The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature Part 8

These stages in the progress of the gold from mine to mint furnish their own commentary. The finished product will pa.s.s current with the most exacting of a.s.sayers, as well as gladden the hearts of the poor one whose hand seldom touches gold.

If the skill of the poet in this case have merited resemblance to that of the refiner of gold, what name less than alchemy can characterize his achievement in the rest of this scene? From the first words of Brynhild's life-story:

I am she that loveth; I was born of the earthly folk;

to the tender words that tell of the coming of another day:

And fresh and all abundant abode the deeds of Day,

there is a succession of beautiful scenes and glorious speeches such as only a master of magic could have gotten out of the original story. The Eddaic account of the Valkyr's disobedience to All-Father, pictures a saucy and self-willed maiden. Sentence has been p.r.o.nounced upon her, and thus the story continues: "But I said I would vow a vow against it, and marry no man that knew fear." The _Volsunga Saga_ gives exactly the same account, but the poetic version of Morris saves the maiden for our respect and admiration. It is not effrontery, but repentance that speaks in the voice of Brynhild here:

The thoughts of my heart overcame me, and the pride of my wisdom and speech, And I scorned the earth-folk's Framer, and the Lord of the world I must teach.

In the Icelandic version, Odin makes no speech at the dooming, but Morris puts into his mouth this magnificent address:

And he cried: "Thou hast thought in thy folly that the G.o.ds have friends and foes, That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and the world slips back, That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and fashion the wrack: Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall aback on thine head; Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed!

For the G.o.ds are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom seen, And the wrong that they will and must be is soon as it hath not been."

(P. 141.)

Morris has here again exercised the poet's privilege of adding to the story that was the pride of an entire age, in order to serve his own the better. If he was wise in these additions, he was no less wise in subtractions and in preservations. The saga has a long address by Brynhild, opening with mystical advice concerning the power of runes, and closing grandly with wise words that sound like a page from the Old Testament. The former find no place in _Sigurd the Volsung_, but the latter are turned into mighty phrases that wonderfully preserve the spirit of the original.

One pa.s.sage more from Book II:

So they climb the burg of Hindfell, and hand in hand they fare, Till all about and above them is nought but the sunlit air, And there close they cling together rejoicing in their mirth; For far away beneath them lie the kingdoms of the earth, And the garths of men-folk's dwellings and the streams that water them, And the rich and plenteous acres, and the silver ocean's hem, And the woodland wastes and the mountains, and all that holdeth all; The house and the ship and the island, the loom and the mine and the stall, The beds of bane and healing, the crafts that slay and save, The temple of G.o.d and the Doom-ring, the cradle and the grave.

(P. 145.)

These ten lines serve to ill.u.s.trate very well one of the most remarkable powers of Morris. Just consider for a moment the number of details that are crowded into this picture, and then notice how few are the strokes required to put them there. For this rapid painting of a crowded canvas Morris is second to none among English poets. This power to put a whole landscape or a complex personality into a few lines is the direct outcome of his study of Old Norse literature. Icelandic poetry is characterized by this quality. One has but to compare the account of the end of the world as it is found in the last strophes of _Voluspa_, or in the _Prose Edda_, with the similar account in _Revelations_ to see how much two languages may differ in this respect. It would seem as if the short verses characteristic of Icelandic poetry forbade lengthy descriptions. The effect must be produced by a number of quick strokes: there is never time to go over a line once made. A simile is never elaborated, a new one is made when the poet wishes to insist on the figure. Take the second strophe of the "Ancient Lay of Gudrun" as an example, in the translation by Morris and Magnusson:

Such was my Sigurd Among the Sons of Giuki As is the green leek O'er the low gra.s.s waxen, Or a hart high-limbed Over hurrying deer, Or gleed-red gold Over grey silver.

That is the Icelandic fashion; William Morris has caught it in the _Story of Sigurd_. Matthew Arnold has not seen fit to use it in his "Balder Dead," as these lines show:

Him the blind Hoder met, as he came up From the sea cityward, and knew his step; Nor yet could Hermod see his brother's face, For it grew dark; but Hermod touched his arm.

