Finland's Saga

Heroes of the Kalevala: Finland’s Saga (1940), by Babette Deutsch. Illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg. (My Edition: Sixth Printing 1954. Not this cover.)

Much to my surprise, while I was trying to make a list of my Eichenberg books, I found that I had not cataloged this volume on the blog. Here is what I said about it on my other site:

“Heroes of the Kalevala, Finland's Saga, by Babette Deutsch, a simplified adaptation of the Kalevala for young people. Fritz Eichenberg is a rather famous artist better known for his work on heavy religious and social themes, but during his career he also illustrated and wrote many "children's books." Considering that the Kalevala was one of Tolkien's major influences, I sometimes can see these pictures as a sort of transposition of themes, a kind of "Silmarillion-Lite," especially images of two trees with the Sun and Moon at their tops.”

I looked up Babette Deutsch (1895-1982) this time and found out she was “an American poet, critic, translator, and novelist“ who was famed in her time for having made some of the best translations of Boris Pasternak’s poetry among the other 35 books to her credit. This sort of work for children seems to have been her amusement.