Egil’s Saga (37 page)

Worse men than Laing have fallen into the same error and, unlike him, sought to justify it. Sir Edmund Head, in his translation of Viga-Glum, a saga told in an unusually rugged and primitive style, uses language like this: “It happened one summer, on his arrival in the Eyjafirth, that Arngrim did not invite him to his house, and though they met he did not speak to him, imputing to him that he had talked with his wife, Thordis, more than was proper; but the report of most men was that there was little or nothing in the matter”. And in his preface he tells us: “I have adhered to the original as closely as was consistent with my desire of presenting to the English reader a translation that could be read without being very stiff and tiresome, but I am by no means sure that I have attained this object”.

One thing is certain: no great work of human genius can be translated successfully by persons pre-occupied with the question how far they may safely follow their original and how far they would be well advised to alter, expurgate, adorn or rearrange it in order to recommend it-to the popular taste of the moment. Pope,
^*
in an auguster field, gives precedent here to Sir Edmund Head. In his
Essay on Homer
, prefixed to his translation of the
Iliad
, he expresses the view that many of Homer’s compound epithets “cannot be done literally into English without destroying the purity of our language”. Some, however, “may have justice done them by circumlocution; as the epithet
εìνοσίɸνλλος
to a mountain, would appear little or ridiculous translated literally
leaf-shaking
, but affords a majestic idea in the
periphrasis
:

The lofty mountain shakes his waving woods”.

And later: “Upon the whole”, he writes, “it will be necessary to avoid that perpetual repetition of the same epithets which we
find in Homer, and which, though it might be accommodated… to the ear of those times, is by no means so to ours: but one may wait for opportunities of placing them, where they derive an additional beauty from the occasions on which they are employed; and in doing this properly, a translator may at once show his fancy and his judgement”.

So Mr Pope will go on avoiding “that perpetual repetition of the same epithets “which is by no means accommodated to the ear of persons of good taste, and Sir Edmund Head will go on talking about people “assuming a high position in the district”, and “imputing” things, and saying, “on his arrival”, where his original says, stiffiy and tiresomely, “when he came out”, Meanwhile, those of us who would like to know something about Homer and Viga-Glum’s Saga must set to work and learn Greek and Icelandic, or find a translator
^*
who is not ashamed of his original.

For, as translators, Pope and Head and their kind are deserving, really, of no respect at all. They are ashamed of their mistresses, that are of an infinitely greater worth than they; and for that, we must call them ungallant coxcombs and send them to the Devil. “Every Lover admires his Mistress”, says old Robert Burton, “though she be very deformed of her self, ill-favored, wrinkled, pimpled, pale, red, yellow, tan’d, tallow-faced, have a swoln juglers platter face, or a thin, lean, chitty face, have clouds in her face, be crooked, dry, bald, goggle-ey’d, blear-ey’d, or with staring eys, she looks like a squis’d cat, hold her head still awry, heavy, dull, hollow-ey’d”—(the blemishes go on for another twenty lines). He that proposes to introduce a saga, or any other great old work in a foreign tongue, to a public that does not know her, must be a true lover of his mistress, after that kind. To “show his fancy and his judgement”, as Pope counsels, is a mere impertinence. He has to ‘show’ not anything that is his, but his original. That will cost him all his pains, and try all his powers.

For the translator, then, this is the commandment that contains all the law: Thou shalt love thy Mistress. The sagas took shape in the mouths of people who, as that great saga-lover
W. P. Ker has said, have a self-conscious principle of style and good grammar: people who were the greatest story-tellers the world has ever seen. These prose epics have the qualities of great poetry: they are “simple, sensuous, and passionate”.
^*
They have the quality of what they spring from, the spoken word. The saga-man (simply, no doubt, as simple men enjoy good beer or sunshine) tasted and enjoyed every word: so must the translator, if his translation is to bear any likeness to his original. The strong and bare simplicity of the saga, so cosmically remote from all that is precious, bizarre, soulful, conceited, self-consciously self-important, or, in the popular sense, artistic, makes it hard on first acquaintance to grasp its essential quality. That quality is in fact pure
style
. And here, as in all art, style is life.

It may be useful in conclusion to refer briefly to two matters affecting the translation of the sagas: the first a matter of principle, the second of convenience.

