Gripla - 20.12.2005, Page 28

GRIPLA26
although in general, as is the case with most of the translations of Pseudo-
Abdian material done into the ‘popular’ style of Old Icelandic prose, the trans-
lator adheres to a policy of simplification: polysyndetic listing is streamlined,
common Latinate two-fold repetitions are eliminated, approximation transla-
tions are given of stereotyped phrases, and elements unfamiliar to an Icelandic
audience are reduced or omitted.35
The best example of this second technique is to be found in the description
of the way in which the demons harm and deceive humans, by first injuring
their bodies and then doing violence to their souls. As Collings points out
(1969:174), the translator plays on the difference, once again, between appea-
rance and reality, thus refocusing attention on the saga’s major thematic
concern of contrasting Christ’s truth with Satan’s wiles, and employs a bal-
anced structure, emphasizing the demons’ two-part deception by contrasting
repetitive words representing the seeming cure in the first half-lines of his long
lines (græfle/bergr/biarga) with repetitive words representing the actual harm
inflicted in the second half-lines of his long lines (meifla/grandar/meifla)
(italics emphasize the pairings/contrasts):
1 En fla synesc heimskom monnom sem hann græfle fla
2 er hann l∂tr af at meifla fla
1 En hann bergr øngom
2 heldr grandar hann
1 ok synesc fla biarga
2 er hann l∂tr af at meifla (Post.:757.15-18).
The Icelandic translator achieves a prosaic balance that is far more pro-
nounced than in the Latin, in which the rhythmic balance is limited to the pair-
ing of the participles sanando/cessando: „[...] hoc uidetur stultis quod sanent:
9). The omission is made in AM 645 4to as well: „En sva sem fiandenn melte vifl enn fyrsta
mann, at hann ∂te, oc át hann“ (Post.:759.25). Speculation as to why the medieval
commonplace represented in the Latin’s per mulierem is omitted from the Icelandic text, if
indeed it was in translators’ original, will not be made here, beyond asking whether it might
have been more than just a case of omitting extraneous information, as is often done with
passages dealing with women in the Icelandic version of the life of St. Paul (see below).
35 See Collings 1969:178-180.