The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
Encyclopedia
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1876
) is an epic poem by William Morris
, telling the tragic story of the Norse
hero Sigmund
, his son Sigurd
(the equivalent of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied
and Wagner
's Ring of the Nibelung
) and Sigurd's wife Gudrun
. The plot is largely based on the Volsunga Saga
and the corresponding poems of the Elder Edda
. According to his daughter
it was the work he "held most highly and wished to be remembered by". It has never found a wide readership, some finding its length (nearly 10,000 lines) and archaic diction off-putting, but many modern critics agree with Morris that it is his finest poem.
's daughter Signy
to Siggeir
, king of the Goths
. The bridal feast is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger, the god Odin
in disguise, who drives a sword into a tree-trunk. Though everyone tries to draw the sword, Volsung's son Sigmund
is the only man who can do it. The disappointed Siggeir takes his new wife home, inviting Volsung to visit him. When Volsung does so he is treacherously killed by Siggeir, and his sons are taken prisoner. While in captivity they are all killed by a wolf, apart from Sigmund who escapes into the wildwood. Signy sends Sigmund her two sons to be his accomplices in avenging their family, but Sigmund only accepts Sinfjotli
, the hardier of the two. Sigmund and Sinfjotli kill Siggeir and burn down his hall, then return to their ancestral home, the hall of the Volsungs. Sigmund marries Borghild
, while Sinfjotli goes abroad with Borghild's brother, quarrels with him, and kills him. On his return Sinfjotli is poisoned by Borghild, and she is turned out by Sigmund, who instead marries Hiordis
. Sigmund is killed in battle, and the pregnant Hiordis is taken to live in the hall of King Elf
in Denmark.
. Sigurd is raised by Regin
, a cunning old man, and when he grows to manhood he asks for a horse from king Elf. Elf bids him choose the one he likes best, and Sigurd takes the best horse in the world, and names it Greyfell
. Sigurd is now urged by Regin to attack Fafnir
, a dragon who guards a hoard of gold. This treasure is to prove the curse of all who possess it. Fafnir, Regin says, was originally a human being, Regin's brother indeed, and the gold rightfully belongs to Regin. He tries and fails to forge a sword for Sigurd that will be adequate to the task, but Sigurd produces the shattered fragments of Odin's sword, which he has inherited from Sigmund, and from these fragments Regin forges a mighty sword, named by Sigurd "the Wrath
". Sigurd makes his way to Fafnir's lair, kills him, drinks his blood, and roasts and eats his heart. This gives him the power to understand the voices of birds and to read the hearts of men. He now understands that Regin intends to kill him, and so he kills Regin in self-protection and takes Fafnir's treasure for himself. On his journey homeward Sigurd comes across an unearthly blaze on the slopes of Hindfell
. He rides straight into it and comes unharmed to the heart of the fire, where he finds a beautiful sleeping woman clad in armour. He wakes her, and she tells him that she is Brynhild
, a handmaiden of Odin whom he has left here as a punishment for disobedience. They plight their troth, Sigurd places a ring from Fafnir's hoard on her finger, and he departs.
brothers and their sister Gudrun
. The witch Grimhild
, their mother, gives Sigurd a philtre that makes him fall in love with Gudrun. Completely under her spell, he marries her and sets out to win Brynhild for Gudrun's brother Gunnar
. Visiting Brynhild again, this time magically disguised as Gunnar, and again penetrating the fire that surrounds her, he reminds her that she is promised whoever can overcome the supernatural fire, and so deceives her into reluctantly vowing to marry Gunnar. Brynhild goes to the Niblung land and carries out her promise, but is so distraught at this tragic outcome that she urges the Niblung brothers to kill Sigurd, and, when they have done this, she commits suicide so that she and Sigurd can be burned on a single funeral pyre.