(1) ARCHAISMS

Controversy has made itself heard from time to time on the question of diction, mainly in the form of attacks upon William Morris for using archaic words and phrases. Morris, as we have seen above, is open to the charge of employing sometimes a preciosity of expression that gives too literary a flavour to his versions; but the attack on the ground of his archaisms is misconceived. People who have never given much thought to the question are apt to take the view that old-fashioned language must be artificial and therefore devoid of life. They forget that the sagas themselves are written in what is, to us (and to Icelanders to-day, for that matter), old-fashioned language. The heroic age itself is old-fashioned to us to-day: it will seem not
old-fashioned only but unreal and ridiculous if we attempt to galvanize it into a semblance of modernity by putting into its mouth the sophisticated parlance of our own very different times. The truth seems to be, indeed, the exact converse of the contention of these thoughtless critics: an archaic simplicity of speech is necessary in translating a saga (or Homer, or the Bible, or the
Arabian Nights
) if we wish to retain its spontaneity and vitality unimpaired.
^*

The reason for this is not far to seek. Much of our present-day language is
literary
, in the sense that it is a language no humane person speaks except in formal business, nor reads except because he cannot help it (e.g. in official documents or the newspapers). It is a written language, full of redundancies and pomposities and full of all manner of clichés and jargons. It is moreover highly abstract. And these ingredients and characteristics themselves carry associations foreign to the background of daily life under the old, simple, unmechanized civilizations. It is perhaps unnecessary to labour the point further, certainly in addressing a reading public who have welcomed Doughty’s
Arabia Deserta
, a book which owes its effect of startling and breathing reality in an incalculable degree to the fact that it is written in a language framed by its author for the occasion in the greatest tradition of pre-Spenserian English. I will only add that that most vital and sparkling spring, the living water of Boccaccio himself, becomes flat and turbid at the touch of a translator who tries to make his version ‘vivid’ by making it modem. Let anyone who would test this read that most perfect of short stories (of Rinaldo d’Asti and the Widow Lady) first in John Payne’s beautiful version, then in one of those which invite our preference (in one case at least) on the ground that Payne is heavy and dull. I think they will agree that the archaic version is the one that bubbles over with life and sprightliness, while the other is by comparison but a lame and out-of-fashion piece of vulgarity.

Archaic language is not an end in itself. The end is, truth to the original. In the present version of
Egla
I have proceeded on a principle not unlike Doughty’s: and my single aim has been to maintain, so far as the English language is capable of maintaining it, both generally and in detail, the style of my Icelandic original.

(2) PROPER NAMES

The treatment in English of Icelandic proper names, both personal and place-names, is chaotic. Pedants and cranks go their various ways in this matter, and revile one another; and the plain reader, for his part, is apt to be prejudiced in favour of the particular form in which a name or set of names first came to his knowledge. But it is tiresome and bewildering, especially to the plain reader, to find the same name served up in half-a-dozen different forms in as many books: Haraldr, Haraldur, Harald; Hairfair, Fairhair, the Fair-haired, Harfagri, Haarfagre, Harfager; Breiðifjörðr, Breiðifjörður, Breidifjordr, Breidifiord, Broadfrith, Broadfirth; Olaf Tryggvison, Olafr, Olafur, Olave, Tryggvi’s son, Tryggvason, Tryggvesson.

It is time that a tradition was established and followed. Certain points are to be noted:

(a) The actual Icelandic names will not amalgamate with English: we cannot work in our own genitival inflexion –’s with the common masculine termination
-r
after a consonant, e.g. ‘Haraldr’s’ or ‘Thorolfr’s’.

(b) The names are often extraordinarily closely related to English:
fjörðr
and
firth
,
dalr
and
dale, sker
and
skerry
, are the same words.

(c) The problem is purely a literary one, and is to be solved by practical good sense, ear and judgement, and not by some ridiculous system of rigid rules (e.g. to translate
everything
, or to translate
nothing
, or, most astounding inspiration of wrongheaded pedantry, to put it all into—Anglo-Saxon).
^*

Common sense suggests that, to establish a tradition, the best beginning is to base our practice broadly on that of translators whose works seem to have some chance of occupying a permanent place in English literature, viz. Morris and Dasent. This is what has been done in the present version of
Egla
. Where Morris and Dasent disagree, I have in most cases preferred to follow Morris. Is it unreasonable to suggest, in the interests of clearness and continuity, that future translators, and indeed all who write on these subjects in English, might sacrifice their pet pedantries and follow this practice?

