Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 75

valt estre senz compainie/Que aveir compainun a envie: betra er at bua
einn ån félaga, en vera med peim er hann dfunda (‘It is better to live
without companions than to be with those who bear envy’). If one had to
base one’s judgment of the Norwegian translation on the paper manu-
scripts alone, one would be inclined to think that Brother Robert neither
perceived nor appreciated the rhetorical play and stylistic effectiveness of
the remaining verses of Thomas’ text. The Reeves Fragment alters our
opinion of Brother Robert as translator, however, at least in regard to
this passage, for it reads:
Betra er at bua einn ån félaga
en vera med {>eim er hann ofunda.
Betra er at vera einn nætr ok daga
en i fjolda {»eirra er illt vilja ok jafnan hata,
{mat {teir leyna {m godu
er {>eir eru vitandi.
Fyrir {»vi er betri engi félagsskapr
en hafa {>ann er illt kemr af.
(It is better to live without companions than to be with those who
bear envy. Better to be alone night and day than to be in the
company of those who have evil wishes and always feel hatred, for
they conceal the very good that they are aware of. Therefore it is
better to have no companionship at all than to have such from
which evil comes.)
The Reeves Fragment brings us one step doser to the original Norwegian
translation without changing our perception of Brother Robert’s stylistic
approach to the text - indeed, the fragment confirms it; Robert’s transla-
tion of tel u n’ait amor (v. 764 ‘those who have no love’) with i fjolda
peirra er illt vilja ok jafnan hata (‘those who have evil wishes and always
feel hatred’) is characteristic of his fondness for collocations - but the
fragment does demonstrate that Robert’s fidelity to his source was great-
er than has been supposed - on the basis of the paper manuscripts.18
Another vellum fragment of Tristrams saga, AM 567 4to XXII, 2, also
from the second half of the fifteenth century, illustrates how misleading
the extant paper manuscripts, and for that matter all editions of Tristrams
ls See Ålfrun Gunnlaugsdottir, Tristån en et Norle (Reykjavik: Stofnun Årna Magnus-
sonar, 1978), pp. 135-47.
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