Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Síða 135
VI From the tum of the century to Jan de Vries
115
form, inherited from the Proto-Germanic period and faithfully preserved
in Eddie poetry, which also retained the shorter lay form, later replaced
by the long epic in West-Germanic poetry (Neckel 1908: 4-8, 20-21).
Neckel supposed that the old form originated in an earlier sung form,
where the combination of two long lines, i.e. the half stanza, corres-
ponded to a musical unit (1908: 11).
Since the unbound type is thus the most primitive form, according to
Neckel, the oldest Eddie poems must have been composed in this man-
ner. This does not mean, however, that every poem of this type is old,
and as a dating criterion this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition
for an early date. In his study of particular poems Neckel took care to
distinguish between primary poems of this form and secondary poems,
resulting from an imitation of older prototypes; old-fashioned style is
not in itself a sure criterion of an early date. In reply especially to criti-
cism from Finnur Jonsson, Neckel insisted on this essential methodolo-
gical point, reproaching Finnur for not having grasped his basic presup-
position, namely that, just as it is possible to establish uniformity in the
behaviour of a single poet, so too is it possible to recognize the charac-
teristics of a tradition, which may lead to similar results. The competent
analyst is therefore in principle able to distinguish between cases where
the same style or form of binding is the mark of a genuine creation indi-
cating a particular date of composition, and cases where the correspond-
ing style bears the imprint of the tradition.15
This is naturally a most important point for the whole discussion of
dating; since old forms are kept up through tradition, there is a funda-
mental lack of symmetry in the argumentation for an early date and for a
later date, an “early date argument” generally being only a necessary
condition, whereas a “later date argument” tends to be both a necessary
and a sufficient condition: “hence old age can never be stated with the
same certainty as a later date, and we will often have to content our-
15 “[...] FJ. [Finnur Jonsson] meine beiden grundvoraussetzungen leugnet: die erkennbare
wiirksamkeit einer tradition und eine erkennbare gleichartigkeit im verfahren des einzel-
nen dichters. wer diese voraussetzungen leugnet, setzt sich in widerspruch zu offenkun-
digen, zt. trivialen tatsachen. [...] uberall, wo wir diese gleichformigkeit finden, da spricht
auch sonst alles fiir einheitlichkeit des textes. wo hingegen die bindungen bunt durchein-
ander gehn, da pflegen auch andere kriterien ungleichen alters nicht zu fehlen” (Neckel
1910: 48).