first came across the story of the Volsungs
, "the grandest tale that ever was told" as he later called it, as a student at Oxford, when he read a summary of it in Benjamin Thorpe
's Northern Mythology, ever after a favourite book of his. In his The Earthly Paradise (1868-70) he included a versification of the story of Sigurd
's daughter Aslaug
, which he may have taken from Thorpe. In 1868 he began to learn Old Norse
from the Icelandic scholar Eiríkr Magnússon, and embarked with him on a series of collaborative translations from the Icelandic classics. In 1870 they published Völsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, claiming uncompromisingly in the preface that "This is the Great Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy
was to the Greeks".
until Margaret Schlauch's version in 1930. As such it influenced such writers as Andrew Lang
, who adapted it in his Red Fairy Book, and J. R. R. Tolkien
, who read it in his student days.
The many parallels with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings include both general themes such as the warrior-hero with mighty sword in a world of elves, dwarves, and men, as well as specific details such as the hero's riding the mightiest horse named Greyfell (p. 183; cf. Tolkien's Snowmane, ridden only by Gandalf), and an elf-ring that would be "the seed of woe to the world and the foolish wasters of men" (p. 106).
Other authors have been inspired more or less directly by the Norse Myths, following in Morris' lead. For example Kevin Crossley-Holland
published his own translation of the myths, Axe-age, Wolf-age as well as stories based on the myths.
wrote to Charles Eliot Norton
:
His passion for all matters Norse was stimulated by two visits to Iceland in 1871 and 1873, and his eventual decision to write the poem may have also been influenced by his knowledge that Richard Wagner
was bringing his own Volsung epic
to completion. This was a prospect he regarded with horror. In 1873 he wrote:
Whatever his motives, he finally overcame his misgivings and began work on Sigurd the Volsung in October 1875, completing it the following year. He chose to write the poem in rhyming hexameter
couplet
s, often with anapaest
ic movement and a feminine caesura
. In keeping with the Germanic
theme Morris used kenning
s, a good deal of alliteration
, and wherever possible words of Anglo-Saxon origin. This resulted in a highly artificial diction, involving such lines as:
and
The poem was published by Ellis and White in November 1876, although the date appeared on the imprint as 1877. They issued a second edition in 1877 and a third in 1880. The book was brought out again in 1887 by Reeves and Turner, and in 1896 by Longman
. In 1898, two years after Morris
's death, a revised text was published by the Kelmscott Press in an edition limited to 160 paper copies and 6 vellum copies, with wood cuts by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
. In 1910 Longman issued an edition in which some passages were replaced with prose summaries by Winifred Turner and Helen Scott. In recent years Sigurd the Volsung has been frequently reprinted, sometimes in the Turner and Scott abridged version.
, writing that
Edmund Gosse
, in The Academy, enthused: "The style he has adopted is more exalted and less idyllic, more rapturous and less luxurious – in a word, more spirited and more virile than that of any of his earlier works." The Literary World agreed that it was "the manliest and the loveliest work of Mr. Morris
's genius", going on to predict that "Whatever its immediate reception may be, William Morris's Sigurd is certain eventually to take its place among the few great epics of the English tongue." The note of caution as to the reaction of the 19th century reading public was sounded more strongly by several other critics. Theodore Watts
, who thought it "Mr. Morris's greatest achievement", wrote in The Athenaeum
, "That this is a noble poem there can be no doubt; but whether it will meet with ready appreciation and sympathy in this country is a question not so easily disposed of." Henry Hewlett, in Fraser's Magazine
, was repulsed by the Dark Age outlook he believed Morris to have adopted:
After Morris's death interest in his poems began to fade, but a few enthusiasts for Sigurd the Volsung continued to speak out in its favour. Arthur Symons
wrote in 1896 that Sigurd the Volsung "remains his masterpiece of sustained power", and in 1912 the young T. E. Lawrence
called it "the best poem I know" According to the great philologist
E. V. Gordon
Sigurd the Volsung is "incomparably the greatest poem – perhaps the only great poem – in English which has been inspired by Norse literature
", and George Bernard Shaw
went so far as to call it "the greatest epic since Homer
". Contemporary judgements on Sigurd tend to depend upon the judge's opinion of Morris's verse in general, but it is commonly held by Morris scholars to be the best of his poems.
