Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 130

point of taking her life. All at once she cried out at the top of her
voice and then fell prostrate in a swoon. And when she had been
picked up she began to claw herself and tear her hair, like a woman
who had lost her mind. She tears her hair and rips her dress, and
faints at every step she takes; nor can anything comfort her when
she sees her husband borne along lifeless in the bier; for her happi-
ness is at an end, and so she made her loud lament.)
The scene is presented above, as in the saga, by an omniscient author.
Unlike the narrator in the saga, however, who functions as factual re-
porter, Chrétien is more arbitrary in the information he presents, and in the
sequence he chooses for the presentation. On one hånd he is more de-
tailed, but on the other he also passes over the faet - at first - that the
corpse is being carried into the hall. Until vv. 1163-64 the reader or
listener has the false impression that the lady entered unaccompanied.
With the new information now presented - that serves to explain the
woman’s strange behavior - one has to revise one’s perception of the
scene actually witnessed by Yvain. Both author and, indireetly, the
character created by him, screen out all but what by them is judged to be
essential - the lady.
Whether the text from Ivens saga above actually represents the Norwe-
gian translation, is a moot question. Either the translator or a later Ice-
landic redaetor deemed the structure of the scene as fashioned by Chrétien
a contradiction of reality, or at least not in keeping with his own sense
of reality, and therefore he undertook to revise the sequence of narrative
elements. In the above case the revision is minimal, consisting as it does
of a transposition of only two narrative units. Often, however, a transla-
tor’s or a redactor’s intervention results in more complicated or far-
reaching structural revisions.
One episode in Ivens saga occurs three times with only minor varia-
tion: a knight pours water from a magic spring over a stone pillar and is,
as a direct result, challenged to combat by the protector of the spring. In
the first two episodes Kalebrant and then fven pour the water, are chal-
lenged, and engage in combat with the irate lord of the spring. From
Kalebrant - who himself recounts the happenings at the spring to some of
Arthur’s knights - we learn that pouring water over the stone and thereby
calling forth a tremendous storm is tantamount to challenging the lord of
the spring to combat. The challenged knight informs Kalebrant that he
has done wrong:
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