i gaar" hev daarer vegen lyst
til dust og daude.

It is difficult to say just where the fault lies, but the thing seems
uncouth, a trifle too colloquial and peasant-like. The fault may be the
translator's, but something must also be charged to his medium. The
passage in Shakespeare is simple but it breathes distinction. The
Landsmaal version is merely colloquial, even banal. One fine line
there is:

"til siste ord i livsens sogubok."

But the rest suggests too plainly the limitations of an uncultivated
speech.

In 1905 came a translation of _The Merchant of Venice_ by Madhus,[28]
and, uniform with it, a little book--_Soga um Kaupmannen i Venetia_ (The
Story of The Merchant of Venice) in which the action of the play is told
in simple prose. In the appendatory notes the translator acknowledges
his obligation to Arne Garborg--"Arne Garborg hev gjort mig framifraa
god hjelp, her som med _Macbeth_. Takk og aere hev han."

[28. William Shakespeare--_Kaupmannen i Venetia_. Paa Norsk ved
Olav Madhus. Oslo. 1905.]

What we have said of _Macbeth_ applies with no less force here. The
translation is more than merely creditable--it is distinctly good. And
certainly it is no small feat to have translated Shakespeare in all his
richness and fulness into what was only fifty years ago a rustic and
untrained dialect. It is the best answer possible to the charge often
made against Landsmaal that it is utterly unable to convey the subtle
thought of high and cosmopolitan culture. This was the indictment of
Bjornson,[29] of philologists like Torp,[30] and of a literary critic
like Hjalmar Christensen.[31] The last named speaks repeatedly of the
feebleness of Landsmaal when it swerves from its task of depicting
peasant life. His criticism of the poetry of Ivar Mortensen is one long
variation of this theme--the immaturity of Landsmaal. All of this is
true. A finished literary language, even when its roots go deep into a
spoken language, cannot be created in a day. It must be enriched and
elaborated, and it must gain flexibility from constant and varied use.
It is precisely this apprentice stage that Landsmaal is now in. The
finished "Kultursprache" will come in good time. No one who has read
Garborg will deny that it can convey the subtlest emotions; and Madhus'
translations of Shakespeare are further evidence of its possibilities.

[29. Bjornson: _Vort S