1876 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* Robert Bridges, The Growth of Love...
) is an epic poem by William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
, telling the tragic story of the Norse
Norsemen
Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish and Danish in their earlier forms.The meaning of Norseman was "people...
hero Sigmund
Sigmund
This article is about the mythological hero Sigmund; for other meanings see: Sigmund .In Norse mythology, Sigmund is a hero whose story is told in the Völsunga saga. He and his sister, Signý, are the children of Völsung and his wife Hljod...
, his son Sigurd
Sigurd
Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) is a legendary hero of...
(the equivalent of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
and Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Ring of the Nibelung
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
) and Sigurd's wife Gudrun
Gudrun
Gudrun is a major figure in the early Germanic literature centered on the hero Sigurd, son of Sigmund. She appears as Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied and as Gutrune in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.-Norse mythology:...
. The plot is largely based on the Volsunga Saga
Volsunga saga
The Völsungasaga is a legendary saga, a late 13th century Icelandic prose rendition of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan . It is largely based on epic poetry...
and the corresponding poems of the Elder Edda
Poetic Edda
The Poetic Edda is a collection of Old Norse poems primarily preserved in the Icelandic mediaeval manuscript Codex Regius. Along with Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda is the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends, and from the early 19th century...
. According to his daughter
May Morris
Mary "May" Morris was an English artisan, embroidery designer, socialist, and editor. She was the younger daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite artist and designer William Morris and his wife and artists' model Jane Morris....
it was the work he "held most highly and wished to be remembered by". It has never found a wide readership, some finding its length (nearly 10,000 lines) and archaic diction off-putting, but many modern critics agree with Morris that it is his finest poem.
Book I: Sigmund
The poem opens with the marriage of king VolsungVolsung
In Norse mythology, Völsung was the son of Rerir and the eponymous ancestor of the ill-fortuned Völsung clan , including the greatest of Norse heroes, Sigurð...
's daughter Signy
Signy
Signy or Signe is the name of two heroines in two connected legends from Scandinavian mythology which were very popular in medieval Scandinavia. Both appear in the Völsunga saga, which was adapted into other works such as Wagner's Ring, including its famous opera The Valkyrie.The first Signe was...
to Siggeir
Siggeir
Siggeir is the king of Gautland , in the Völsunga saga. In Skáldskaparmál he is given as a Sikling and a relative of Sigar who killed the hero Hagbard...
, king of the Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
. The bridal feast is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger, the god Odin
Odin
Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
in disguise, who drives a sword into a tree-trunk. Though everyone tries to draw the sword, Volsung's son Sigmund
Sigmund
This article is about the mythological hero Sigmund; for other meanings see: Sigmund .In Norse mythology, Sigmund is a hero whose story is told in the Völsunga saga. He and his sister, Signý, are the children of Völsung and his wife Hljod...
is the only man who can do it. The disappointed Siggeir takes his new wife home, inviting Volsung to visit him. When Volsung does so he is treacherously killed by Siggeir, and his sons are taken prisoner. While in captivity they are all killed by a wolf, apart from Sigmund who escapes into the wildwood. Signy sends Sigmund her two sons to be his accomplices in avenging their family, but Sigmund only accepts Sinfjotli
Sinfjötli
Sinfjötli or Fitela in Norse mythology was born out of the incestuous relationship between Sigmund and his sister Signy...
, the hardier of the two. Sigmund and Sinfjotli kill Siggeir and burn down his hall, then return to their ancestral home, the hall of the Volsungs. Sigmund marries Borghild
Borghild
In Norse mythology, Borghild was the first wife of Sigmund. She bore him two sons, Hamund and Helgi.She is the personification of the evening mist, or perhaps the moon, who kills the light of day.- Volsungasaga:...
