calls him his brother, his hope, his inspiration. For some time he considered it his duty to take over Whitman's command for the new century, and in spite of differences arising Becher's thankfulness for Whitman remains fervent and deep.

A young critic H. E. Jacob 21 believes that he has discovered Whitman's poetical secret in his new syntax, the "democratic syntax," which is based on the principle of co-ordination, contrary to the centuries-old European principle of subordination, from which nightmare (as he says) Whitman came to free Europe. He asks, “Have we not everything to learn from Whitman?"

The year 1919-Whitman's 100th anniversary-saw many laudatory, even idolizing essays on Whitman in journals of all political directions; also in calendars he is remembered and quotations from the Leaves of Grass are numerous. But what is more important, since 1919 there has been a flood of new Whitman editions and translations, from editions de luxe with expressionistic illustrations by W. Jaeckel down to a school edition. One may say that every prominent German publishing house has some collection of Whitman's poems or prose.2 22 The best mediators are Hans Reisiger, Gustav Landauer, Max Hayek, Franz Blei and Johannes Schlaf. Most valuable critiques following these editions show the steadily increasing interest in him.23 Johannes Schlaf 24 proclaims anew Whitman as a religious power, thinking that we will not get a greater poet than Whitman but a greater religious prophet following in his path. Franz Blei 25 idolizes him as great Pan. Herman Stehr 26 clings to Whitman's gospel of boundless human love as an anchor in the time of hardship. Landauer and Reisiger 27 hope that mir nicht übel, ganz wie im gewöhnlichen Leben spreche ich. ). . . . Ein Zwiegesang! Du singst mir zu, ich antworte Dir:-Ja mein älterer Bruder, mein weiserer, mein erfahrener Du, ich verspreche es Dir, darf ich Dir vortragen, wie ich meine Mission auszuwirken gedenke . . . ."

...

21 Heinrich Eduard Jacob, "Der Dichter in der Demokratie." 10. Dez. 1924. Berliner Tageblatt.

22 Inselverlag. S. Fischer. Kurt Wolff Verlag. Erich Reiß Verlag. Stegemann Verlag. Erich Lichtenstein Verlag, etc. . .

....

23 It may be interesting to know that Whitman's "Drum Taps" inspired also a modern Swiss composer, Othmar Schoeck.

24 In Der Bücherwurm, Mai 1919.

25 Das große Bestiarium der Modernen Literatur, Ernst Rohwolt Verlag 1922.

26 Vossische Zeitung, 17 Nov. 1919.

27 In the introductions to their translations.

through Whitman the conception of death, which had been abused for five years, will win back a holy and starry height. For Karl Broeger 28 Whitman is a seer and his work a source of strength of such grandeur that it penetrates the dark dreary present days. Stephan Zweig calls his work a deed, a really creative deed. Julius Bab,29 one of the finest of German critics, not only believes that Whitman has already found entrance into the soul of Europe (i.e., poetry), but also thinks him the only ally against the Asiatic invasion. Only Whitman can stop the gigantic march of Dostojewski. According to Bab, only the New World can make the last attempt at finding a worthier form of life: Whitman means the first step on this way. The existence of Europe depends upon the question, whether its peoples succeed in making a real possession out of the mere program of democracy, a religious reality. For the moment Bab does not know any better means than to read Whitman.

But the most remarkable and most surprising Whitman experience is that of Thomas Mann,30 who adds a new tint to the German Whitman portrait, again a political one. Mann's reserved style becomes jubilant, dithyrambic, whenever he discusses Whitman. He, the conservative author of the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, the aristocrat, learned to know Whitman in 1922, i.e., in a period of his life when he was struggling for a new path out of the chaotic world, recognizing that his own way, paved with the inheritance of Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche, did not offer an escape. Now Whitman becomes his pathmaker, in helping to conquer a deep rooted pessimism, and in discovering the powerful forces of affirmative optimism. And so Mann showed German students in an address, "Von Deutscher Republik," " that Spengler and his philosophy cannot and must not be the basis for the problems of the day. If Germany wants to live, and she surely wants to live, there must be some future hope, some outlook, some help,

28 Frankfurter Zeitung, 3. Dez. 1922.

29 Frankfurter Zeitung, 6. Mai 1922.

30 Frankfurter Zeitung, 16. April 1922.

31 S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1923; also in "Gerhart Hauptmann Heft" of the Neue Rundschau 1922; delivered before German students in Berlin in 1922 before it was printed.

