Ivan Šajković 1935 and 1939
Ivan Šajković was acquainted with the Kalevala when he was a student in Prague and read the new translation by Josef Holeček. Holeček was a poet and a personal friend of Šajković.
Ivan Šajković in 1935. The Kalevala Society Foundation.
“At one time, when I met him on the street, he asked me to join him”, Šajković tells us. “When we arrived at Holeček’s place he gave me, without uttering a word, a couple of books and briefly said: “I know that you are a poet. Read, this will give you great pleasure.”
Holeček was right. His verses in the Czech language sounded beautiful and bright as soon as Šajković started to read. “I pressed the books against my chest and hurried home to continue reading.” It was an unforgettable day for Šajković, he was almost intoxicated by the Kalevala.
Šajković assumed that he would probably never have the chance to visit Finland. During the Russian-Japanese war, Šajković stayed in Moscow and St. Petersburg for a long time and in 1908 he contacted professor Beslkij, who had translated the Kalevala into Russian. Belskij encouraged Šajković to start translating and he wrote in his letter that he hoped that Šajković would give his people “an exemplary and artistically wonderful” translation when it comes to its precision. Šajković decided to use artistry and precision as his guidelines in his work with the translation. He started his work by thinking “what may come, comes”.
“Thus, I began my work by learning Finnish and studying the original text and by comparing translations of the Kalevala in the languages that I knew. After this, I started to study the poems in the Kalevala, their artistic structure. I did this, so that I would be able to completely grasp the most mysterious depths of this wonderful poetry.”
“The Kalevala cannot be translated”
The title page of Ivan Šajković’s Kalevala translation from 1935.
“When I had completely understood the splendid worthiness of the original text, I concluded that the Kalevala cannot be translated. I said this then and I repeat this, even now when I have finished my work. The language and the poetry of the Kalevala, where the alliteration and the combinations of the consonants and the vowels sparkle and glimmer like rays of sunshine in a mountain creek, are unattainable and cannot be translated into any language. The only thing that the translator can do is to approach the immense beauty of the Kalevala, which in its perfection cannot be attained.”
Šajković strived for artistry and precision but he did not avoid expressions that deviated from the original language, but that seemed to emerge by themselves.
“A well-known foreign reviewer once told me in a scolding way that there are end rhymes in my Kalevala translation. In that sense, I was told that I was not true to the nature of the Kalevala. I do not find this rebuke justified. First of all, I have never, on purpose, tried to find end rhymes, but instead I have left them in my translation when they have emerged by themselves, when the language itself, the language that the text is translated into, requires them, when the end rhymes themselves were necessary. These end rhymes, which emerged by themselves, replace, in my view, the alliterations of the Kalevala. And I do not regret that I have done this. Every translation of the Kalevala should sound like a golden string of the kantele.”
I took Ivan Šajković 27 years to translate the Kalevala. Because he regarded translating as an artistic creative process, he translated it only when he felt a calling to do so. “Sometimes a month went by and I did not touch my work. At other times I sacrificed weeks to the Kalevala. At those times I did not see or hear anything else. My family was jealous to my work and they said: ‘again you have been spellbound by your Louhi!’”
Translating the text was arduous and hard, but the Serbo-Croatian language of the folk poetry that Šajković had learned from his grandmother Maria, helped him in his work. “Just like your Larin Paraske he remembered the rich treasury of the Serbian folk poetry. I have obtained valuable ornaments from this boundless source when I transformed the Finnish folk epic into Serbian wording. I have done my best.”
A connection between the fate of Finnish and Serbo-Croatian folk poetry
According to Ivan Šajković the folk poetry has had a similar, huge impact in both the Finnish speaking and the Serbo-Croatian speaking regions. “In the beginning of last century, when the Serbian people gathered all their strength to fight to finally free their country from the Turkish forces, the folk poetry gathered by the great [Vuk] Karadžić, opened up the whole world of civilization for the people”, Šajković said at the anniversary of the Kalevala Society in 1936.
Goethe, the German poet, had recommended the Serb and he declared that the Serbs were a great nation in their spirit”, and, consequently, “the cold heart of Europe melted and was compassionate towards our quest for freedom”. Šajković quoted the Finnish folklorist, professor E. N. Setälä who said that the Kalevala was the first ambassador and diplomat of the Finnish people when meeting other people. However, Jacob Grimm, also made the cultural circles in central Europe aware of the Finnish epic tale.
Ivan Šajković, ”Kalevalan serbokroatiannos” – Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 17. Helsinki: WSOY. 1937.
Ivan Šajković, ”Kalevalan-käännökseni johdosta” – Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 15. Helsinki: WSOY. 1935.
Juhani Nuorluoto: ”Dr. Ivan S. Šajković – ein dichter und diplomat” – Studia Slavica Finlandensia 2 (1985), s. 132–141.