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I just noticed it's been two years since my last Nibelungenlied post, which provided a translation of Kriemhild's introduction to the poem's audience. Whoopsie! Of course, the poem goes on... And you can happily ignore this if you're not into snarky Middle High German poetry. However, you know I'm a fan. XD

Anyway: we've just met Kriemhild, who's been introduced in a heavily sarcastic way using a clusterf*ck of passive verb forms that are not typical for the language, and which serve to veil the fact that Kriemhild is - of course - very very active. No one in the 1200s expected that of a heroine, but we'll need to remember that this poem was not a new story but rather a retelling (with some changes) of Norse mythology. Some people in the audience knew what to expect and would have gotten a good laugh at the way her introduction was phrased.

Now that Kriemhild has been established as the main protagonist, the poem introduces her brothers in a similarly nasty (or even nastier?) way.

Ir pflagen dri kunige edel unde rich, - Three kings, noble and mighty, took care of her:
Gunther unde Gernot, die recken lobelich, - Gunther and Gernot, the laudable warriors,
und Giselher der junge, ein ûz erwelter degen. - and Giselher the young, a distinguished knight.
diu frouwe was ir swester. die fürsten hetens in ir pflegen. - The lady was their sister. The lords had her in their care.

Oooooookay. On the surface, it all sounds normal enough: in the absence of a father (which is not discussed here, but implied), an unmarried young noblewoman may well have been the ward of her brothers. However, the details here are quite explosive.

'dri kunige': NO NO NOOOO you don't have three kings. Technically, only one guy (here: Gunther) is king and would have outranked his brothers! Introducing these three as done here already implies (which is, of course, confirmed later) Gunther is a weak king who doesn't control his subordinates the way he's supposed to. In short: this is a constellation that can and will blow up a whole court. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

'edel unde rich': Oh, LOL!!!! This is one of my favorite puns in the whole poem! The most obvious translation (which, I think, most professional translators went for) is 'noble and mighty'. Neither is unexpected for a king and his brothers. It's, basically, a trope - and also appears in other medieval poems. However, if we pronounce 'rich' slighty differently - only the tiniest bit - it can also be a form of the verb 'taking revenge' (though it would be an unusual choice of word form indeed, but, hey). Oh. WAIT. Was there something?!? This needs to be translated very carefully... Actually, each of the words in this little, brilliant construct, has (at least) two possible meanings! 'edel' usually means 'noble' (which is the expected meaning when talking about, well, noblemen), but is also (rarely... VERY rarely) used as an amplifier - something like 'especially' or 'the greatest'. (There's a similar use in Low Saxon.) 'unde' means 'and', but also the preposition 'under' (including in the figurative sense, like in 'under siege'). and 'rich'... Well, I already explained that. So, the phrase COULD be translated as 'under the greatest (kind of) revenge'. Is this a bit of a spoiler? Yes. Yes, it is. Also, I firmly believe every listener who knew the Norse stories would have cracked up right here... And the rest of the audience would have had no idea why these people were laughing. (It's a weird construct, grammatically very unlikely, and basically, you only find this meaning if you already know what to look for. However, given the nature of the text, I'm sure Unknown Author was aware of it. Unknown Author was good with nasty puns, generally speaking. This isn't an accident.)

'pflagen' and 'in ir pflegen': Sarcastic overemphasis by using the same word twice, once as a verb and once and a noun... Of course, the three kings one king and two disrespectful brothers are doing a shitty job taking care of Kriemhild. (They conspire to murder her husband and steal her gold. I mean, how could it get any worse? Oh, yeah, Gunther slept with her husband in a super weird kinky threesome before deciding to have him killed. THAT'S how it can get even worse. What a family!) Anyway, I'm quite sure the repetition is intentional. Unknown Author was trying to make a point.

Yeah... FUN!

I’m re-reading the Nibelungenlied! Again! It’s not as if I’d know large parts of it by heart by now, noooooo…. :D I decided to post this because I can’t help it, I always laugh out loud at Kriemhild’s character introduction. (Very free translation by me – the grammar with its passive structures doesn’t have a direct equivalent in English that doesn't sound horribly clunky, so please don’t take this as a lecture in Middle High German! I'm trying for "makes sense" rather than "correct".)

Ez wuohs in Burgonden ein vil edel magedîn - There grew up, in Burgundy, a very noble maid
daz in allen landen niht schoeners mohte sîn, - so there could have been none more beautiful anywhere*,  
Kriemhild geheizen, si wart ein schoene wîp, - called Kriemhild, she became a beautiful woman
darumbe mousen degene vil verliesen den lîp. - because of whom many heroes** had to lose their life***.   

*in all countries|places - basically, she's the world's most beautiful woman.
**degen: boy, man, fighter, warrior, hero. In the Nibelungenlied, it's typically used to refer to the male heroic characters, so I chose to translate it as "hero" rather than just "man" although both would be technically correct. It's the context.
***or: lose the body; lîp can refer to both. I chose the one that makes more sense in English. Either way: they die.

LOLOLOL

This is, of course, heavy sarcasm - and an intentional play with genre tropes. (Throughout the whole text, Unknown Author shows a deep knowledge of what the audience is expecting… While subverting it in creative ways. It’s one of the things that make the poem so much fun!)