*
The following is a list of some of the more important: after, ale, all, back, bairn, bale, bane, bear, beneath, better, best, bid, bide, bind, blood, boot, broad, brother, burthen, busk, byrny, call, cast, chapman, cheap, choose, coal, cold, cost, dale, dare, day, deal, dead, deem, dirt, doom, draw, drift, drink, drown, dwell, earl, earth, east, eat, egg, eke, eld, elf, else, end, enough, errand, even, eye, fain, fair, fall, fare, fast, fat, father, fee, feed, fell, fellow, ferry, fetter, few, fey, fill, find, finger, first, firth, fish, fit, fleet, flit, float, flock, flood, fold, folk, follow, foot, for, force, fore, forgive, foster, fowl, from, frost, full, furlough, gab, gain, game, gang, garth, gem, get, gift, gill, gird, give, glad, goat, god, good, grass, gray, grim, grip, grit, ground, grow, guard, gush, hail, hair, hale, half, hallow, halt, hammer, hand, handsel, hang, hap, harbour, hard, harm, harry, harvest, have, haven, hause, hawk, hay, head, hear, heart, heath, heave, helm, help, hen, here, hew, hold, holm, holt, holy, home, honey, horn, horse, hound, house, how, ice, if, ill, in, iron, keel, kettle, kin, king, kirk, knee, knife, know, lamb, lame, land, lard, laugh, law, lay, lead, leap, leave, leet, leg, length, let, lie, life, like, linen, list, lithe, little, live, loan, loathe, lock, long, loose, lot, louse, lout, low, main, man, mark, may, meal, meat, meet, mere, mid, mild, milk, mind, mire, mirk, mis-, month, mood, moor, more, morning, mort, most, mother, mould, much, muck, murder, nail, name, near, neat, need, neighbour, ness, new, next, night, north, now, oak, oar, oath, of, off, oft, our, out, over, ox, oyce, quick, quoth, ransack, rash, raven, reave, red, rede, reek, rich, ride, right, rime, ring, rise, rive, rob, roof, room, root, row, rowan, rue, run, rune, ruth, sable, sackless, saddle, sail, sake, salt, same, sand, saw, say, scant, scathe, sea, seal, seat, see, seek, seethe, seldom, self, sell, send, set, shaft, shall, shame, shape, sharp, shear, sheathe, shield, shift, shine, ship, shoot, short, should, sick, side, sign, silver, sing, sister, sit, sith, skerry, skill, skin, slacken, slake, slander, slay, sled, sleek, sling, slit, slot, sly, small, smear, smith, snake, sneak, snick, snow, so, sodden, soggy, some, son, song, sore, sound, sour, south, spae, spar, spare, spear, spell, spew, spill, spurn, spurt, stack, staff, stall, stand, starboard, stark, stave, stead, steadfast, steal, steep, steer, stem, stepdaughter, etc., stern, stick, still, sting, stir, stock, stone, stool, stoop, storm, stour, strand, straw, stream, strew, string, strong, stud, summer, sunder, swain, swallow, swan, swarm, swart, sweat, sweep, swell, swim, swine, sword, tail, take, tale, talk, tame, tarn, tassel, teen, tell, thank, thane, that, thatch, thaw, their, them, then, there, they, thick, thief, thine, thing, think, thirst, this, thole, thorn, thorp, thou, though, thought, thraldom, thrall, threat, thresh, thrift, thrive, throng, thrush, thrust, thwaite, thwart, tide, tidings, till, tilt, timber, time, tit, toe, tongue, town, tread, tree, trough, trow, trust, turf, twin, un- (prefix; Icel. ú-
or
ó-), under, up, viking, wade, waggon, wake, wand, want, ward, ware, warm, warn, wax, way, weapon, weather, week, welcome, well, were, west, whale, what, wheat, where, white, why, wick, wide, wield, will, win, wind (n.), wind (v.), with, withstand, wolf, wonder, word, work, worm, worst, worth, wound, wrath, wreak, wreck, write, wrong, young.

*
Cf. p. 26 for this passage.

*
Morris and Magnússon, Saga Library,
Heimskringla
, vol. I, pp. 169–70 (Quaritch, 1893).

†
The Heimskringla, or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway
, transl. Samuel Laing, vol. I, pp. 330–1 (Longmans, 1844).

*
In justice to Laing it should be said that he translated at second hand, through a Danish version.

*
Two diverse examples of his practice: