Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 130

116
IV
Omissions in the saga text
The omissions in the Norse text are more important, and more numer-
ous, than the additions. The unimportant omissions are, theoretically, of
two kinds, verses omitted in the French source and those omitted by the
translator. But we do not know the French source, and the first group
cannot therefore be distinguished from the second one. We cannot attach
any great weight to the faet that a certain verse has been omitted in the
saga and in one or more of the French versions as well: it may only mean
that an unimportant verse has been omitted by more than one scribe. Only
in the case of verses which are preserved in O alone is there at least a
certain chance that those verses are really additions in the Oxford MS.
We certainly cannot prove it, but all the other versions have additional
verses of their own, and it would be surprising if this was not also
true of O.
O verses omitted in Kms and all the other versions of the poem are:
Vv. 87, 115, 165, 253, 318, 341, 373, 609, 645-46, 684, 693, 758, 761-65
(laisse), 798, 825, 839, 1195, 1264, 1386-87, 1718, 1848, 2213.
A look at these verses will show that all (perhaps with the exception
of the mueh discussed v. 373, which might sound obscure to the translator)
belong to one or another of the groups of unimportant verses listed below,
and were likely to be omitted in any case. The faet that these verses are
omitted in Kms cannot be used as an argument for the view that they
were added by the scribe who wrote O.
The texts examined by Meissner are written in “Court Prose”, and the
translators of those sagas consciously tried to introduce new stylistic ideals.
Therefore, although they left out a number of repetitions and epithets,
they did not strive to avoid the verbosity of the French poems to make
their texts more acceptable to their audience. The translation of the
Chanson de Roland is, as I have tried to show, influenced by the tradi-
tional literary standards of 13th century Norway rather than by the
“Court Prose”. The omissions are more extensive than the additions, as
was to be expected, and if we compare the rhetorical and literary ideals
of the French poet and the Norse translator, the reasons for the majority
of these omissions become obvious.
“Turoldus” was no mean scholar, as has been emphasized by e.g. Cur-
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