Dorrit Einersen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
The Reception of D. H. Lawrence in Denmark
Together with professor Arnt Lykke Jakobsen (Copenhagen Business School) I have written an article on "The Reception of D.H. Lawrence in Denmark" for the volume on "The Reception of D.H. Lawrence in Europe", Continuum 2007.
Lady Chatterley's Lover was the first Lawrence novel to be translated into Danish (1936) in a truncated and harmless version, and this novel is the only one to have been retranslated in 1950 in a faithful but unpoetical version, but still it is remarkable that the complete text was rendered into Danish as early as 1950 – 10 years before the Penguin trial of the novel.
In 1935 a fine translation of Sons and Lovers by the wellknown Danish writer Tom Kristensen appeared, and this was followed by Elias Bredsdorff's ponderous translation of Women in Love in 1936, as well as a dated translation by Ove Brusendorff of The Rainbow in 1943. Apart from these only Aaaron's Rod has been translated (1937).
Strangely enough Apocalypse has been translated twice into Danish, in 1969 and 1996, but the novels need to be translated or retranslated.
The reason why this has not happened may be either that those who are interested in Lawrence prefer to read his texts in English – because the general command of English is reasonably good in Denmark – or that Lawrence is not considered a difficult writer like Joyce or that he is considered a sexist misogynist after Kate Millett's Sexual Politics was translated into Danish in 1971.
It is perhaps symptomatic that the only recent publication (apart from Apocalypse from 1996) is Elaine Feinstein's trivial and popularized Lady Chatterley's Confession from 1996. A Lawrence revival in Denmark is definitely overdue, but outside the Danish universities – where interest in Lawrence is still kept alive – the general reading public seem to have moved away from him.