Olav H. Hauge

horticulturist, translator and poet

Verse

If you can make a verse

that a farmer finds worth in,

you should be content.

A smith you’ll never understand.

Worst to please is a woodworker.

- from Drops in Eastern Wind (1966)

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This week is Autumn Holiday in Norway. I turn the lights on in the shop most days, but I don’t do very much; a spot of sharpening, some light maintenance and a lot of staring into the middle distance while my thoughts fly free.

When I’m not making dust I like to read and listen to music. This week is set aside for Wasily Grossman’s ‘Life and Fate’. Reading and writing is the best bridge between human hearts and minds. That I — little, insignificant me! — can take some small part in this timeless, slow-flowing conversation spanning centuries fills me with awe and gratitude. Gratitude most of all to my Father who was a teacher, a good husband to my Mother and who kept a well-stocked library in the little prefab social-democratic row-house I grew up in. The walls were covered with books — everything from The Bhagavad Gita to de Sade. All my questions were answered honestly.

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When I was a wee boy, my father would read stories from Snorre’s Sagas to me. On a Sunday afternoon, while the roast was broiling in the oven, I would nestle in his armpit on the sofa while he would read fantastic tales of heroic battles, great longships, feats of arms, derring-do and laconic wit … for instance:

During a feud, a raiding party surrounded the farmhouse of Gunnar, their adversary. Gunnar and his men were holed up inside and Torgrim decides to reconnoitre by climbing up onto the roof and peer down through the smoke-hole. His enemies inside hear him climbing up and manage to thrust a spear up his groin as he peers into the darkness inside.

He manages to climb down where Gissur asks:

- Was Gunnar home?

Torgrim answers:

- You find out! But I do know that his spear was home.

Then he dropped dead.

Just the thing to keep small boys entertained while waiting for dinner.

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Literature transcends petty limitations; it renders them null and void; it opens up an interior landscape spanning the breadth of human experience — all yours for the small price of literacy and a bit or perseverance. It offers you a fellowship of humanity so very unlike social media that only offers you an exploitative, narcissistic addiction.

And music! Music must be the language of the gods. My old hero, Harold Skjøldt, used to impress on me that ‘God is an acoustician!’ I didn’t quite get it back then; I was too busy trying to please the girls, but it’s beginning to dawn on me now. The Pythagoreans were not on to nothing.

But back to our poet …

Olav H. Hauge is one of my favourite poets. He writes in a traditional West-Country dialect from Hardanger. Norway was historically such an inhospitable and difficult country to traverse for most of the year that we’ve retained a variety of dialects. To understand Norway you should sail around the coast — it only makes sense from a sailor’s perspective. Some dialects resonate deeper than others, and Hauge was a Master of making his words sing. This is all lost in translation … the rich depth of meaning and metre, the allusions, the alliterations, the deceptive simplicity of wording. It’s all in the tradition of the Sagas — the old stories.

The greatness of America lies in its ability to throw up truly brilliant individuals like Dr. Jackson Crawford. He’s not only handsome as a movie star, but as far I can judge, extremely knowledgeable. Apart from his teaching he also runs a YouTube channel full of high quality linguistic content, and he has a soft spot for our man Olav H. Hauge — to the extent that he’s translated some of his poetry. A difficult task; much is lost but the basic meaning remains. I think he’s done a very good job, but judge for yourself.

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Today and Tomorrow

I am just a spark of the great fire

and as I was born in the darkness

I will go dark one night

I am the wave that hits land in this hour

born again and filled again

and I grow old and sink to sleep

I am the leaf that quakes in this spring

you will tremble in the storm another year

I am the waking, the owning, the eye that sees

the drop that now mirrors the face of the sky

I live and I burn and I don’t know why

the world with its flowers and women, today is mine

You will own all the beauty on this earth

when I have long ago gone and my tracks are no more

- from Embers in Ashes (1946 debut)

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Too heavy? Too existentially angsty? Sigh … Grow up! Only children dream of sugar and happiness. Life’s a struggle and then you die, but there are consolations along the way: peace, beauty, children, cats, music, books, food & drink, sweet sleep … life is a bloody parade of pleasures, but you better not forget: memento mori!

You might even die well.

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