THE " NIBELUNGENLIED."

Ir is the boast of the Germans that they alone possess, besides the Indians, the Persians, and the ancient Greeks, a national epic. The boast is a pardonable, and, on the whole, also a legitimate one; but a close comparison of the Nibelungenlied with all the other epic poems in existence will not hold water. We do not allude to the relative poetical merit of the Mahcibhcirata, Shah Nanoeh, or the great Homeric Epopee, but to their im- portance and bearing from a national point of view. An epic poem can only be said to be truly national if it is intimately interwoven with the history of the people—whether mythical or authentic—if it pervades all the classes of the nation as a living remembrance, and, finally, a it exercises a deep and lasting influence on the mode of thought of the people. We need not specially point out that all these conditions are completely fulfilled by the Homeric epic, for instance. But can this be said of the Nibelungenlied ? Besides the mythological element, chiefly represented by the " Siegfried-Saga," there are two historical elements to be met with in the German poem. The principal one of these two elements refers to the destruction of the Burgundian Empire by the Huns—but not by Attila—in 437. From allusions dating from a much later period, we may safely infer that songs regarding the Burgundian catastrophe were composed soon after the event, when the recollection of it was still fresh in the memory of the people. These national songs were, however, soon forgotten in Germany, amidst the great commotion and dislocation of the nations in those days. There was, therefore, no continuity of tradition as regards the principal historical element of the Nibelungen- lied. The second historical element in the poem—relating to the " Thidreks-Saga "—is based on an anachronism, con- necting, as it does, three Kings, the Burgundian Gunther, the Hunnish Attila, and the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great, or Dietrich von Bern, who died respectively in 437, 454, and 526. The last-named King was, indeed, the favourite hero of German folk-lore, and his memory was long cherished by the people ; but his name was connected with the Burgundian legend and the Siegfried myth as late as the seventh century only, when the latter was transformed from a purely mythical fable into a hero- legend. All these facts show that there was no continuity of either the historical or the mythical elements in connection with the Nibelungenlied, which cannot, therefore, have exercised in its primitive form that influence on the German people which Homer's poem did on the Greeks. When the great German epic assumed towards the end of the twelfth century the form in which it is known to us, the poem was considerably modernised. It was divested of its gross mythological ingredients, the fabulous creatures were humanised, and Christian elements were, in general, substituted for the heathenish ones. Thus refined and modified, the poem seems to have become a great favourite with the then select and cultured circles of society ; but it never became, so to say, the common property of the people. We do not wish to imply by the foregoing remarks that the Nibelungenlied was not—to use a modern expression—popular at all in its time. A poem of which there are about twenty. nine more or less complete manuscripts extant, must have enjoyed a certain popularity, at least at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and it was, above all, the text known as the " Valgata " which seems to have been in great favour. Gradually the popularity of the poem waned, and after the death of Maximilian I.—the so-called Jetzt° Bitter—in 1519, the Nibelungenlied, together with the other relics of mediEeval German poetry, was forgotten for a considerable space of time. The Swiss poet, Bodmer, who possessed more of the instinct than the genius of poetry, and whose attention was called to a manuscript of the poem, was the first to rescue it from per- petual oblivion by publishing a fragment of it in 1757. This publication passed, however, unnoticed, and so did Professor C. H. lltliiller's complete edition of the Nibelungenlied in 1782, although it was dedicated to Frederick the Great. The latter had himself a very poor idea of the poem, of which he • The NZelungenlied : Lay of the Mulling. Translated from the German by Alfred G. Foster-Barham. London: Macmillan and Co.

wrote in 1789 that it was nicht einen Schloss Pulver werth ; which harsh judgment was quite explicable in a King whose literary tastes were thoroughly French, and who, in his political aspirations for Germany, did not look backwards to the mythical days of "horned Siegfried," but rather forward to the dawn of the nineteenth century. Single efforts to raise the poem in public estimation proved unavailing, until the romantic school hit upon the ingenious idea of making it the medium of patriotic enthusiasm. The spirit of Tentonism had, according to their opinion, to he aroused in the young of Germany in order to enable them to fight the French successfully. Wilhelm Schlegel struck the key-note by his lectures on the Niebelungenlied at Berlin in 1803. The philologists followed in the wake of the "Romantic Patriots," and here it was, above all, Jacob Grimm who showed that the clue to the German epic was to be found in the Northern version of it, in the Eddas, without which the Nibelungenlied is, in fact, quite unintelligible.

If we have dwelt so fully on the history of the composition of German epic, and on its vicissitudes, it was simply to show that it does not fulfil the primary conditions of a truly national epic, and that the enthusiasm entertained for it by the Germans of latter days was not the result of any continuous growth, but the outcome of an artificial propaganda. Considered from a purely msthetical point of view, however, the Nibelungenlied ranks with the finest productions of poetical genius. All the characters are sketched with marked outlines, and the whole poem is dis- tinguished by a grandeur of conception which justified Heine in declaring that a Frenchman can hardly form a just notion of the majestic vigour of the Nibelungenlied. It took some time before the Germans themselves fully realised the poetical beauty of their national epic, partly because it was used, as we said above, by the romanticists as a purely politico. sentimental vehicle, and by the philologists as an abundant source for linguistic disquisitions. These two schools, which have done so much to obscure the poetical charm of the epic, are still more numerously represented in the constantly increasing and alarm- ingly vast Nibelungen literature than the a3sthetic school which sees in the poem nothing but the poem.

