Tizzies, Rockers and Caboodles

- A Game with Clichés

Af : W. Glyn Jones

Benny Andersen is to be included among the most popular of Danish poets over the past twenty years or so, not least because of the poems called Svantes viser (Svante´s Songs) with that mixture of gentle humour and poignancy that has been described as the quintessence of Danishness. Thanks to the recording of them, in which Benny Andersen himself accompanies the singer Poul Dissing on the piano, these songs occupy a place unlike that of any other poetry in Denmark. However, Benny Andersen also stands as a kind of linguistic juggler, one of those who take delight either in using an established metaphor in such a way that its figurative and literal senses are played off against each other, or else placing it in totally unexpected context. Occasionally, he will echo some well-known cliche, but imply the opposite.
    Having written originally for adults, Benny Andersen experimented with a similar technique in a book for children, entitled Snøvsen og Eigil og katten i sækken (The Tizzy and Eigil and the Cat in the Bag), a book that soon established itself as a classic in Danish children´s literature. Set in an easily recognisable modern environment, it also contains a delightful fairy-tale element as the seven-year-old Eigil discovers a tiny creature, a "snøvs" and sets out on a series of adventures with it and two other children and the cat which he lets out of the bag. There are chases by the police and a kidnapping and the inevitable happy ending when only the villainous kidnapper is missing from the general rejoicing. Yet, at the same time it is not quite an ordinary children´s book, for along with a charming and subtle text goes the same play on language as Benny Andersen had employed in his earlier books for adults. It is a game that will be readily understood by his Danish child readers, but which will also make them stand back and look at the real meaning of phrases which they use regularly without thinking twice about them, and thus it brings new life and meaning to the language of everyday life.

A challenge for the translator
Translating this book looks pretty hopeless from the word go. The title itself causes not the least of the problems, based as it is on two set phrases which do not have any direct equivalent in English. To begin with, there is no such thing as a "snøvs". However, the phrase "At gå fra snøvsen" does exist, meaning to go off your rocker. In the story, Eigil hears his father use it, and immediately asks the impossible question as to what a "snøvs" is. The little creature he then dreams up when he receives no answer - a tough, resilient little thing, with no arms and only a single toe, looking rather like an overgrown parsnip - is the main "character" of the story. But Benny Andersen repeatedly makes use in his text of the rest of the original phrase, meaning to go from or to take leave of and any translation must take this on board because it has repercussions later. To coin an English word without connotations for "snøvs" would defeat the object of the original story. It would perhaps have been possible to base the translation on take leave of your senses, and to call the resultant creature, for instance, a sensis. That, at least, would allow for unproblematical treatment of the reminder of the pun at a later stage - but at the same time it would lose the rather everyday nature of the Danish phrase employed. "Rocker" is rather tempting, too, but in modern English it probably has too much of a secondary connotation to be entirely acceptable: if it were used in the title, there would probably still be too many children envisaging some youth dressed in black and riding a motorcycle. So in the accompanying extract, the choice has fallen on the slightly old-fashioned and innocuous tizzy - though the need to fit in the entire phrase to be in a tizzy with the Danish take leave of or go from snøvsen will inevitably cause problems at a later stage in the story.
    Then there is the question of the cat. Danish buys cats in bags, where English buys pigs in pokes. One can imagine an English-speaking Benny Andersen here making play on poke and have a pig as his central character - but to tread that path would be to re-write the book for him. The cat plays such a major part in the story that he has to be brought in somehow. Luckily, English has a closely related phrase: to let the cat out of the bag, and so at some stage in the story a transfer from one metaphor to the other has to be arranged. The bit about letting the cat out of the bag in this translation is thus an addition in the attempt to do just that.
    The present extract is taken from the 1992 version of the book. In the corresponding chapter of the 1967 version there was yet another phrase of the same kind: "hele molevitten", meaning the whole caboodle. The molovit/caboodle does not play any great part - though, ironically from the translator´s point of view, it would have been much simpler to adopt. Certainly, however, it raises the question in the child´s mind as to exactly what is meant by that word - in either language.

More than a mere story?
There is far more to this story than a first superficial reading might suggest. It has even been suggested that in it, Benny Andersen is moving within the field of linguistic philosophy, implying the philosophical concept of language as the key to existence. Be that as it may, one is here reminded of the other Andersen and his principle of providing food for thought for both children and adults at the same time. And that is good company to keep.

W. Glyn Jones is a Professor of Scandinarian Studies at the University of East Anglia and a literary translator.


Denne artikel blev første gang bragt i Danish Children´s Literature 4, 1993.