Snowflake Challenge #5

[eller]

This is Snowflake Challenge #5, "In your own space, promote a canon/talk about a part of canon that you love. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so."

Promote a canon? Sure. Not enough people read medieval poetry! So I simply have to promote the Nibelungenlied. I mean, what's not to love?

- Very nice Middle High German poetry
- Mythology / folk tale themed
- Interesting characters
- Even: interesting female characters
- Snark! Medieval snark!
- Hagen. I love the guy. (Also, I totally ship Volker/Hagen. LOL)

If you want a look, here is my translation of Kriemhild's character introduction, with a bit of analysis on the side. :) Maybe that will give you an impression regarding the style and tone.

What I love about this canon... Eh. It's difficult to explain. This has been my favorite poem since I was a child*, though! Probably because, unlike the children's books I was forced to read at school, there's no clear morality, no good and evil. Everyone is just being themselves, and dealing with things as good as they can... (Which, usually, isn't all that good. Also, not-too-much-of-a-spoiler: no happy end. For anyone.) I like the characters. I like the unapologetic violence. I like the occasional dark humor with which the tragedy is treated. And the plot is just a good story of sex and crime. ;)

Also: Hagen. I mean, if I were asked to name the ultimate anti-hero? That would be Hagen. And I happen to like anti-hero characters. I've read the poem hundreds of times by now, and I still can't decide whether Hagen is the most loyal man imaginable or the ultimate traitor... His loyalty is a special brand, that's for sure.

Also: the famous vigil scene towards the end, right before the slaughter starts. Music. The mood! It's amazing: there are so many dramatic events going on, but the most striking scene is a quiet one...

*no, my parents did not care about child-appropriate reading.

[Note: I think some people have been scared off by the ways this canon has been used for... unsavory political purposes. I can assure you the original isn't a propaganda piece.]

Comments

[sperrywink]

Very interesting choice of canon! I liked your translation piece and why you chose the English words you did. It does make it much more clear.

And medieval snark is classic, after all. *g*

[eller]

Glad to entertain! XD Someday, I'll do my own translation of the whole thing.

Heh, yes. Middle High German puns are the best. ;)

[yhlee]

Curse you, I'm up past 1 a.m. having just gotten to the hunt (in the prose translation into English) where Hagen is planning to kill Siegfried after having snaked Siegfried's weakness out of Kriemhild. AHHHHHH THE SUSPENSSSSSSSE XD XD XD

[eller]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Fun, right? :D

[prisca]

Interesting choice of canon. I have to admit that, though I am from Germany, I've never read the Nibelungenlied. Though, of course, I know the story it tells.

[eller]

It's impossible to escape some version of the story, anyway. XD

[flo_nelja]

Ooh, I read it quite a while ago, but I'm always for seeing classics as canon worthy of transformative works and squeeing!

[eller]

I'm... decidedly fannish about it? :D

[luthien]

Posts like this are exactly why I love fandom. Thanks for the rec. I will have to check it out.

[eller]

I hope you'll enjoy :)

[themightyflynn]

Huh. I'll have to try to find an English translation. Thanks for the rec! :)

[eller]

I'm sure there are a few translations online. Unfortunately, I haven't read any English versions of the text, so I don't have a recommendation for you. :/

[themightyflynn]

All good! It'll give me something to do tomorrow :)

[sevilemar]

I have read a few re-tellings of the poem when I grew up, but never the actual sources. Even at university, it was never part of the curriculum, not even for my early German classes. I found a version online, and it's quite amazing how much of Middle High German still lurks around in my brain. I am missing some vocabulary, and sometimes I need to read aloud to understand, and I probably miss a ton of the witticisms and nuances, but I get some, and the general gist. Never thought I would read the Nibelungenlied this snowy, overcast, Saturday morning^^

[eller]

I hope it's a worthy way of spending a snowy, overcast, Saturday morning. :D

...retellings of this canon are a bit problematic anyway, because most of them were created with a clear political agenda. Sticking to the original is the way to go. :D

Early German at uni sounds fun!

