Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 206

186
Part One
Eddie poetry, originating in Gothic heroic epic, giving rise to Old Norse
mythological epic poetry, through the intermediary of Old Norse heroic
epic. In the second edition, however, the arrangement follows the order
in Codex Regius, where the poems on gods precede the poems on her-
oes. As a corollary to this relapse into traditional philological habits,
more information on the manuscript tradition of each of the works is
given.
Apart from a few retouches in order to bring the discussion up to date,
however, the treatment of particular poems is virtually unchanged. Oc-
casionally a poem is assigned to another period than in the first edition,
the most notable examples being Skirnismål and Lokasenna, which in
the first edition were dated to late heathendom, but in the second belong
to the later layer of Eddie poetry, i.e. the period after 1150, Lokasenna to
probably about 1200. In both editions de Vries expressed doubts as to
the proper dating of Skirnismål, so he merely drew a different conclu-
sion from the same ambiguous arguments. Decisive for the rearrange-
ment is probably F.R. Schroder’s article on Lokasenna (1952), in which
he argues for the 12th century. But the greater part of de Vries’s text con-
ceming Lokasenna is for all practical purposes identical in the two edi-
tions. The author has even neglected to withdraw the sentence quoted
above (p. 177), on a Christian preacher who could not castigate the vices
of the classical gods more sharply than the heathen poet of Lokasenna.
Unchanged are likewise the introductory arguments for a “synchron-
ic” treatment of Old Norse literature. Only now they in no way apply to
the actual realization.
What conclusions are to be drawn from the comparison of the two
editions? Bearing in mind that the rearrangement distorts the work in its
very essence, namely the unprecedented effort at a resolute historical
treatment of Old Norse literature, it has to be taken in great eamest and
can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as an acknowledgement of
more than a partial failure. This failure may be due to the relative shal-
lowness of de Vries’s historical conception. A chronological arrange-
ment is a necessary precondition for a historical treatment, but it is far
from sufficient. We may well wonder, however, if what we are confront-
ing here is really failure, or simply the impossibility of a bold enterprise,
given the nature of the material.