What is it about?
This is not only the first English translation of Aleksis Kivi's 1866 one-act play "Kihlaus" ("The Betrothal," here rendered archaically "The Troth-Plight") but an archaizing translation that follows Kivi's own manuscript corrections exactly.
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Why is it important?
Kivi's greatest works are his 1870 novel Seitsemän veljestä ("The Brothers Seven," Zeta Books, 2017) and his 1864 five-act play Nummisuutarit ("Heath Cobblers," North Star Press of St. Cloud, 1993); apart from several poems, this is his only short-form classic--and it has never been translated into English before. This text also provides an introduction and a facsimile page of Kivi's manuscript.
Perspectives
I've always wanted to translate this short play, but didn't know where to place a translation of this brevity. Having translated Heath Cobblers and published it in 1993, and The Brothers Seven and published it in 2017, The Troth-Plight was the last great Kivi work untranslated by me!
Professor Douglas J. Robinson
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Appendix 3 An English Translation of Kihlaus (1866) as The Troth-Plight, January 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004340268_009.
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