Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Blaðsíða 153
VI From the tum of the century to Jan de Vries
133
in Eddie narrative, based on an important article from 1902 on dialogue
in Old Germanic narrative poetry.46
Even if this categorisation is in the first instance strietly speaking of
no immediate relevance to the question of dating, it inevitably has con-
sequences for it, in part because the types naturally tend to be conceived
in evolutionary terms, and in part as a result of the distribution of the dif-
ferent form types within the Germanic world. In this perspective the
“species” will belong to different chronological layers, which are not to
be identified with the age of the actual individual poems, but which may,
all the same, attribute to them an “inner age” (innere Altersstufe), to
adopt a concept Heusler has used in another context (Heusler 1925: 750
= 1969: 602), or, more technically, a “morphological age” (Heusler
1902: 225 = 1969: 640). The genre of the so-called “Standortlied”, for in-
stance, is in an internal manner later than the retrospective lays of incid-
ence, which does not mean that the actual poems need be younger;
layers of genre and time may intersect.47 Obviously, a poem cannot be
older than the type to which it belongs, but a late poem may belong to an
old type (cf. pp. 112-18 above, on Neckel’s criteria of style). Thus
Eddie poetry as such is supposed to be categorically older than skaldic
poetry, because it has remained doser to the common Germanic tradi-
tions, even if no extant Eddie text can be dated to a period anterior to
Bragi (Heusler 1941: 28).
Apart from being essential to the notion Old Germanic, the ahistoric
point of view has the advantage of exonerating the scholar from the bur-
den of dating. For Heusler this is not only a matter of convenience, it is
also a matter of principle, following from the essential characteristics of
the Eddie poems, since poetry that has been transmitted by way of mem-
ory is by definition undatable. “The rigid dating of Eddie poems on the
46 The main outline of Heusler’s Eddie morphology is to be found already in his entry on
“Dichtung” in Hoops’s ReaUexikon (Heusler 1913: 446-59); a concise description is also
to be found in his introduction to Genzmer’s translations of the Edda in the series Thule
(Genzmer 1912: 1-15, 1920: 1-10).
47 “Messen wir diese Kunstart an jenen groben ruckblickreichen Ereignisliedem, so ist sie
gewiB das folgerechtere, innerlich spatere Gewachs. Damit ware noch nicht gesagt, daB sie
nach Jahren junger sei; Gattungs- und Zeitstufe konnten sich uberschneiden” (Heusler
1941: 183). Cf. further: “Hier wie so oft in der Dichtungsgeschichte sehen wir eben keine
‘organische Entwicklung’ vor uns” (Heusler 1923: 175). “Die Zugehorigkeit zur alten
Gattung gibt nur die Moglichkeit alten Ursprungs” (Heusler 1906: 252 = 1969: 167).