and all that is found in the thunderer of Manhattan, the prophet of athletic democracy, the singer of brotherhood, of love and death. In his address, which was originally planned as a lecture on the relationship of Whitman and Novalis,32 American democracy and German Romanticism, Mann claims the identity of American democracy with German "humanity." The new humanity is Goethe's, with just a touch of Whitman's. According to Mann, Whitman's message seems to be like Hellas, reborn out of the spirit of American democracy. "Goethe is in it and the best and most forward-looking and most pedagogical spirit that was in Nietzsche, and the temple devotion of Novalis." Thomas Mann, himself a singer of death in his novels, owes Whitman a new conception of it. What Mann, inspired by Whitman, announced as a probable theme for a "Bildungsroman" in the above-mentioned lecture, the problem of death becoming a problem of life and leading to humanity, is carried out in his richest novel Der Zauberberg. In the "Democratic Vistas," Mann finds lessons for contemporary German and European politics and it is for this that he calls the founder of the American ideology, the singer of the States and of a Union of States, most powerful and important for the future.33

In the sense in which Bab and Mann conceive of him, Whitman will keep his importance for the present and the future, but his mission as the expressionists saw and admired it belongs to the past. His voice will be heard with enthusiasm as long as the overwhelming Americanization continues to sweep over Europe: the voice of the poet, who in 1860 addressed foreign lands in lines like these:

I heard that you asked for something to prove this puzzle, the New World,

And to define America, her athletic Democracy,

Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

HUNTER COLLEGE

32 Also Knortz and Eulenberg call Whitman and Novalis brothers.

33 A recent private letter of Thomas Mann of Oct. 10, 1925, shows that his attitude towards Whitman is still the same.

A LIST OF ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE FRITHIOFS SAGA. A RETROSPECT

AT THE CENTENARY 1

BY ADOLPH B. BENSON

HUNDRED years have passed since Tegnér's best known masterpiece first appeared in its completed form, and during that period the Swedish original has been done into many tongues and has been the inspiration besides of many painters and composers, both at home and abroad. Translations of the Frithiofs Saga have been published, as we know, not only in the neighboring Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic dialects; not only in the three principal European languages, German, French and English; but also in the medium of Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Bohemian, Armenian, Dutch and Finnish. Also, according to Swan, parts have been translated into Latin and modern Greek. Every chief European tongue is represented save Spanish and Turkish, and there may be a partial translation in Spanish. Thirty years ago, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, in writing about Tegnér in his Essays on Scandinavian Literature, reported (p. 259) that “even in Spain, Greece, and Russia tears were shed over 'Ingeborg's Lament."" As we might expect, German translations have been especially numerous. "There have appeared 25 complete translations into German," said Professor Flom in 1909 in the bibliography of translations appended to his edition of the Frithiofs Saga, "besides other, partial translations, and many of these have appeared in numerous editions." 3 Up to the year 1909 thirtyfour editions of C. Fr. Mohnike's German rendering had been

1 This article has been prepared in collaboration with Gustaf N. Swan, L.H.D., a well-known collector and scholar, the Swedish vice-consul at Sioux City, Iowa. It is largely his painstaking aid, based on years of research, which has made this corrected list possible. All indebtedness to Consul Swan is hereby acknowledged. His part of the co-operation will be more specifically noted in the course of the paper. 2 Cf. Frithiofs Saga, edited by George T. Flom (Chicago, 1909), Introduction, pp. xvi ff. a ibid., p. xix.

published, not counting several printings of a pocket edition of the same translation. Other German versions also have required more than a dozen editions, so that the popularity of Frithiofs Saga in Germany rivals-if indeed it does not exceed― that of the original in Sweden, a fact which in this case actually means something. But what about the popularity and number -and herein lies the raison d'être for this article of the English (including the American) translations of Tegnér's poem?

In October, 1876, when Mr. and Mrs. Holcomb wrote and dated the note to their translation, which appeared the year following, they asserted that the Frithiofs Saga had already been "rendered into English by eighteen different translators," besides having twice been reprinted in America, their own translation being supposedly "the nineteenth English." The grounds for this statement, or any explanation of it, were not given, but their claim was obviously accepted at its face value, and more than that, for all subsequent American and English commentators on the subject, except Flom and Swan, have, in computing the number of translations to date, simply added the number of later renderings, both partial and complete in some instances, and concluded that the famous cycle of poems-meaning the whole cycle-had been done into English a score or more times. Thus in 1883 in his translation of Winkel-Horn's History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North, Rasmus B. Anderson asserted: "There are 21 translations of Tegnér's Frithiofs Saga into English." We must assume that these were meant to be complete versions. In another of his translations, that of Brandes' Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century, Anderson increased the number to twenty-two. Encyclopedias continued to claim nineteen or more different English translations: the eleventh edition of the Britannica cautiously ventured the information in 1911 that the Frithiofs Saga "is said to have been translated twenty-two times into English, twenty times into German, and at least once into every European language"; * ibid., p. xvii.

* An exhaustive comparative study of the different English translations of the Frithiofs Saga, and their history, has, to my knowledge, never been attempted. The present list of translators, editors and publishers may, therefore, serve as a modest introduction to such an investigation in English.

See edition of 1901, p. 388, note.