Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 152

En ef eigi væri mér hrop eda brigsli ok synd,
at sverja meineida,
J)å skyldi hann aldri med mér få sætt né samfjykki frid né
fagnad,
sakir enskis {?ess, er hann mætti at gera,
fyrir ftann Aarm, er enn sitr i Aug mér,
ok hann gerdi mér af sinum svikum, lygi ok Aégoma. (146:20-
27)
(I’d rather waste all the rest of my life dealing with water and wind,
the lightning and the foul weather. If it didn’t mean siander, re-
proach, and sin for me to swear false oaths, he would never get any
reconciliation or consent from me or any peace or welcome, no
matter what he might do. The sorrow he caused me with his treach-
ery, lies, and falsehood still burdens my heart.)
Expansion in the translation is the result of an extension and variation of
Chrétien’s parallelism. The French synonyms vanz:orages are amplified
into an alliterating enumeration of four elements, the last summarizing
the preceding ones semantically as well as alliteratively. Instead of the
adjectival pair leide:vilainne modifying the nondescript noun chose, the
translation puts the weight of the modifiers into a non-alliterating sub-
stantive triplet hrdp:brigsli:synd, of which the last member is alliterative-
ly linked to the following infinitive clause. The nominal pair pes.acorde is
represented in the saga by two pairs of alliterating collocations. The
redactor further expands the text by also referring to the dastardly deed
that had occasioned the lady’s anger in the first place. The triplets
hrop.brigsli:synd, to refer to the speaker, and svikum:lygi:hég6ma to
refer to Iven, lend the passage a remarkable symmetry and unity.16 The
two examples discussed here, one from the beginning of Yvain/Ivens
saga, the other from the very end of the tale, are characteristic of the
style of both works. They demonstrate that, except for the rhymed verse
of the French and alliterating prose of the Norwegian romance, the meth-
ods chosen by Chrétien and the saga author to stress a scene are not
16 Considering the amplification evident in the cited passage, one wonders how Wendelin
Foerster could comment in his edition of Yvain: "... so konnte ich mich denn ... bei einer
eingehenden Vergleichung von Y [Yvain] und N [Ivens saga] iiberzeugen, dass die uns
erhaltene Version von N bald in ihrer ausfiihrlichen Wiedergabe ermudet, immer kttrzer
wird und bald mehr das Gerippe allein wiedergibt” (p. XVIII).
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