Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Page 236
222
“historical” writings from other sources, even if these sources do not agree
with their main authority. The best example is the combination of Turpin
and Aspremont in Kms itself. If the translator had paid any attention
to the Chronicle, he would have noticed, as the editor of Bb did, that
Turpin could not have died in the battie.
The omission must be due to a desire to shorten the tale; no other
logical explanation is possible. It has been pointed out repeatedly that we
have in the text of the saga the traces of the hånd of a French remanieur,
with a prosaic and unimaginative, but fairly sound judgement, and at the
same time we have seen many examples of the translator’s thoughtlessness
and unfamiliarity with the poem. The omission is more likely to be due
to the former than to the latter. The translator probably worked for the
court and was commissioned to translate the French text. He may have
translated other things as well, and it is difficult to see why a person
who was paid for his work, and who performed his task without the
slightest trace of enthusiasm, should leave out about half of a poem “to
get finished with it”. This appears still more unlikely when he did not
leave out the episode of the war in Libya at the end of the poem, which has
no connection whatever with the central theme of the Chanson de Roland.
However lacking he was in a sense of the poetic heauties of the Chanson
de Roland, he should at least have told us that Charlemagne conquered
“Sarraguze” and became master of all Spain.
The omission of the Baligant episode is only one of the details in the
process of changing and abridging the last part of the poem. In the case
of some of the changes that will be discussed below, we are on firm ground
in declaring that they are due to the French and not the Norse remanieur.
It is probable that the same is true of the Baligant story, even if the
arguments for this solution must necessarily be negative.
X
Charlemagne returns to Roncevaux; laments for Roland,
vv. 2845-2944
The treatment of this scene dif fers from one MS to another. V4 follows
the O text closely, and P and T have substantially the same version, but
with many small changes and, particularly in P, omissions. L has left out