Here, the audience expects the introduction of the main female character of a classic adventure story of the time. Unknown Author clearly was having some fun with introducing our (anti-)heroine Kriemhild! She’s beautiful beyond compare (Of course! Somehow, ladies in epic poetry always are!) and, by emphasizing that, the author intentionally sets her up as a conventional medieval heroine while nevertheless foreshadowing the bloody events to follow. Basically, the medieval audience is led to believe that the knights will have to go on some kind of lethally dangerous quest for her sake, to save her or to win her love or whatever. Maybe fight each other over her, too. That’s what usually happens in these stories when a legendarily beautiful woman is mentioned! So, the listeners won’t expect that beautiful young noblewoman herself going on a murder spree (and, indeed, cause the death of many heroes that way)… Ah, I love it when poets possess a healthy sense of humor.

[Also, I strongly suspect the extreme (and, unfortunately, hard-to-translate) use of passive voice in this stanza is chosen intentionally for the same reason: to obfuscate the fact Kriemhild is extremely active when it comes to murder driving the plot. Maximal contrast! Is snarky grammar a thing? Because these are some of the most ironic verb forms I've ever seen, and I don't think they're a lucky accident.]

It’s notable that female characters rarely had their own agenda in fiction of that time, so having a female lead character – who does her own killing, too – is highly unusual. Ladies usually appear as the one to be saved, the one to be married, the one sending the hero off to have the actual adventure… You know it. And yet, Kriemhild is an independent character with not only opinions on what the male characters are doing, but with her own plotline. (Oh, and she's the first of the main cast to be introduced, too! By medieval epic poetry conventions, that makes her the main main character, the one who the whole poem is about.)

And she’s a worthy opponent for Hagen, who is seriously badass himself. (By the way, having a deadly conflict between a female and a male character who are equally matched and also equally amoral, and not judged by different standards for that is another genre transgression. Unknown Author is good at those.) While I don’t actually like Kriemhild as a person, I… appreciate her existence in medieval literature.

I maintain this is the coolest character intro, ever.

So yesterday I was reminded of the existence of these classical fantasy books... And that they've been made into a series, and that I (although I rarely watch series or films) wanted to at least give it a chance... So today I did just that. I didn't watch it in the right order, just random episodes and scenes here and there, but that's enough to form a first impression.
They changed a lot when comparing the whole thing to the books, but, I mean, that's normal...

Best thing about the series? Clearly, the guy playing Geralt. Awesome actor (pretty famous too, apparently, but I didn't know him because I don't watch American media much), and... Yeah, basically, he is Geralt. Perfect choice for the role, really outstanding acting job.

Also, I really liked that they gave the female characters some depth. I mean, the original Witcher books are nice enough, but they suffer from the same problem as most nineties fantasy: the female characters, even the supposedly "strong women", tend to be male wanking material stereotypes. The series manages to actually make Yennefer an interesting character. Thanks for that!

Also, I've figured out why so many people in fandom ship Jaskier and Geralt: from the books only, that would be a pretty unlikely ship (with Jaskier a fairly minor character, and both Jaskier and Geralt being very much dick-driven into ladies), but in the show
- the actor playing Jaskier is extremely charismatic (which would make the character popular in fandom), and
- he clearly interprets his role as having a massive crush on Geralt, which, I mean, why not? As a narrative choice, that's actually an improvement. Their relationship really makes more sense this way! Amusing if you've read the very very much aggressively heterosexual books, but if you're introduced to the story with the series, the ship, at least in a one-sided version (though if you're looking for it, sometimes Geralt almost flirts back, which, cool), is actually canon?!? XD

Ciri is still boring, but, I mean, she's the worst Mary Sue in anything I've seen that's actually been professionally published, so I suppose making her an interesting character would have taken a miracle.
(Let's face it: she
- is the literal "magical child" trope played straight and without any detectable irony
- has ridiculous mystical heritage, complete with ridiculous "elvish" name
- also, needless to say, tragic backstory
- is ridiculously superpowered even in comparison to other superpowered characters
- is loved by everyone
- ....
...basically, she's a huge storytelling f*-up by the book author, and unfortunately she's a major character too, so she couldn't be changed too much without drawing fandom ire.)

I liked less that... how to explain this? The books are Polish, and the fantasy world and fantasy elements are very much inspired by Polish folklore. The series removed most of that and Americanized the whole thing. That's... actually pretty major. Cultural appropriation at its worst. Basically, the fantasy in the series is now your standard Western European and US American collection of tropes, because almost everything distinctly Slavic was carefully eliminated. Yikes! The original books lean pretty heavily on (and sometimes even parody: one of the things that made me keep reading the books because that's really well done!) Slavic mythology and folk tales. Oh, and even if the world is fictional and the countries have fantasy names, the characters are culturally distinctly Polish. I suppose they thought they could market the story to an American audience better if they minimize that (and just keep some Slavic mythical monsters, but have the characters behave culturally US-American, or, more precisely, the fantasy standard of How-US-Americans-Imagine-Medieval-Western-Europeans) - and, unfortunately, they're probably right about that, too - but really, this is not the way to treat literature from another culture. Not even when it's, let's face it, pretty straightforward unapologetic power-and-wank-fantasy stuff from another culture.

Basically? If this were my first introduction to The Witcher, I would have loved the show. The actors are all excellent, and in many ways the quality of the storytelling surpasses the entertaining but ultimately trashy original. It was just a bit disappointing to see a very American retelling of a very Polish story. Will probably not watch the whole thing, although I now have "Toss a Coin to your Witcher" stuck in my head. (Awfully catchy song! XD)