And as a spray of honeysuckle flowers Brushes across a tired traveller's face Who shuffles thro the deep-moistened dust, On a May-evening, in the darkened lanes, And starts him that he thinks a ghost went by-- So Hoder brushed by Hermod's side.

These are n.o.ble lines, but altogether foreign to Icelandic.

Book III opens with the dream of Gudrun and Brynhild's interpretation of it. This matter is managed in accordance with our own standards of art, and thus differs materially from the saga story. In the latter a most nave procedure is adopted, for Brynhild prophesies that Sigurd shall leave her for Gudrun, through Grimhild's guile, that strife shall come between them, and that Sigurd shall die and Gudrun wed Atli. The whole later story is thus revealed. This is not a story-teller's art, but it sets clear the Old Norse acceptance of fate's dealings. Of course Morris' poetic action explains the dream perfectly, but the details are not so frankly given.

"Thou shalt live and love and lose, and mingle in murder and war," is the gist of Brynhild's message, and the whole future history is there.

This poem has often been called an epic, and certainly there are many epical characteristics in it. One of them is the recurrence of certain formulas, and in Books III and IV these are rather more abundant than in the first two books. Thus the sword of Sigurd is praised in the same words, again and again:

It hath not its like in the heavens nor has earth of its fellow told.

Then, there is the "cloudy hall-roof" of the Niblungs. Gudrun is "the white-armed"; Grimhild is "the wisest of women"; Hogni is the "wise-heart"; the Niblungs are "the Cloudy People"; their beds are "blue-covered"; "the G.o.dson the hangings" is an expression that recurs very often, and it recalls the fact that Morris was an artisan as well as an artist.

In the preceding books we have noted that Morris lengthened the saga story in his poem by the introduction of speeches that find no place in the original. In this book we see another lengthening process, which, with that already noted, goes far to account for the difference in bulk between the saga and the poem. Chap. XXVI of the saga, tells in less than a thousands words how Sigurd comes to the Giukings and is wedded to Gudrun. His reception is told in one hundred words; his abode with the Giukings is set forth in even fewer words; Grimhild's plotting and administering of the drugged drink are told in two hundred words; his acceptance of Gudrun's hand and her brother's allegiance are as tersely pictured; kingdoms are conquered, a son is born to Sigurd, and Grimhild plots to have Sigurd get Brynhild for her son Gunnar, yet the record of it all is compressed within one hundred and fifty words. Of course, the modern poet can hem himself within no such narrow bounds as this. The artistic value of these various incidents is priceless, and Morris has lingered upon them lovingly and long. He spreads the story over forty pages, or a thousand lines, and I avow, after a third reading of these three sections of the poem, that I would spare no line of them. How we love this Sigurd of the poet's painting! And what a n.o.ble gospel he proclaims to the Giukings:

For peace I bear unto thee, and to all the kings of the earth, Who bear the sword aright, and are crowned with the crown of worth; But unpeace to the lords of evil, and the battle and the death; And the edge of the sword to the traitor, and the flame to the slanderous breath: And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the weary should sleep, And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth should reap.

(P. 174.)

Here, by the way, is the burden of Morris's preaching in the cause of a better society. It recurs a few pages further on in the poem, where the Niblungs bestow praise on this new hero:

And they say, when the sun of summer shall come aback to the land, It shall shine on the fields of the tiller that fears no heavy hand; That the sleep shall be for the plougher, and the loaf for him that sowed, Through every furrowed acre where the Son of Sigmund rode.

(P. 178.)

It need hardly be remarked that this Sigurd is not the sagaman's ideal.

The Icelanders never evolved such high conceptions of man's obligations to man, but in their ignorance they were no worse off than their continental brethren, for these forgot their greatest Teacher's teaching, and modern social science must point them back to it.

This Sigurd that we love becomes the Sigurd that we pity in the drinking of a draught. Sorrow takes the place of joy in his life, and "the soul is changed in him," so that men may say that on this day they saw him die the first time, who was to die a second time by Guttorm's sword.

