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226 NOTES
Greeting to Mrs. Louise Heiberg. The tenth, a characteristic, rather
long poem of vigor and value, New Year’s Epistle in Rhyme to Rec-
tor Steen, is extremely difficult to render into English verse.
The translator has thought it best not to include any of Bjérn-
son’s lyric productions not contained in the collection published
with his sanction during his life, the other lyrics in his tales, dramas,
and novels, many occasional short poems in periodicals and news-
papers which were abandoned by their author to their fugitive fate,
two noble lyrical cantatas, and a few fine poems written after the
year 1900.
The translation aims to reproduce as exactly as possible the verse-
form, meter, and rhyme of the original. This has been judged de-
sirable because music has been composed for so many of these songs
and poems, and each of them is, as it were, one with its musical
setting. But such reproduction seems also, on the whole, to be most
faithful and satisfactory, when the translator is not endowed with
poetic genius equal to that of the author. The very numerous double
(dissyllabic) rhymes of the Norwegian are not easy to render in
English. Recourse to the English present participle has been avoided
as much as possible. If it still seems to be too frequent, the trans-
lator asks some measure of indulgence in view of the fact that the
use here of the English present participle is formally not so unlike
that of the inflectional endings and of the post-positive article in
Norwegian.
The purpose of the Notes is to assist the better understanding
and appreciation of the contents of the book, by furnishing the ne-
cessary historical and biographical information. Of the persons re-
ferred to it is essential to know their dates, life-work, character,
influence, and relation to Bjérnson. The Notes have been drawn
from the accessible encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, biblio-
graphies, and histories. The notes of Julius Elias to his edition of
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