Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Side 146
‘Mais il a rejeté ou réduit plus volontiers encore précisément ce qui faisait le prix
du poéme fran$ais: ces discours sentimentaux, ces dissertations morales chéres å
Thomas, son émotion, son lyrisme, le jeu maladroit et joli de sa preciosité. Ce
que le plus volontiers il a supprimé de son original, c’en est la poésie.’2
Bédier’s less than complimentary remark was not the only criticism lev-
eled at Tristrams saga. Wolfgang Golther grumbled about “stilwidrige
Verunstaltungen des Thomas-Gedichtes,”3 and Einar Ol. Sveinsson is of
the opinion that “Friar Robert’s translation of the story of Tristan has
very nearly ruined that great love story.”4 Some scholars have concluded
that the Norwegian translators were primarily interested in narrative
content. Henry Goddard Leach, for example, congratulated Brother Ro-
bert for not boring the reader, but at the same time the scholar acknow-
ledged that the author of Tristrams saga had “fallen into the equal peril of
playing only upon the superficial interest of action.”5 Among the narra-
tive devices favored not only by Thomas but also by Chrétien de Troyes
and Marie de France are anticipation, repetition, and variation in the
dramatic as well as reflective portions of the narrative. Material of a
repetitive nature in the French sources was often excised in the riddara-
sogur. In writing of the Strengleikar, Rudolf Meissner attributed the lack
of anticipation and repetition to the faet that the translators chose to
transmit the verse of the romances in prose: “Was der dichtung håufig zu
2 Le roman de Tristan par Thomas. Poéme du XIT siécte. Vol. Il (Paris: Librairie de
Firmin Didot et Clc, 1905), p. 75.
3 Tristan und Isolde in den Dichtungen des Mittelalters und der neuen Zeit (Leipzig:
Hirzel, 1907), p. 197.
4 The Age of the Sturlungs. Icelandic Civilization in the Thirteenth Century, tr. Johann S.
Hannesson, Islandica, XXXVI (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1953), pp. 41-
42.
5 Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, VI
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 178.
Golther remarked, “Nur die Tatsachen der epischen Erzåhlung lieB er bestehen” (Tristan
und Isolde ..., p. 184). See also Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen: “I oversættelserne fra oldfransk
finder man en overlegen tekstbehandling; de oldfranske tekster er redigeret med fremhæ-
velse af det episke og didaktiske element paa bekostning af det lyriske” (“Den høviske
litteratur,” Norrøn fortællekunst. Kapitler af den norsk-islandske middelalderlitteraturs hi-
storie. Eds. Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen, Ole Widding [Copenhagen:
Akademisk Forlag, 1965], p. 110); Carol Clover: “... formal considerations held, for all
intents and purposes, little or no interest for the Norse translators. Story interest was the
single criterion in the choice of material to be translated, just as it was the guiding principle
for whatever emendations the translator might introduce” (“Scene in Saga Composition,”
ANF, 89 [1974], p. 67).
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