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
naïve 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 Godson 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 noble 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 illustrated 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 godlike through the hard experiences of his life. Take this
passage as an illustration:
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 God 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 pass which is foretold; neither shall I fear the
fulfilment thereof." (_Völunga 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 noble 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
passionless 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 assure 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 Gods have bid,
And no whit of the sorrow that shall be from his wakened soul is hid.
(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 assume 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.