From
beginning to end the poem has a lyrical intensity which sets the mind
vibrating with a responsive emotion. It is not a coldly impersonal epic,
recounting remote heroic events; but there is a deeply personal note in
it, which has that nameless moving quality--_la note emue_, as the
French call it--which brings the tear to your eye, and sends a delicious
breeze through your nerves. All that, to be sure, or nearly all of it,
evaporates in translation; for no more than you can transfer the
exquisite dewy intactness of the lily to canvas can you transfer the
rapturous melody of noble verse into an alien tongue. The subtlest
harmonies--those upon which the thrill depends--are invariably lost. If
Longfellow, instead of giving us two cantos, had translated the whole
poem, we should, at least, have possessed an English version which would
have afforded us some conception of the charm of the renowned original.
The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which have been urged by numerous
critics may all be admitted as more or less valid; yet something remains
which will account for its astounding popularity.
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