Love without Stockings

By Johan Herman Wessel

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    This is a verse translation from Danish of a parody of neoclassical tragedy by Norwegian Johan Herman Wessel entitled Kiærlighed uden Strømper, second edition (1774) – ie, with epilog – a masterpiece of Scandinavian literature.  Look it up if you want, but the descriptions are all full of spoilers.

    Neoclassical tragedy was a century-old theatrical genre designed by a committee of Frenchmen.  What could possibly go wrong.  It was so overspec'd that the actors could barely move – no swooning, no eating, no stabbing, no soliloquies, not even any deus ex machina!  Nonetheless, Louis XIV – aka the Sun King – and all his descendents – up until the guillotine cut them off – just loved it, as did everyone who was anyone in France during that past century, especially if they wanted to go on breathing.  Because it said only nice things about royalty, the other royals of Europe all loved it too, as did their associated aristocracies, mercenaries, merchants, bishops, hangers-on and assorted other parasites.  But not in the British Isles.

    After dominating the European royal stages for a century, it was long overdue for a good parody.  Instead there arose a movement to create such plays in Danish and Norwegian – essentially different dialects of a single language.  (Don't tell them I said that.)  Fortunately this author lampooned it before it got started, thus sparing the northern kingdoms from an even greater tedium than winter solstice.  You know it's really bad art when the parody becomes more famous than the original, at least in the lands where they can understand it.

    That's a problem because, even though it's supposed to be theatrical not poetic, the entire genre was written in alexandrines – ie, iambic hexameter couplet verse!  How ya gonna translate that?  So for the past quarter millennium, it's been the exclusive delight of the Scandinavians, except for a bad French translation, a really bad German translation and another French one not so much bad as execrable – all done back when the genre was still dying, not yet dead.

    Here's how he did it.  Wessel obeyed enough of the rules to make clear what he was lampooning, then broke as many of the rest as he could within just five acts, even doubled the length of the final act to allow time to break several more.  Effectively, he dropped Holberg-style commoners onto the royal stage, compelled them to put on tragic airs and speak in alexandrines, and otherwise turned them loose with no hint as to the quantity of French thespian glassware out there just begging to be shattered every time they in any way behaved like real people.  Then, to screw things up royally, he also parodied the other imported theatrical genre, Italian opera, by throwing in several spoofs of arias, which were of course also forbidden from the French genre – 2 for 1.

    If anyone in France had done what Wessel did, but in French, they would have been looking at serious jail time – make that dungeon time.  But he was safe up in Copenhagen, right?  No, it was still kind of a gutsy thing to do, since they had recently held a palace coup where the losers were publicly executed and the pieces stuck up on the city wall for the birds to peck at.  Oh, and the king was insane.  That was one royal court that you really didn't wanna mess with.  But Wessel had courage – or at least recklessness – and talent, and style.

• Language: English
• Publisher: non·standard thought
• Release date: Feb 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9781962461085

Book preview

Love

without

Stockings

A

Tragedy

in Five Acts

by

Johan Herman Wessel

Second Edition

Copenhagen 1774

verse translation from Danish by Dennis Black

Copyright © 2024 by Dennis Black

All rights reserved.

ISBN:  978-1-962461-08-5

Publisher:  non·standard thought

First edition:  February 2024

This is a verse translation of

Kiærlighed uden Strømper + epilog

published a quarter millennium ago,

a Norwegian's Danish-language spoof

of neoclassical tragedy, a theatrical

genre that died shortly thereafter,

a victim of the French revolution,

like men's knee pants + stockings.

translation dedicated

to poet Poul Borum

in memorum

translation

1772

Characters

Johan von Ehrenpreis, journeyman tailor

The name Johan von Ehrenpreis is German.  The von – meaning of or from – makes it an aristocrat’s name.  The word after the von ought to be the place-name of the aristocrat’s domain.  Ehrenpreis literally means honor prize – i.e., honorary award, easily construable as unearned distinction.  It’s also the name of a little flower, a blue snapdragon, genus veronica.

Greta, Johan’s fiancée

Grete – here Greta to avoid being mispronounced like Crete – sounds an awful lot like Danish græde and Norwegian gråte meaning to weep, so an alternative translation might be Mona – sounds like to moan.  Careful, if you change it, you have to make it rhyme.

Metta, Greta’s confidant

Mette is here Metta to avoid being mispronounced like Bette.

Mads, Greta’s hapless suitor

Danish improper noun mad means food, and mads means food's, so what does that say about Mads?

Jesper, Mads’s pal

Act One

Scene One

Greta alone

Asleep in a chair,

wakes up and says:

You never shall be wed unless today it be!

Oh, vision all too foul! It seems to me I see

still now the ghost so black and hear his threat as ever

in that same thund’rous voice. So now that hope I never

will see fulfilled, on which so firmly I had planned,

as on my tailor’s lap, around his back my hand,

so oft I heard him say, his voice with longing laden,

that I was best of all, his one and only maiden,

and that my merest glance cut straight through to his heart,

and that he could not bear that we should be apart.

Soliloquies are forbidden.

How faithless!  Now I wish I knew what pain you’re feeling!

Between the two of us no devil could come stealing;

your passion was my smile; my hint was law for you.

You swore on that and lied, and such a gross lie too!

For since the time that you to me your promise stated

that you would come back here, for eight whole days I’ve waited.

I curse that officer who tore his pants in two!

But no, untrue Johan, accurst be rather you!

That messenger who claimed an officer had told him

to carry word to you that now the pants you’d sold him

last year had gone to rags, and fast another pair

you’d have to make, for he had nothing else to wear –

the hopes I’d built, he had conspired with you to level.

You two rode off to raise not trousers but the Devil!

How could there well occur suspicion in my mind?

I was so gullible and by my love made blind.

Stone blind I must have been that I imagine couldn’t

that never such a man, a perfect major wouldn’t

be in a pinch for pants. Well, now too late I see . . .

After some silence.

You never shall be wed unless today it be!

Stop thundr’ing in my ears, and go away, Black Spirit.

But no, I do not hear. I only seem to hear it.

Scene Two

Metta.  Greta.

Metta

What new distress, mah-surr, is causing you to cry?

How this alarms my soul!

French ma sœur means my sister.  They’re not sisters.  Metta’s just trying to be chummy and sophisticated at the same time.  Wessel wrote it as Masør indicating that she substitutes a Danish vowel for the second French one, and utterly demolishes the trailing consonant.  Still it was a common enough phrase in those days – like déjà vu is now – so everyone got the idea.  She later has no difficulty with seigneur, so the error is due to not