Seweryna Duchińska 1869
Seweryna Duchińska (1816–1905) was the first one to translate the Kalevala into Polish. She had emigrated in 1863 and worked as an author and translator of French, Hungarian and Spanish poetry. Her translations of the four first poems of the Kalevala were published in 1869 in Biblioteka Warszawska. In 1896 the poems 1 and 4 were published in Obrazy literatury powszechnej. Four years later, the 3rd poem was published in the 12th issue of the Przyjaciel Młodzieży and the second poem was published one more time in 1902 in the journal Przegląd dziejów literatury powszechnej. Duchińska places the Kalevala in a literary context and objects to the stereotype according to which Finland is a geographical region without any own national culture, but instead culturally completely assimilated to Sweden.
Seweryna Duchińska. Kuva: Wikipedia.
Duchińska introduces the reader to the themes of the epic on three levels. The first level describes things that are associated with the Kalevala and the intellectual environment of the Kalevala as a phenomenon. The author assumes that the people who have collected the songs are the ones that have been the greatest poets and, thus, she defends Lönnrot against the accusations regarding the authenticity of the Kalevala. In a way, Duchińska gives the folk singers a secondary role, when she refers to the creative needs of the persons who collected the poems and to how they, through their collecting work, looked for new ways and hopes to further develop their field of knowledge. She presents Lönnrot as the most accomplished researcher of Finnish poetry and tells her readers about the difficulties this kind of work may encounter. She talks about two kinds of problems that most researchers encounter. The first problem relates to the limited possibilities the researcher has to gain access to the closed rural communities, where the attitude towards strangers usually is negative. She describes how Lönnrot solved the problem with the help of his education: he was a doctor and could, thus, offer his own services in exchange for poems. Another problem is, according to Duchińska, the fact that people may have posed as traditional poetry singers and sing songs they came up with themselves, hoping to receive some sort of compensation. Thus, the songs may not have been authentic poems. When the news about people studying old songs spread, many singers adapted a new line of reasoning: “the one whose memory fails him, loses”, which led to the creation of unauthentic texts. The new poems did not have much in common with the traditional song ritual, which continued either until the end of the poem or until some of the singers fell asleep.
The inspiration of the missing Slavic epic
In the second part of the text, Duchińska discusses the problem with the missing Slavic epic and she is among the first ones to seek solutions and inspiration from the methods used when collecting Finnish traditional poems. She stresses the fact that research was conducted on the subject in Finland at the same time as in Poland and she compares the first Finnish publication of poems from 1819 to the later work Slaavilaisesta kulttuurista ennen kristinuskoa (in English: The Slavic culture before Christianity), which came out a year later by Zorian Dołęga Chodakowski (1784–1825). She states that the Swedish speaking elite in Finland had to learn Finnish in order to implement their plans. Duchińska calls the Finnish language the language of the common people. However, this has not been an obstacle when creating the mighty epic, whereas in Poland the similar has not been achieved, even though an epic, most likely, would have a big part in the creation of national unity.
Based on the success of the Finnish researchers, Duchińska points out the mistakes in the Polish ethnography, which, in her opinion, prevent Polish research programmes from recreating the cohesive and lasting tribal feeling, which must have existed in ancient times. She thinks that the most influential obstacle is the inability to focus on one carefully identified goal. In her opinion, this inability is directly connected with the lack of ethnic-geographical boundaries, in other words with the fact that research do not know in which region they should perform their work. The author suggests that instead of striving for a non-existent unified “cleansed” tribe, it is more important to focus on finding the common Slavic characteristics, because they are the ones that differentiate this culture from all communities that originate in other countries. Furthermore, it is important to differentiate the geographical locations and, consequently, exclude similarities that have been accidentally found. The author states that Finland and its culture that were completely unknown until recently, is doing its share in the development of research methods for the fields of geography and history. Furthermore, the author points out that this work is helping Finland to become a leading figure when it comes to new views on ethnography.
At the end of the article, there is a free translation of the Finnish epic. This translation is a combination of prose and poetry and the author’s comments and explanations have been added to it. The comments are emotional footnotes and they discuss both the themes and the form of the epic tale. Duchińska writes: “I present this declaration in a word-by-word form, written according to the original trochaic octameter. There are no rhymes in the initial texts, only half rhymes, in other words repetitions of the vowels”. The translation begins with a prologue written in prose and it invites the singer to join the chanting. The next part presents “a peculiar cosmology, which is very different from our own”. It is, thus, apparent that the text is subjective.
The names of the Finnish characters are written in more than ten different forms. The mistakes that relate to phonetics and spelling are the same in all the early translations. For example, Väinämöinen’s name is Wajnomojn and Kalevajnen and Joukahainen becomes Jukohojnen. Duchińska depicts the sowing of Wajnamojnen’s world and the combat with Jukohojnen in the form of prose. Aino’s despair and discussion with her mother is written in a poetic form. When Aino meets Väinämöinen and abandons all worldly riches because she does not want to become the wife of the artist, the author reverts to prose. At this point, the text is heavily compressed, a fact that the author does not hide: “A couple of days later the girl went into the forest to collect branches from the birch trees. She wore pearls around her neck, a golden belt buckle and her hair was tied with a colourful ribbon.” The discussion the girl has with her whole family is written as a poem, but her despair and journey is, again, written as prose. “And the girl wept the first, and the second day, and on the third day she dressed in new clothes and wandered far through fields and swamps […]”. The sorrows of the girl are, then, written as a poem, but the moment she dies is written as prose. The part ends with the poem that depicts the despair of the mother who griefs the death of her daughter. The tears of the old mother flow like a river.
The translation by Duchińska is the starting point for the Polish people’s experiences of the Kalevala and it also teaches the Polish readers about Finland. As the author states:
“As the songs can be found in one single book, they become a literary milestone for the Finnish people, who have been heavily influenced by the Scandinavian civilisations. As we are very well aware of, the ancient Bjarmia was also under the same influence.”
Anna Walkowiak: ”Kalevala puolalais-suomalaisten kulttuurikontaktien lähteenä 1800-luvulla”. Kalevala maailmalla. Helsinki: SKS. 2012.