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convey a tittle more than their bare contents—which would be utterly unfair to the genius of the individual poems. It would cheat the student who has a right to demand at least an adumbration of the original in spirit and appeal.
But if prose be rejected, I can see no other alternative than just an absolutely faithful adherence to the original metres. For what other course is open to us? To write alliterative verse and then, ad libitum—or, shall I maliciously say, propter necessitatem—to do for several lines, or even stanzas, at a time without alliteration (which, I submit, is the very stuff and substance of the alliterative measures)—as does Olive Bray, is to fall between two stools. Again, it goes without saying, we cannot translate a Ljóðaháttr stanza in Fornyrðislag metre. Even to change Málaháttr into Fornyrðislag, and vice versa, is unwarranted. Nor is it possible to substitute a measure of our own invention;[1] unless, indeed, we intend to make a paraphrase and not a translation, as did e.g., William Morris in his Earthly Paradise. So, I say, there is no alternative to prose but just an absolutely faithful adherence to the original metres.
By faithful adherence I mean, of course, not slavish adherense. If, e.g., stanzas of the original should contain, here and there, as a license, a three-syllable half-line in a Fornyrðislag metre poem I would certainly not feel myself bound to follow suit. I hold it a good rule that the translator should, if anything, stick closer to the norm than the original: the possibility of text corruptions should very properly ever be present to him; unless, of course, irregularity be the norm, as in the Hárbarðsljóð.
Obviously, in the rendering of the sense of a passage it frequently may be necessary, owing to deep-going differences between archaic Old Norse and Modern English, to let whole stanzas go into the melting pot, to be entirely recast in conformity with English syntax. To do this, without serious damage to the spirit of the original, naturally is the hardest part of the translator’s task and one insuperable but to the serious student of Old Norse literature.
In the matter of text it should be the translator’s endeavor to adhere to the manuscript readings whenever possible. Personally, I do not let this prevent me from siding with the so-called ‘constructive’ editors, notably Gering, Finnur Jónsson, Sijmons—who refuse to grovel before the readings of the codices in all cases, as do Neckel, Detter and Heinzel—even where the corruption thereof stinketh to heaven, or at any rate defies an intelligent understanding.
Neither do I see why manifest interpolations should not be translated, if marked as such; or, again, why some of the happy restorations, by Gering, Sophus Bugge, and Svend Grundtvig, of lost lines or stanzas should not be incorporated, providing the conjecture be made evident as such at a glance.
On the other hand I refuse to go as far as Genzmer, the author of the most recent German translation, who under the leadership of the brilliant and poetically gifted Andreas Heusler attempts a rapprochement to modern taste
- ↑ I call attention to my colleague, Professor Leonard’s adaptation of the Nibelungen stanza for the translation of Beowulf. (University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature.) No. 2.
