Why should someone translate a poem like The Hunting … from English into Dutch, I mean. Dutch readers interested in Carroll or in English literature are able to read it in its original language, I suppose. Yes, when you want to tell the readers about your interpretation, when you add new notes or when you  have an artist who’s illustrations might enrich the (history of) the story … indeed, Henry Ruizenaar did, eight years ago.

Suddenly (in 2007) there was a new Dutch Snark, translated by Jan Kuijper, with the original text next to the Dutch one, with the original illustrations from Henry Holiday, without annotation and without  a single word about the translator’s interpretation or motivation. Is this just another translation? No, it’s brilliant! Jan Kuijper is a man of genius!  To me, his way is the ónly way to translate a poem: do not change the stanza’s, do not change rhyme, rhythm and metre, do not change the sounds … just fill up the scheme with Dutch words! Impossible? Yes … nearly, but Jan Kuijper did so. To me, he is a skilled labourer, an expert and an artist.

“The Hunting” is told in eight “fits”, ranging from 9 to 29 stanza’s. Together 141 stanza’s from 4 lines. The metre is the anapest and the lines contain 4, 3, 4, and 3 of these metrical feet from 3 syllables, so there are 12, 9, 12 and 9 syllables when the stanza is “perfect”. Yes …, forty-two, 42 syllables! (See for “sense and nonsense” about “42” in Carroll’s work and life: The annotated Snark from Martin Gardner or Henri Ruizenaar’s translation.)  A short survey of Carroll’s complete works learns me that he used this metrical construction (in a couplet of four lines) only in The Hunting of the Snark. There are about 22 stanza’s written in this ”perfect” metre. The famous last one is a beautiful example:

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away –
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

In Dutch there is one syllable missing … the very first one, but the reader might pause a second (extra), so close to the end of the horrible story:

Gelach noch gejuich zou hem ooit vergaan:
Halverwege de naam van het beest
Had hij zachtjes en plotseling niet meer bestaan –
Want de Slaai was een Poeman geweest.

Undoubtedly there are many Carrollians who “discovered” this quatrain a long time ago … let us call it a “Snarquatrain”! The very first “perfect”  snarquatrain, also a beautiful example,  is number six in Fit the First – The Landing:

There was one who was famed for the number of things  (n.b.!)
He forgot when he entered the ship:
His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings,
And the clothes he had bought for the trip.

And in the first line of the next stanza:  He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,  … of course, Carroll knew what he did! Jan Kuijper knows it too? Or is this the real expert? In his translation he has also forty-two syllables, but the female rhyme makes this quatrain just “a little less perfect” than the original:

Een was er vermaard om de veelheid van dingen
Die hij op de valreep vergat:
Paraplu, garderobe, horloge en ringen,
Alles wat hij zich aangeschaft had.

As  you see, the cause is the pluralis: things/rings is in Dutch dingen/ringen, one of the reasons why it is more difficult to use male then female rhyme in Dutch. At the other hand, Kuijper’s quatrain  has something extra: op de valreep means in Dutch: just in time and a valreep is a man-rope, so the translator makes a magnificent pun by playing upon these words!
Carroll’s male rhyme is very often changed in female but that is seldom disturbing. Moreover, the extra syllable without emphasis, the unmarked sjwa, might have been a pause and often one can “read“ it as the first syllable of the following line.

The way Jan Kuijper plays with the internal rhyme is sublime. I did not count all the lines with this surplus,  but it seems to me that Kuijper made even more than Carroll … one example:

Hij riep het nochtans en ook greep hij de kans
Op verwarring van boeg en roer –
Verwarring gezaaid als een schip wordt “geslaaid”
In de tropen, zoals hij bezwoer.

This is also one of the stanza’s in which the rhyme-scheme (mostly abab) is not followed; the translator very seldom did so.

Another clever  find is the translation of the third line of the fourth stanza in Fit the Third:

“If it once becomes dark, there’s no chance of a Snark –
“De avondstond heeft geen Slaai in de mond –

Translated litarelly: “The evening-hour has no Snark in its mouth“. There is a Dutch saying “De ochtendstond heeft goud in de mond”  (The morning-hour has gold in its mouth”) that means “Do your work early in the morning for the best results” … so, all Dutch readers will get this association and the translation has an extra dimension!
I might give numerous examples of beautiful “finds with an extra” but I will not … Dutch readers can look for themselves. There is one last example I quote, stanza 9 of the first fit … and you don’t have to know any Dutch to see how splendid it is translated:

Hij gaf sjoege op ‘Heet!’ of een andere kreet,
Zoals ‘Bak me dan!’, ‘Pruikkrakeling’,
Op ‘Hoe-zou-die-heten!’, Ík-zou-het-niet-weten!’,
Maar vooral op ‘Dinges-dom-ding!’.

Kuijper did not try to give all the personae a name with a B, that’s very wise.

Sometimes Kuijper choosed a too modern word; words that not existed in the second half of the nineteen’s century should not be used, I think.

On the backside of the book, the publisher (?) tells us something I don’t like. He calls the story “mysterious, virtuous, profound, nonsensical and especially funny …”.  Funny? Maybe it is funny for children and, of course, it is meant for them … to me Carroll’s humour in The Snark is oppressing. It was his only way to survive in this incomprehensible  world ; there is no-thing to catch … knowing we are agnostics, we keep searching…
The publisher goes on: “It was published  in 1883 …” As far as I know, it was late in March 1876. But most of all I became angry when I read: “Charles Ludwidge Dodgson (…) had a strong preference for little girls, (…)”. What is the use of saying things like this in these words? The suggestions are clear. Is this just to sell more copies?  The publisher should know better.

Jan Kuijper is a rather well known poet in The Netherlands, he translated Edward Lear and he wrote children’s books. But he must lóve this burleske, The Hunting of the Snark ! That makes me curious about his motives and his relation with Carroll’s work in general. When will he translate (the poems from) the “Alice-books”?  And in a reprint he might tell us something about his ideas, his interpretation from “The Hunting” … but a reprint will not come soon for this beautiful book was “ramsjed” in October …  you can buy it at “De Slegte” for 7 euro’s! (See: www.deslegte.com) Do it!

Franke Koksma