Louis Léouzon Le Duc 1845 ja 1867

Louis Léouzon Le Duc (1815–1889) was born in Dijon. He had graduated from a Jesuit college and studied literature and history in Paris. He came to Finland in 1841 to work as a private tutor, a job that he had got through the Russian prince Ivan Sergejevitš Gagarin.

Because of the family who hosted him, Léouzon Le Duc easily gained access to the high society in the capital and it made it even easier that the language that was used in the high society was, indeed, French.

The French translation of the Old Kalevala in 1845

Léouzon Le Duc lived in Finland for a couple of years and during this time he had time to study Swedish and also, to some extent, Finnish and literature. It is likely that he had already studied Swedish. According to what we know, Léouzon Le Duc had already translated the work by Tegnér Frithiofin taru (The tale of Frithiof) to French in the winter 1844 as well as other Swedish literature and that he also intended to publish articles on Russia in France.

The most ambitious project of the French private tutor was, nevertheless, the translation of the Old Kalevala that was published in 1835. Le Duc finalised the translation surprisingly fast: as early as in the summer 1845 his two-piece work La Finlande was published in Paris. This book contains a complete, word-by-word, translation of the Old Kalevala. The book also includes a long introduction to the ancient history of the Finnish people, mythology and folk poetry as well as a very extensive and miscellaneous commentary section, which contains, besides explanations on the subjects of the Kalevala, also a mixed collection of information, descriptions and remembrances about the history of Finland and its various areas of life, persons etc.

Léouzon Le Duc, who most certainly did not know any Finnish when he arrived in Finland and who did a lot of other things besides learning Finnish, states quite concisely in the preface of the La Finlande: “I have translated the Kalewala from the Finnish language, which is the language in which it was written.” Naturally, this piece of information has to be scrutinized with some reservation and the translator does mention, after this, two people that have helped him to a great extent in his work. One is the “Finnish scholar” Wilhelm Brander, who has translated each word of the poems first into Latin with me, then into Swedish and then finally into French”. It is, probably not, wise to consider this completely believable; the method does not seem very fast, to say the least. When the French translation had been published, some reviews in Finnish newspapers stated that here and there it is more of a paraphrase than a translation.

Fredrik Wilhelm Brander was about 20 years old and a student when he met Léouzon Le Duc; he became a priest in 1845. The catalogue of priests, compiled by O. I. Colliander, Suomen kirkon paimenmuisto (1918), writes the following about him: “A private tutor in Russia in the family of count Mussin-Puschkin, when he translated the whole Kalevala into Latin. Based on this translation, the renowned author Léouzon Le Duc then translated the Kalevala into French.”

Another important assistant, according to Le Duc, is doctor Axel Laurell, who, according to the French translator, helped him to “match the spirit of both languages and create a completely French translation, without losing any of the originality of the Finnish text”. Consequently, we have to read the statement by the author that he has done the translation directly from the Finnish language as if he has had a “direct” contact to the original text through both his assistants.

It seems more odd that Léouzon Le Duc does not mention the Swedish translation of the Old Kalevala by M. A, Castrén, which was published in 1841; it does seem obvious that he, as he knew the Swedish language would have utilised Castrén’s translations of the poems.

Léouzon Le Duc’s French translation is, along with Castrén’s Swedish translation, the only published translations of the Old Kalevala into any language. (See also Carl Niclas Keckman 1836.) He was the first one to present our epic tale to a broad European audience and held this position until the 1850’s when translations of the New Kalevala emerged in various languages.

The French translation of the New Kalevala in 1867

The translation of the Old Kalevala by Léouzon Le Duc with its extensive commentaries was received with much acclaim in France. It was stated that the translation hade opened up a completely new and unknown world to the European readers.

When Lönnrot published a considerably larger and to a great extent updated version of the Kalevala, the New Kalevala, Léouzon Le Duc, again, decided to translate it. He began the translation as soon as he had arrived in Finland in the autumn of 1850. However, the new word-by-word French translation Le Kalevala. Épopée nationale de la Finlande et des peuples finnois was not published until 1867.

In the preface, Léouzon Le Duc mentions this time that his most important assistant was the student Carl Gustaf Borg (1823–1895), who later was, among other things, secretary of the Finnish Literature Society and worked as a translator for the senate. Borg published his own Swedish translation of the passages on Kullervo and Lemminkäinen in 1850–1852 and it is said that he had made a complete Swedish translation for the French translator. In the obituary for Léouzon Le Duc, which was published in Uusi Suometar (261/1889), it is mentioned that he had also attempted to study Finnish with the help of Borg, but he “did not have the patience to devote enough time and effort, and thus, he did not acquire any deeper knowledge of it”.

This time, Léouzon Le Duc expresses in the preface his gratitude, not only to Borg, but also particularly to M. A, Castrén and Lönnrot for the help that he had received from them.

The translations of the Kalevala are only one part of the extensive and rather heterogeneous production by Léouzon Le Duc, which usually is described as fluent and easy to read, however not very profound. For example, he has written a large number of books and pamphlets on the history of the Nordic countries and Russia as well as on the literature and political conditions. He has also published historical documents on France and letter collections and he has worked as a reporter. Among his works there are ten or so pieces that, either completely or in part, focus on Finland.

---

Marja Itkonen-Kaila: ”Louis Léouzon Le Duc” – Kalevala maailmalla. Helsinki: SKS. 2012.