Gloom spreads over all the earth with the quenching of Sigurd's joy:

In the deedless dark he rideth, and all things he remembers save one, And nought else hath he care to remember of all the deeds he hath done.

Here is ill.u.s.trated the essential difference between the sagaman's art and the modern story-teller's. The Icelander must tell his story in haste; the deeds of men are his care, not their divagations nor their psychologizings. The modern writer must linger on every step in the story until the motive and the meaning are laid bare. In the present-day version Sigurd's mental sufferings are described at length, and our hearts are wrung at his unmerited woes. The saga knows no such woes, and to all appearance Sigurd's life is not unhappy to its very end. Indeed, it appears in more than one place in Morris's poem that Sigurd has become G.o.dlike through the hard experiences of his life. Take this pa.s.sage as an ill.u.s.tration:

So is Sigurd yet with the Niblungs, and he loveth Gudrun his wife, And wendeth afield with the brethren to the days of the dooming of life; And nought his glory waneth, nor falleth the flood of praise: To every man he hearkeneth, nor gainsayeth any grace, And, glad is the poor in the Doom-ring when he seeth his face mid the Kings, For the tangle straighteneth before him, and the maze of crooked things.

But the smile is departed from him, and the laugh of Sigurd the young, And of few words now is he waxen, and his songs are seldom sung.

Howbeit of all the sad-faced was Sigurd loved the best; And men say: Is the king's heart mighty beyond all hope of rest?

Lo, how he beareth the people! how heavy their woes are grown!

So oft were a G.o.d mid the Goth-folk, if he dwelt in the world alone.

(P. 205.)

Set this by the side of the saga: "This is truer," says Sigurd, "that I loved thee better than myself, though I fell into the wiles from whence our lives may not escape; for whenso my own heart and mind availed me, then I sorrowed sore that thou wert not my wife; but as I might I put my trouble from me, for in a king's dwelling was I; and withal and in spite of all I was well content that we were all together. Well may it be, that that shall come to pa.s.s which is foretold; neither shall I fear the fulfilment thereof." (_Volunga Saga_, Chap. XXIX.) These words are spoken to Brynhild after she has discovered what she regards as Sigurd's treachery. His words are dictated by a n.o.ble resignation to fate, but his very next remark shows a moral meanness not at all in keeping with Morris's conception. Sigurd said: "This my heart would, that thou and I should go into one bed together; even so wouldst thou be my wife."

There have been many griefs depicted in this poem, but surely here are set forth the most pitiless of them all. The guile-won Brynhild travels in state to the Cloudy Hall of the Niblungs, and the whole people come out to meet her. They are astonished at her beauty, and give her cordial greeting and welcome to her husband's house. Proud and majestic, the marvelous woman steps from her golden wain, and gives friendly but pa.s.sionless greeting to Gunnar as she places her hand in his. For each of Gunnar's brothers she has a kindly word, as she has for Grimhild, too. She asks to see the foster-brother of whom such wondrous tales are told, and whose name she heard from Gunnar's lips with never a tremor--"Sigurd, the Volsung, the best man ever born." Grimhild stands between them for a time, but the meeting has to come. Then Brynhild remembers, and Sigurd sees the unveiled past:

Her heart ran back through the years, and yet her lips did move With the words she spake on Hindfell, when they plighted troth of love.

His face is exceeding glorious and awful to behold; For of all his sorrow he knoweth and his hope smit dead and cold:

For the will of the Norns is accomplished, and outworn is Grimhild's spell And nought now shall blind or help him, and the tale shall be to tell.

(P. 226.)

There's the note of the whole history--the will of the Norns and the note of a whole Northern literature, as it is of a whole Southern literature. Man, the puppet, in the hands of Fate; however man may think and reason and a.s.sure himself that the dispensation of Fate is just, the supreme moment of realization will always be a tragedy:

He hath seen the face of Brynhild, and he knows why she hath come, And that his is the hand that hath drawn her to the Cloudy People's home: He knows of the net of the days, and the deeds that the G.o.ds have bid, And no whit of the sorrow that shall be from his wakened soul is hid.