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which, I am ready to admit, is at times highly satisfactory, but by that very fact open to suspicion.
I need hardly add that surely no one has any business to attempt a translation of an Old Germanic monument who is not thoroughly conversant with both its higher and lower criticism. This is especially true in the case of the Edda, where whole stanzas have been most variously interpreted and the text fairly bristles with difficulties of all kinds. To pin one’s faith to one edition or text will never do; for if the translator should follow one edition through thick and thin he will presently find himself the slave of his chosen editor's theories;[1] instead of standing on his own feet. Let him bear in mind that, though assuredly interpretation, a translation is not a text.
The great difficulty of doing alliterative verse into Modern English lies in the restricted number of words from the old stock at hand. For, while scouting any rigorously puristic ideas, I yet hold emphatically that, to give a fair equivalent, Germanic material must be drawn upon to the utmost extent, and later elements used most sparingly and only whenever indispensable or unavoidable, and even then only after anxiously considering whether consonant with the total effect of the whole. The stylistic feeling of the translator must here be the court of last instance; for what is perfectly proper in one place—say in the more mediæval and knightly Atlamál—may be utterly out of place in a rough-shod ballad such as the Thrymskviða. And yet, I say it again, I lay the utmost stress on avoiding non-Germanic material, and see failure or success in the skill and resourcefulness with which the old vocabulary is handled.
At the same time I do not mean to be squeamish and avoid a given word just because it is not found in Anglo-Saxon before the battle of Hastings, or because I have preconceived notions about the relative merit of Teutonic and French-Latin elements. Any one who has given the matter thought knows that no amount of linguistic contortions will furnish Germanic equivalents for such oft-recurring words, embodying absolutely basic conceptions of Old Teutonic antiquity, as: war, battle, hero, glory, revenge, defeat, victory, peace, honor, and the like.[2] Still, wherever possible, Germanic words ought to be chosen, not because of Anglo-Saxo-mania, but because of the tang and flavor still residing in the homelier indigenous speech-material. I have no quarrel with those who are not aware of this. They are suffering with the painless evil of Ajax.
Another difficulty: the old Germanic poetry, however scant in content, and in however narrow circle it moves, is phenomenally rich in vocabulary and shines with a dazzling array of synonyms for one and the same conception. Scherer has shown how this state of affairs was brought about by the very principle of alliteration, and in its turn finally gave rise to the empty verbiage and jingling of Skaldic poetry, where sense is drowned in a flood of heiti and
- ↑ I note, e.g., that the author of a most valuable recent edition, with a cliquishness wholly unbecoming to serious scholarship, virtually ignores valuable suggestions made in a rival undertaking which I, for my part, gladly accept.
- ↑ May I take this opportunity again to call the attention of Germanic scholars to the remarkable volumes of Vilhelm Grönbech, Vor Folkeæt i Oldtiden dealing fundamentally with these conceptions; see my reviews, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1910, p. 269–278, and 1915. p. 124–135.