In England, the German epic first became known partially at least, through extracts in prose, interspersed with metrical translations, which appeared in 1814, in the Illustrations of Northern Antiquities. These metrical renderings were attributed by Lockhart to Walter Scott, who, we need not add, would have been better qualified than any other English poet, perhaps, to produce a translation which might worthily have been placed by the side of the original. This first attempt at acclimatising the Nibelungenlied in this country seems to have passed unnoticed, and it was reserved to Carlyle to call special attention to it. In 1831 there appeared in the Westminster Review his well-known essay, "The Nibelungenlied," for which Simrock's modern High-German translation was used as a mere peg on which to hang a general survey of the epic, as far as its litera- ture was known in those days, together with some metrical renderings. In 1846, Mr. J. Gostick gave some extracts from the poem in his Spirit of German Poetry ; and two years later, Mr. J. Birch published at Berlin a translation of the Nibelungen- lied which purported to be complete, but only reproduced the poem in its curtailed form as edited by Lachrnann, who merely recognised twenty songs as genuine. Mr. Birch was not success- ful with his versification, and his translation was superseded, in 1850, by that of Mr. W. N. Lettsom, who followed the edition of Braunfels, containing the original middle High-German text and a modern High-German version. Lettsom seems to have possessed a thorough knowledge of modern High-German, and he was in so far able to handle English verse that he could assimilate the English metre to the German one, at least as regards the cmsura at the end of each half-line ; but he was not a poet, and he failed to produce a version truthfully reflecting the spirit of the original.

Our readers will see that there was ample room for a new English translation of the Nibelungenlied, and we looked hope- fully forward to the publication of the volume before us, when it was first announced. Unfortunately, our expectations have not been realised. In the first instance, a trans- lation of a poem like the Nibelungenlied should not be issued without a full historical and literary introduction.• Mr. Lettsom has one which is fairly in keeping with the state of the Nibelungen criticism of 1850; whilst Mr. Foster-Barham's sketchy preface of about three pages not only, gives the reader no information whatever about the great-poemi.bat aetually

betrays the translator's historical and literary ignorance re- garding the subject of the poem. The translation itself is, as a whole, an unsatisfactory performance. Not only are a number of verses quite uuscannable, but the elesura at the end of the half-lines has frequently been neglected. Nor has the original metre been scrupulously followed in the last half- line of each stanza. As a specimen of the translator's versifica- tion, we will quote, out of many similar stanzas, the following only :—

" Then spake the monarch Gunther : Let me an answer hear; Tell me now, I pray you, how they both do fare,

Etzel and Dame Helke in the far Hnnland ?'

To whom replied the Margrave : That shall you understand.'"

That Mr. Foster. Barham is capable of producing more melo- dious verse, he has shown in several instances. We take at random the following stanza from the "Adventure," in which

the first meeting between Siegfried and Chriemhilda is described :— " Then came the lovely one, as does the rosy morn

Through sombre clouds advancing. From Siegfried's heart love-bra Fled all the care that bound him, and which he long had known ; Before him now the maiden in queenly beauty shone."

This is a far happier rendering than the one given by Mr. Lett- som, and we cannot but exclaim : 0 si sic onznia !

The translator seems to have followed, like Mr. Lettsom, the above-mentioned edition of Braunfels, in which the following

last stanza is wanting, now given in all complete editions of the poem, and in accordance with which it is universally called Das Nibelungenlied, instead of, as was done formerly, Der Nibelungen Noth:— "Ich sag' euch nicht welter von der grossen Noth :

Die da ersohlagen waren, die least liegen todt.

Wie es aoch im Hennland hernach dem Yolk gerieth,

Hier hat die Mar em n Ende : das let das Niebelungenlied."

(SimnocK.)

Mr. Foster-Barham says on the title-page, "Translated from the German," which almost sounds like an admission that his version was not made from the original middle High-German ; nor can we imagine that any scholar acquainted with the original work would have issued an English translation without prefixing an appropriate disquisition on the poem, which in its present English garb will be quite unintelligible to the generality of readers. We might point out several other defects in connection with the volume before us, but we will content ourselves with saying that an English version of the Nibelungenlied, fully worthy of the original, would be a most valuable contribution to our literature ; but let no one rashly undertake the gigantic task. Only an English poet, fully conversant with both middle and modern High-German, and thoroughly acquainted with the extensive Nibelungen literature of the present day, could successfully perform the great achievement. To all those who do not combine those qualities, we should address the warning, "Hands off !"