The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs (Oxford World's Classics) (44 page)

M
UCH
scholarly attention has been paid to the form of the
Nibelungenlied
, as it has to all other aspects of the lay. The division into ‘adventures’ is well attested by the manuscripts. The strophic form consists of four lines. These each divide into half-lines, separated by a caesura. The end-rhyme has an
aabb
pattern, but there is also often internal rhyme, i.e. with the half-lines preceding the caesura rhyming. The way in which the feet are filled varies. Must commonly a foot consists of a trochee (/*). Ultimately the form goes back to Germanic alliterative verse, the long line of the
Hildebrandslied
(and of
Beowulf
). That alliteration is also frequent in the
Nibelungenlied
thus comes as no surprise.

The most idiosyncratic feature of the poem’s form is the placing of four, rather than three, main stresses in the last half-line of the strophe. This is not consistent throughout the poem, but is present in the majority of strophes. It lends greater emphasis to the final line of the strophe and is often echoed in the content, coinciding with the epic prophecies, the harbingers of doom. The penultimate strophe may serve as an illustration, with the verse translation by Burton Raffel below:

Diu vil michel êre       was dâ gelegen tôt.
die liute heten alle       jâmer unde nôt.
mit leide was verendet       des küniges hôhgezît,
als ie diu liebe leide       z’aller jungeste gît.

All their once enormous       honor was dead and gone
People everywhere      shared the pain and grief.
Etzel’s celebration      ended in heavy sorrow
as love and joy have a way      of doing, today becoming tomorrow.
¹

The metrical scheme of the MHG is as follows (‘denoting a stressed syllable, and * an unstressed syllable):

′ * ′ * ′ *        * ′ * ′ * ′
* ′ * ′ * ′ *       ′ * ′ * ′
* ′ * ′ * ′ *       * ′ * * ′ * ′
* ′ * ′ * ′ *       ′ * ′ ′ * ′

Raffel has boldly ‘followed this pattern very closely throughout his translation’.
²
Yet the problem with a verse translation is that the exigencies of metre and the constant hunt for rhyme tend to lead the translator away from the sense of the original. Thus, while Helmut de Boor’s edition of the
Nibelungenlied
remains the standard one, his verse translation into German fell on deaf ears.
³
Raffel’s translation of the first strophe illustrates the problems:

We know from ancient stories           filled with wondrous names
how heroes fought for glory,           won their fight for fame,
their flowing feasts and pleasures,    their tears, their moans, their mourning,
their noble quarrels and courage,      and here once more is more of the same.

The closest roughly contemporary parallel to the metrical scheme is to be found in the lyrics of Der von Kürenberg, perhaps the oldest named German lyric poet. We know virtually nothing about his identity, but he is thought to belong to a group of Danubian poets who composed songs around the middle of the twelfth century. This dating is based on criteria of both style and content. The thirteen strophes attributed to Kürenberg employ the long line with a caesura and impure rhyme (assonance), features which are absent from the German lyric from
c
.1170 onwards, when pure rhyme and the tripartite form of the canzona, borrowed from the French
troubadours
and
trouvères
, begin to dominate. Kürenberg’s lyrics, in contrast, are for the most part monostrophic vignettes. Generally his songs are free from the influence of courtly love, which established itself in the last quarter of the twelfth century, again under Romance influence. The females in Kürenberg’s lyrics are forceful
and outspoken, in contrast to their later lyric counterparts. A further link with the
Nibelungenlied
is the probable Danubian provenance of Der von Kürenberg’s lyrics. Most significantly, however, the last half-line of their strophes generally has four feet, as in the following monostrophic lyric in the female voice:

Ich stuont mir nehtint spâte      an einer zinne,
dô hôrt ich einen rîter      vil wol singen
    in Kürenberges wîse,     al ûz der menigîn.
    er muoz mir diu lant rûmen,      alder ich geniete mich sîn.

I stood late one night     at a turret;
Then I heard a knight       singing full well
    in Kürenberg’s melody,       from out of the crowd.
    He must leave my lands,       or I’ll have my way with him!

