The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature Part 9

(P. 226.)

In such an hour, what are conquests of a glorious past, what are honors, crowns, loves, hates? The mind can think of little matters only:

His heart speeds back to Hindfell, and the dawn of the wakening day; And the hours betwixt are as nothing, and their deeds are fallen away.

(P. 226.)

Is aught to be said to one in such a crisis, the words are weak and commonplace. There is Brynhild's greeting to Sigurd:

If aught thy soul shall desire while yet thou livest on earth, I pray that thou mayst win it, nor forget its might and worth.

The shattered mind of Sigurd tries to grasp the meaning of the harmless words, and like common sounds that are so fearful in the night, the phrases a.s.sume a terrible import:

All grief, sharp scorn, sore longing, stark death in her voice he knew.

Then again conies the dominant note of this story:

Gone forth is the doom of the Norns, and what shall be answer thereto, While the death that amendeth lingers?

Here is a hint of the end of all--"the death that amendeth," and from this point to the end of the story there is no gleam of happiness for anyone.

Book IV brings to a majestic close this mighty history. We have dwelt so long on the wonderful poetry of the other books that we must refrain from further comment in this strain. As we read these eloquent imaginings, we regret that the English reading public have left this work through fear of its great length or the ignorance of its existence, in the dust of half-forgotten shelves. Gold disused is true gold none the less, and the ages to come may be more appreciative than the present.

For the sake of rounding out this story, be it noted concerning this Book IV, that the poet has taken liberties with the saga story here, as elsewhere. Motives more easily understood in our day are a.s.signed for the deeds of dread that throng these closing scenes. Gudrun weds King Atli at her mother's bidding, and under the influence of a wicked potion, but neither mother nor magic drives the memory of Sigurd from her mind. She lives to bring destruction upon her husband's murderers, and those murderers are her own flesh and blood. Through her appeals to Atli's greed, and through Knefrud's lies in the Niblung court, the visit of her proud brothers to her pliant husband is brought about. The saga makes Atli the arch-plotter, and the motive his desire to possess the gold. This sentence exculpates Gudrun from any wrong intention towards her brothers: "Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and mis...o...b..s her that this would mean some beguiling of her brethren." (Chap. x.x.xIV.) In Chap. x.x.xVIII, we are told that Gudrun fights on the side of her brothers. We see at once the superiority of the poet's motive for a modern tragedy.

It is impressed upon the reader of an epic that the plan of its maker does not call for fine a.n.a.lysis of character. The epic poet is concerned necessarily with large considerations, and his personages do not split hairs from the south to the southeast side. One sign of this is seen in the epic formulae employed to characterize the personages of the story.

Such formulas are in _Sigurd the Volsung_ in abundance, as we have noted on another page. But there are also many departures from the epic model in this poem. Some of these we have referred to in the remarks on Book III, where we noted Sigurd's mental sufferings. In Book IV we have a discrimination of character that is not epic, but dramatic in its minuteness. In the speech and the deeds of the Niblungs their pride and selfishness is clearly set forth, but the individual members of that race are distinguished by traits very minutely drawn. Thus Hogni is the wary Niblung, and is averse to accepting Atli's invitation:

"I know not, I know not," said Hogni, "but an unsure bridge is the sea, And such would I oft were builded betwixt my foeman and me.

I know a sorrow that sleepeth, and a wakened grief I know, And the torment of the mighty is a strong and fearful foe."

(P. 281.)

Gunnar is here distinguished as a hypocrite by word and deed; Gudrun remembers Sigurd in her exile and schemes and plots to make her husband Atli work her vengeance on the Niblungs; Atli is greedy for gold and Gudrun's task is not hard; Knefrud is a liar whose words are winning, and overcome the scruples of the Niblungs. In these careful discriminations of character we see a non-epical trait, and of necessity therefore, a non-Icelandic trait. The sagaman was epic in his tone.

As a last appreciation of the art of William Morris as it is displayed in this poem, we would call attention to the tremendous battle-piece ent.i.tled "Of the Battle in Atli's Hall." It is the climax of this marvelous poem, and in no detail is it inadequate to its place in the work. The poet's constructive power is here demonstrated to be of the highest order, and in the majestic sweep of events that is here depicted, we see the poet in his original role of _maker_. The sagaman's skill had not the power to conceive this t.i.tanic drama, and the memory of his battle-piece is quite effaced by the modern invention. In blood and fire the story comes to an end with Gudrun,

The white and silent woman above the slaughter set.

As we turn from the scene and the book, that figure fades not away. And it is fitting that the last memory of this poem should be a picture of love and hate, inextricably bound together, for that is the irony of Fate, and Fate was mistress of the Old Norseman's world.

5.

Between the great works dealt with in the last two sections, which belong together and were therefore so considered, came the book of 1875, bearing the t.i.tle _Three Northern Love Stories and Other Tales_. It is as good a representation as Iceland can make in the love-story cla.s.s.

These tales are charmingly told in the translation of Morris and Magnusson, the second one, "Frithiof the Bold," being a master-piece in its kind. Men will dare much for the love of a woman, and that is why the sagaman records love episodes at all. Frithiof's voyage to the Orkneys in Chap. VI is a stormpiece that vies with anything of its kind in modern literature. It is Norse to the core, and we love the peerless young hero who forgets not his manhood in his chagrin of defeat at love.

Surely there is fitness in these outbursts of song in moments of extreme exultation or despair! "And he sang withal:

"Helgi it is that helpeth The white-head billows' waxing; Cold time unlike the kissing In the close of Baldur's Meadow!

So is the hate of Helgi To that heart's love she giveth.

O would that here I held her, Gift high above all giving!"

Modern literature has lost this conventionality of the older writings, found in Hebrew as well as in Icelandic, and we think it has lost something valuable. Morris thought so, too, for he restored the interpolated song-s.n.a.t.c.hes in his Romances. We are tempted to dwell on these three love-stories, they are so fine; but we must leave them with the remark that they show the poet's appreciation of the worth of a foreign literature, and his great desire to have his countrymen share in his admiration for them. "The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and Raven the Skald," and "The Story of Viglund the Fair," are the other two stories that give the t.i.tle to the volume, representing the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, as "Frithiof" represented the fourteenth.

6.

With _Sigurd the Volsung_ ended the first great Icelandic period of Morris's work. More than a dozen years pa.s.sed before he returned to the field, and from 1889 until his death, in 1896, everything he wrote bore proofs of his abiding interest in and affection for the ancient literature. The remarkable series of romances, _The House of the Wolfings_ (1889), _The Roots of the Mountains_ (1890), _The Story of the Glittering Plain_ (1891), _The Wood Beyond the World_ (1895), _The Well at the World's End_ (1896) and _The Sundering Flood_ (posthumous), are none of them distinctively Old Norse in geography or in story, but they all have the flavor of the saga-translations, and are all the better for it. They are as original and as beautiful as the poet's tapestries and furniture, and if they did not provoke imitation as did the tapestries and furniture, it was not because they were not worth imitating: more than likely there were no imitators equal to the task. In these romances we have men and women with the characteristics of an olden time that are most worthy of conservation in the present time. The ideals of womanfolk and manfolk in _The House of the Wolfings_ and _The Roots of the Mountains_, for instance, are such as an Englishman might well be proud to have in his remote ancestry. Hall-Sun, Wood-Sun, Sunbeam, and Bowmay are wholesome women to meet in a story, and Thiodolf, Gold-mane, Iron-face and Hallward are every inch men for book-use or to commune with every day. Weaklings, too, abide in these stories, and Penny-thumb and Rusty and Fiddle and Wood-grey lend humanity to the company.

The two romances last mentioned are so steeped in the atmosphere of the sagas, that what with folk-motes and shut-beds, and byres, and man-quellers, and handsels and speech-friends, we seem to lose ourselves in yet another version of a northern tale. Morris retains the old idiom that he invented for his translations, and keeps the tyro thumbing his dictionary, but the charm is increased by the archaisms. As one seeks the words in the dictionary, one learns that Chaucer, Spenser and the Ballads were the wells from which he drew these rare words, and that his employment of them is only another phase of his love for the old far-off things. It is true that the language of Morris is not of any one stadium of English, but it is a poet's privilege to draw upon all history for his words as well as for his allusions, and the revivals in question are of worthy words pushed aside by the press of newer, but not necessarily better forms.

These works are the kind that show the influence of Old Norse literature as spiritual rather than substantial. The stories are not drawn from the older literature, nor are the settings patterned after it; but the impulses that swayed men and women in the sagaman's tale, and the motives that uplifted them, are found here. We cannot think that the English people will always be unmindful of the great debt that they owe to the Muse of the North.

7.

In 1891, Morris engaged in a literary enterprise that set the fashion for similar enterprises in succeeding years. With Eirikr Magnusson he undertook the making of _The Saga Library_, "addressed to the whole reading public, and not only to students of Scandinavian history, folk-lore and language."[33] With Bernard Quaritch's imprint on the t.i.tle pages, these volumes to the number of five were issued in exceptional type and form. The munificence of the publisher was equalled by the skill of the translators, and in their versions of "Howard, the Halt," "The Banded Men," and "Hen Thorir" (in Vol. I, dated 1891), "The Ere-Dwellers" (in Vol. II, dated 1892) and _Heimskringla_ (in Vols. III, IV and V, dated 1893-4-5), the definitive translations of sterling sagas were given. As was the case with their _Grettis Saga_, the works rise to the dignity of masterpieces, and had we no other legacy from Morris'

wealth of Icelandic scholarship, these translations were precious enough to keep us grateful through many generations.

8.

One more contribution to English literature hailing from the North, and we have done with William Morris's splendid gifts. The volume of 1891, ent.i.tled _Poems by the Way_, contains several pieces that must be reckoned with. The vividest recollections of Icelandic materials here made use of are the poems "Iceland First Seen," and "To the Muses of the North." No reader of the poet's biography can forget the remarkable journey that Morris made through Iceland, nor how he prepared for that journey with all the care and love of a pilgrim bound for a shrine of his deepest devotion. Every foot of ground was visited that had been hallowed by the n.o.ble souls and inspiring deeds of the past, and that pilgrimage warmed him to loving literary creation through the remainder of his life. The last two stanzas of the first of the poems just mentioned show what a strong hold the forsaken island had upon his affections, and go far to explain the success of his Icelandic work:

O Queen of the grief without knowledge, of the courage that may not avail, Of the longing that may not attain, of the love that shall never forget, More joy than the gladness of laughter thy voice hath amidst of its wail: More hope than of pleasure fulfilled amidst of thy blindness is set; More glorious than gaining of all thine unfaltering hand that shall fail: For what is the mark on thy brow but the brand that thy Brynhild doth bear?

Lone once, and loved and undone by a love that no ages outwear.

Ah! when thy Balder conies back, and bears from the heart of the Sun Peace and the healing of pain, and the wisdom that waiteth no more; And the lilies are laid on thy brow 'mid the crown of the deeds thou hast done; And the roses spring up by thy feet that the rocks of the wilderness wore.

Ah! when thy Balder comes back and we gather the gains he hath won, Shall we not linger a little to talk of thy sweetness of old, Yea, turn back awhile to thy travail whence the G.o.ds stood aloof to behold?

In several other poems in this volume he recurs to the practice of his romances, Scandinavianizes where the tendency of other poets would be to mediaevalize. "Of the Wooing of Hallbiorn the Strong," and "The Raven and the King's Daughter" are examples. Here we have ballads like those that Coleridge and Keats conceived on occasion, full of the beauty that lends itself so kindly to painted-gla.s.s decoration; cl.u.s.tered spear-shafts, crested helms and curling banners, and everywhere lily hands combing yellow hair or broidering silken standards. But the names strike a strange note in these songs of Morris, and the accompaniments are very different from the mediaeval kind:

Come ye carles of the south country, Now shall we go our kin to see!

For the lambs are bleating in the south, And the salmon swims towards Olfus mouth.

Girth and graithe and gather your gear!

And ho for the other Whitewater![34]

The introduction of the homely arts of bread-winning distinguishes the romance of Scandinavia from the romance of Southern Europe, and here Morris struck into a new field for poetry. Wherever we turn to note the effects of Icelandic tradition, we find this presence of daily toil, always a.s.sociated with dignity, never apologized for. The connection between Morris' art and Morris' socialism is not hard to explain.

No commentary can equal Morris' own poem, "To the Muse of the North," in setting forth the charm that drew him to the literature of Iceland:

O Muse that swayest the sad Northern Song, Thy right hand full of smiting and of wrong, Thy left hand holding pity; and thy breast Heaving with hope of that so certain rest: Thou, with the grey eyes kind and unafraid, The soft lips trembling not, though they have said The doom of the World and those that dwell therein.

The lips that smile not though thy children win The fated Love that draws the fated Death.

O, borne adown the fresh stream of thy breath, Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart, That, if it may be, I may have a part In that great sorrow of thy children dead That vexed the brow, and bowed adown the head, Whitened the hair, made life a wondrous dream, And death the murmur of a restful stream, But left no stain upon those souls of thine Whose greatness through the tangled world doth shine.

O Mother, and Love and Sister all in one, Come thou; for sure I am enough alone That thou thine arms about my heart shouldst throw, And wrap me in the grief of long ago.