The best book you never read

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- "Kristin Lavransdatter" has been described as the best book you never read. Is this masterpiece of psychological fiction neglected because of the overt Catholicism and social conservatism of its author?

In the autumn of 1966, I spent stolen hours at Glynco Naval Air Station, near the Sea Islands of Georgia, rapturous in the company of a beautiful Norwegian blonde. That she was an imaginary character who lived in the 14th century mattered less than you might think. The "relationship" tore me up and affects me still.

Although I return periodically to other favorite novels, I've never re-read "Kristin Lavransdatter" (1920-1922), Sigrid Undset's monumental trilogy that tracks the life of a medieval woman from childhood to death. Kristin was special -- and when it's over, it's over.

But, truth to tell, something else held me back. Charles Archer's wretched translation produced an annoyance on almost every page. In an apparent effort to impart the flavor of olden times, Archer rendered Undset's 20th century Norwegian into contrived, pseudo-archaic English reminiscent of the worst of Sir Walter Scott. "Yes" and "no" become "ay" and "nay." Word order is inverted and sentences are convoluted. "Methinks," "say naught," "I trow" and "think not" mar the text.

Tiina Nunnally's splendid new translation makes the novel accessible in Undset's straightforward prose style. "I was very dismayed at the old translation myself," Nunnally told United Press International in a phone interview from Seattle. "It was terribly unkind to the author's work."

Even so, Nunnally said, the Archer translation had been selling steadily at about 5,000 copies a year and has never been out of print since the 1920s, "a remarkable publishing history."

Undset won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. Still, most people will respond to the title with a blank stare, and Undset's work is perennially unfashionable among the black-turtleneck set.

Who is this headstrong Kristin, and who was the author who immortalized her creation?

"Kristin Lavransdatter" is "arguably the greatest Catholic novel, and arguably the greatest woman's novel, ever written," the Rev. C. John McCloskey told UPI. The priest, director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, has been the guest host of two series (26 shows) about Catholic authors on EWTV, the Eternal Word Television Network.

"It's a novel that has perhaps the greatest insight into the human psyche," McCloskey continued, "but particularly the feminine psyche, in terms of the impact of sin on a person's life, in that sin against God or another person is not something that one simply does and then repents and then it disappears. But even if one has repented and has been forgiven, nonetheless it leaves an imprint on the person's life throughout their entire life."

Speaking as a priest with long pastoral experience, McCloskey said one also sees the effects of sin across the generations. What makes it such an interesting novel, he said, is that the sins or vices of one's grandparents "can descend."

Kristin escapes an arranged marriage to a worthy but boring man and begins an illicit affair with a handsome, impetuous knight whom she marries. Both bliss and discord follow, along with children and motherhood, a desperate political gamble, ruin, redemption and death.

Nunnally said that, more than style and plot, Undset knows people. "Her characters are so vivid and so flawed, but that makes them so interesting. Kristen is such a real person. We can picture ourselves making some of these terrible mistakes she makes and understanding that she has to then suffer the consequences."

The translator said her interest is in attracting new readers, and younger readers, to Undset's work.

Undset was born in 1882, the daughter of a Danish mother and a Norwegian archaeologist who introduced the child to the world of Iron Age and medieval Scandinavia and taught her to read Old Norse.

Nunnally's introduction to "The Wreath" says that at age 10, Undset discovered "Njal's Saga," a tale of 10th century Iceland, which Undset would call the most important turning point in her life. The word that best describes the saga is "relentless." Good but flawed people get caught up in events -- some of their own making, and some not -- that unfold with the force of nature.

Undset's father died young, leaving the family poor. At 17, Sigrid went to work as a secretary for an electrical firm and stayed in that job for 10 years. A publisher rejected her first attempt at historical fiction in 1904. A modern novel of infidelity and a book of short stories met with success, as did "Gunnar's Daughter," a narrative set in the Middle Ages, the period Nunnally says Undset perceived as her "own time."

In 1910, when traveling to Italy on a grant, Undset met and fell in love with Anders Castus Svarstad, a married Norwegian painter 13 years her senior who had three children. After two years of upheaval and pain for all concerned, the two were married in June 1912 at the Norwegian consulate in Antwerp, Belgium. Undset was already pregnant with their first child.

"Undset herself had abortions," McCloskey said. "She had a very difficult marriage. ... She was a feminist before her time. So she had lived through all that experience herself and then spilled it out in this book."

Two artistic temperaments, not enough money, three stepchildren and three others (one severely retarded) proved too great a strain. The couple split in 1919, and the marriage was annulled when Undset converted to Catholicism in 1924 on the grounds that the church did not recognize Svarstad's divorce from his first wife.

Tim Page, the Washington Post's Pulitzer-Prize winning music critic, has played an important role in making Undset's work accessible to modern readers. "Jenny," her semi-autobiographical novel that describes the freewheeling lives of artsy expatriates in Rome before World War I, forms the backbone of his new edited volume, "The Unknown Sigrid Unset: Jenny and Other Works."

"The translation of 'Jenny' was even worse than the one of 'Kristin Lavransdatter,'" Page said in an interview. "There was a huge amount missing. But I still read it and I was still very moved by it, which is why it became a crusade of mine to get a new translation of 'Jenny' out.

"I learned about 'Jenny' through Dawn Powell," he continued. Page has been very active in reviving the work of the long-neglected, Powell (1896-1965). His biography of the underrated writer of crystalline, unsentimental satiric novels appeared in 1998. On Powell's list of the novels that meant most to her, "Jenny," was the only one Page did not know. He had tried to read "Kristin Lavransdatter," but was stopped by the translation.

Page discovered that Nunnally had begun translating "Kristin Lavransdatter." Impressed with that effort, he arranged for Nunnally to do the translation of "Jenny" that appears in his book.

Is Undset absent from the feminist canon because she was an unabashed Catholic who put the emphasis on women's biological nature and her view that motherhood is the highest duty to which a woman can aspire?

"I would say that's definitely the case," Page said. "She is a strong woman who is not a feminist." Page also put Powell, Willa Cather and "a number of other fine women writers" into that category. Powell's life in Greenwich Village was somewhat Bohemian, but -- Page said -- she was not "of the left," and Undset and Cather were social conservatives.

Page said that Undset's fatalism and pessimism also contribute to her neglect. Neither Undset, Powell, nor Cather thought life was "some grand Utopian adventure," he said.

In his introduction to "The Unknown Sigrid Undset," Page writes that the novelist was "a fearless chronicler of the human condition who detested cant, frivolity, and grafted-on happy endings. ...

"She knew that the struggle between the need to express her talents and the equally powerful imperative to love and protect her children was the central and potentially tragic contradiction in the life of every woman artist."

Nunnally thinks the third volume of "Kristin Lavransdatter" (The Cross) is the best. "A lot of people who tried to read the old translation never made it that far," she said. "Kristin becomes so much wiser in that book, and I love the fact that she's looking back on her life and understanding a lot more than in the other two volumes. It's very touching, I think."

McCloskey said the novel gives theological insight to the biblical story of Adam and Eve.

"You might ask yourself, 'Why are we born with original sin?' We didn't commit it, but nonetheless sin leaves an imprint not only psychologically but almost physically damages human nature. So 'Kristin Lavransdatter' is probably from birth to death one of the greatest insights -- explanations -- both of the power of sin, but at the end the beauty of redemption."

But if Kristin had been a good girl and married the boring Simon, there wouldn't have been much of a story.

"Of course not," the priest said. "Sin and redemption are much more interesting, unfortunately, than just pure virtue."

After 35 years, thanks to Nunnally's intercession, Kristin and I are getting back together. Old loves die hard.