[sevilemar]

It is, thank you ;)

I don't really know how much politics was involved in my versions, I was very young. I don't think they were very popular versions, though. I found one book in a garage sale at our local library, old and battered, and the other was written by a popular German novelist at the time, from the perspective of Hagen, actually^^ And just because it's true: the very small town we lived in, where I found the first book, was also called Hagen, near Bremerhaven in Germany.

It was fun, though in retrospect not very practical^^ For some reason, the only thing I can actively remember from those classes was from the Langobardic I took as an elective. They had different words for robbing a corpse you just happen to find along the road, and robbing a corpse you have killed yourself along the road (plotraub/rairaub, but I can't remember which is which). Sometimes, memory works in weird ways^^

[eller]

Was it the one by Wolfgang Hohlbein? ^^

Also, it's important to differentiate when you rob corpses! Don't you think so?

[sevilemar]

Jupp, of course it was^^

You are absolutely right, you should always differentiate your corpse robberies. It would be utter chaos, otherwise!

[eller]

I think it also made a huge legal difference whether it was before or after burial. Very tidy and organized, these people!

[green_knight]

I first encountered Hagen as a heroic figure, and was most disturbed to find him made the villain of the Nibelungensage.

I've always rejected that part as 'not canon.'

[eller]

Mh, I don't understand him as a villain in the Nibelungenlied, just a very ambiguous figure... But, of course, that's up to interpretation! :D

[green_knight]

The villain bit may have been authorial interpretation. (I was eight. I did not read the original.)

[eller]

Ah, okay. In the Nibelungenlied it's like... He does some morally objectionable things, but then, so does Högni in the older tales. At the same time, he does some very heroic things. So, no, he's not a clear-cut villain. Just not a "good guy", either. More like a case of extreme moral ambivalence, and values dissonance - even with some of the other characters.

[thewiggins]

Oh, what a cool thing to promote! I recently went on a Norse/Germanic mythology kick and read the Poetic Eddas, but I haven't gotten around to the Nibelungenlied.

Thanks for linking to the piece you did about Kriemhild's introduction, very interesting and I love that you did the translation yourself. Given that you did that translation, I imagine that you read the poem in the original Middle High German. But do you happen to have any recs for which English translation would be most worth checking out?

[eller]

Yes, I read it in Middle High German. Unfortunately, I can't recommend you any particular translation into English: I'm German, so I've never had any reason to look for versions in other languages. I don't know the "market". Sorry!

[corvidology]

I haven't read it in ages so thanks for the reminder. :D

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Most of the cast list of The Hobbit is in Snorri's Prose Edda. :D

My mother read me The Hobbit when I was four. I read my father's history books all along. They included some written by the losers.

My parents figured if I could understand the words, I was old enough to read the book. What did I do when I got to the pr0n scenes in The Clan of the Cave Bear and sequels? I skipped them. They were boring. It was years before I bothered to read them. I usually still skip them.

Reading over other people's heads has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years, but it was all worth it.

Re: Yes ...

[eller]

AHAHAHA - everything that Tolkien ever wrote is Old Norse, Old English and Old Germanic fanfiction anyway. ;)

When my dad discovered I was reading the old stuff, what he did was the obvious: (to him, anyway...) help me with the phonetics.

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yeah, the linguistics is great fun too.

I still refer to a museum as a "mathom-house." :D I have some of the linguistic books in my collection.

[komadori]

You had me at medieval poetry! I think I know the basic story, but I've been wanting to read this one for a while.

[minoanmiss]

*saves this post in my literature files*

[eller]

:)

[wendelah1]

Is this related somehow to Wagner's Ring cycle? The characters sound right.

[eller]

Yes and no... The Nibelungenlied is based on older Norse myths. Wagner used the same myths as source material for his Ring cycles. Otherwise, the works are substantially different - it's like two different fanfictions in the same fandom. Or something. ^^

[margaret_r]

You've really made me interested to read this. I shall have to look for the English translation.

[firecat]

I made a note to look for a good English translation. I love Norse myth, why not this?