The metrical scheme is:

* ′ * ′ * ′ *       ′ ′ * ′ *
* ′ * ′ * ′ *       ′ ′ ′ *
* ′ * ′ * ′ *       * ′ * ′ * ′
* ′ * * ′ ′ *       ′ * ′ * ′ * * ′

Kriemhilt’s dream in the First Adventure has been compared with the most celebrated of Kürenberg’s lyrics, the ‘Falcon Song’, which has the same metrical form:

I reared myself a falcon      for more than a year.
When I had tamed him,      as I would wish,
and I had bound his plumage      well with gold,
he rose to a great height      and flew into other lands.

Afterwards I saw the falcon,      lovely in flight.
He wore silk ribbons      on his legs,
and his plumage      was all red gold.
May God send those together       who would gladly be lovers!

It has even been suggested, in the constant search to identify the poet of the
Nibelungenlied
, that Der von Kürenberg might have been its author. The equation of the male lover with the (often phallic) falcon is, however, a common topos in medieval German literature.

From the Anglo-American point of view, the metrical scheme bears a resemblance to that obtaining in many of the ballads collected by Francis Child,
⁴
for example in one of the melodies to which the border ballad
Lord Bateman
(Child 53; also known in Scotland as
Young Beichan
) is sung, in the Aeolian mode.
⁵
A version sung by Campbell MacLean has the characteristic extra foot in the fourth line:

Lord Beichan was a noble lord,
A noble lord of high degree.
He set his ships upon the ocean;
Some foreign country he would go see.

The Child ballads, like the medieval lay, are in quatrains; the usual rhyme-scheme is
xaxa
, as above, or
aabb
. The extra length of the fourth line gives a sense of finality, of closure, underlining the end of the strophe as a unit, and matching the expectations of the audience.

Adventure
: this has the sense, derived from Old French, of ‘something that happens’. In effect, it comes to mean ‘chapter’ in the manuscripts of the
Nibelungenlied
.

Of Kriemhilt
: this subtitle is not in the central manuscripts A, B, and C, but is to be found in D and d. The subtitles vary greatly in the manuscripts. I have followed those in the Bartsch/De Boor edition.

such marvels told
: the Middle High German (MHG) poet employs the device of
apo koinu
here, linking two main clauses by the same object. A more literal translation would read: ‘In ancient tales we are told many marvels, of renowned heroes, of great hardship, of joys, festivities, of weeping and lamenting, of bold warriors’ battles you may now hear marvels told.’ This programmatic first strophe is not in MS B.

noble maiden
: a distinction is drawn between the young ‘maiden’, a virgin, and the ‘woman’, after her future marriage. The term
edel
, ‘noble’ is shifting in significance
c
.1200. Originally denoting high rank, it comes to mean ‘noble of mind’.

in all the lands
: probably a proverbial expression, though the poet may have in mind the constituent lands of the Holy Roman Empire.

margraves
: counts of the marks or marches, border territories; by the twelfth century this had become a hereditary title.

marshal… steward… cup-bearer… chamberlain
: these are the four highest offices at court, established in Ottonian times.

without a guard
: or ‘without supervision’. This courtly portrait of a safely guarded young prince contrasts starkly with Hagen’s account of Sivrit’s early adventures in the Third Adventure. See Introduction, p. xvii.

took sword
: i.e. ‘were knighted’.

bohort
: a mounted charge carried out in teams.

travelling people
: minstrels such as, perhaps, the author of the
Nibelungenlied
.

noble love
: MHG
hôhe minne
usually refers to courtly love, a relationship that remains generally unfulfilled. Sivrit’s love-life is complicated by the genesis of the poem. He is bent on marriage, but the ethos of courtly love influences his wooing. See Introduction, p. xvii.

for whom my heart holds very great love
: love unseen, love at a distance, is a common topos in medieval literature. For example, in Book XIV of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Parzival
, Gramoflanz expresses love for a lady he has never beheld, Itonje, sister of Gawan, his deadly enemy. Gramoflanz is not one to make things easy for himself.

said King Sigmunt
: such double attribution of speeches is common in the
Nibelungenlied
.

with twelve others
: MHG
selbe zwelfte
ought to mean ‘with eleven others’, but this is contradicted by strophe 64. Numbers in the poem should not be taken too literally.

grey and coloured garments
: ‘grey’ refers to the fur of grey squirrels, ‘coloured’ to the same animal’s stomach fur, which is white with black edges.

spans
: a span is the breadth of an outstretched hand.

turned his eye
: normally (but not invariably) the plural ‘eyes’ obtains in such MHG idioms. This may be a reference to Hagen’s loss of one eye in battle against Walther of Spain, in the Latin poem
Waltharius
.

Schilbunc and Nibelunc, those powerful king’s sons
: the background is not explained, but Schilbunc and Nibelunc would appear to be the sons of the deceased King Nibelunc, who have subsequently quarrelled over their inheritance.

was … to wear a crown
: a reference to Sivrit’s earlier refusal to be king during his parents’ lifetime (strophe 43).

Uote’s son
: here Gernot is probably meant, although MS C attributes the speech to ‘Giselher the child’.

threw the stone … shot the shaft
: knightly pastimes, equivalent to putting the shot and archery (or possibly throwing the javelin).

rode into their lands
: to assert their authority and exercise justice.

shield-rims
: or ‘rims’—
pars pro toto
for a shield.

squires drew away
: the younger members of the contingent form a separate company, not necessarily involved in the fighting.

Let bold Dancwart guard the young folk
: this anticipates events in the Thirty-second Adventure.

with swords
: after an inconclusive horseback joust, the antagonists fight on foot with swords. This is the customary pattern of combat in romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

offered Sivrit his lands
: this is customary behaviour when a knight is defeated in the courtly romance.

twelve warriors
: Sivrit’s men are numbered separately.

battlesome
: the word only occcurs here. Instances of
hapax legomenon
(nonce-words, unique readings) are rare in the
Nibelungenlied
, but the poet clearly enjoys employing them in his battle scenes.

battle-bold
: another nonce-word.

Whitsun morning
: Whitsun is the customary time for festivities in Arthurian romance, from Chrétien de Troyes onwards. The poet may well be conversant with the MHG adaptations of Chrétien by Hartmann
von Aue. Wolfram von Eschenbach, looking back towards Hartmann and Chrétien, writes: ‘Arthur, the Mayful man—all that was ever told of him happened at Whitsun, or in May’s flower-time.’ (Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Parzival and Titurel
, trans. Cyril Edwards, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 118–19).

a foolish hope. Yet if I am to be estranged from you
: the vocabulary (‘foolish hope … estranged’) is that of the courtly love-lyric (
Minnesang
).

painted on parchment by a masterly artist’s skills
: a similar image is employed of the hero of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Parzival:
‘As the adventure tells us, no artist of Cologne or Maastricht could have painted a better picture than of Parzival sitting upon the charger’ (p. 67).

in the forefront of her kinsmen
: the reading of MS C. B has ‘in the presence of so many a hero’.

ducking behind shields
: a defensive manoeuvre in battles fought on foot.

anywhere else in the lands
: see note to p. 5 above.

heroes to lose their lives thereafter
: an echo of the last line of the second strophe.

how things stand with Prünhilt
: scholars have posited prior acquaintance between Sivrit and Prünhilt in an earlier version of the legend. There are some pointers to this in Old Icelandic sources. See Theodore M. Andersson,
The Legend of Brynhild
, Islandica, 43 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980), 31. It may be that Hagen’s words have an undercurrent of irony here. See Appendix II.

in warrior fashion
: as lone knights, not unlike the samurai in a different culture.

You must tell Gunther this
: like modern-day sportsmen, characters in the
Nibelungenlied
are fond of referring to themselves in the third person.

silk
: silk was comparatively rare in the early thirteenth century. There is early evidence for its presence in Bavaria in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Parzival
.

Zazamanc
: the name of the land of Belacane in Book I of Wolfram’s
Parzival;
the poet may be borrowing from Wolfram here. The green colour of emeralds also figures in
Parzival
.