, while Sinfjotli goes abroad with Borghild's brother, quarrels with him, and kills him. On his return Sinfjotli is poisoned by Borghild, and she is turned out by Sigmund, who instead marries Hiordis
Hjordis
Hjördís or Hiordis in Norse mythology is the wife of Sigmund, and the mother of Sigurd. Her father was a king named Eylimi.She is mentioned in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda....
. Sigmund is killed in battle, and the pregnant Hiordis is taken to live in the hall of King Elf
Yngvi and Alf
Yngvi and Alf were two legendary Swedish kings of the House of Yngling.According to Ynglingatal, Historia Norwegiae and Ynglinga saga, Yngvi and Alf were the sons of Alrik....
in Denmark.
Book II: Regin
There she gives birth to SigurdSigurd
Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) is a legendary hero of...
. Sigurd is raised by Regin
Regin
Reginn, often Anglicized as Regin, in Norse mythology, was the son of Hreiðmarr and foster father of Sigurd. His brothers are Fafnir and Ótr. When Loki mistakenly kills Ótr, Hreiðmarr demands to be repaid with the amount of gold it takes to fill Ótr's skin and cover the outside. Loki takes this...
, a cunning old man, and when he grows to manhood he asks for a horse from king Elf. Elf bids him choose the one he likes best, and Sigurd takes the best horse in the world, and names it Greyfell
Grani
In Norse mythology, Grani is a horse owned by the hero Sigurd. He is the horse that Sigurd receives through advice from an old man . Grani is a descendant of Odin's own steed, Sleipnir.-Attestations:...
. Sigurd is now urged by Regin to attack Fafnir
Fafnir
In Norse mythology, Fáfnir or Frænir was a son of the dwarf king Hreidmar and brother of Regin and Ótr. In the Volsunga saga, Fáfnir was a dwarf gifted with a powerful arm and fearless soul. He guarded his father's house of glittering gold and flashing gems...
, a dragon who guards a hoard of gold. This treasure is to prove the curse of all who possess it. Fafnir, Regin says, was originally a human being, Regin's brother indeed, and the gold rightfully belongs to Regin. He tries and fails to forge a sword for Sigurd that will be adequate to the task, but Sigurd produces the shattered fragments of Odin's sword, which he has inherited from Sigmund, and from these fragments Regin forges a mighty sword, named by Sigurd "the Wrath
Gram (mythology)
In Norse mythology, Gram is the name of the sword that Sigurd used to kill the dragon Fafnir.It was forged by Wayland the Smith and originally belonged to his father, Sigmund, who received it in the hall of the Volsung after pulling it out of the tree Barnstokk into which Odin had stuck...
". Sigurd makes his way to Fafnir's lair, kills him, drinks his blood, and roasts and eats his heart. This gives him the power to understand the voices of birds and to read the hearts of men. He now understands that Regin intends to kill him, and so he kills Regin in self-protection and takes Fafnir's treasure for himself. On his journey homeward Sigurd comes across an unearthly blaze on the slopes of Hindfell
Hindarfjall
Hindarfjall or Hindafjall is the mountain where Brynhildr lives in the Völsung cycle.In Snorri Sturluson's account of the Völsung cycle , Sigurðr first meets Brynhildr, whom he finds asleep, in a building on a mountain whose name is not given...
. He rides straight into it and comes unharmed to the heart of the fire, where he finds a beautiful sleeping woman clad in armour. He wakes her, and she tells him that she is Brynhild
Brynhildr
Brynhildr is a shieldmaiden and a valkyrie in Norse mythology, where she appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga and some Eddic poems treating the same events. Under the name Brünnhilde she appears in the Nibelungenlied and therefore also in Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des...
, a handmaiden of Odin whom he has left here as a punishment for disobedience. They plight their troth, Sigurd places a ring from Fafnir's hoard on her finger, and he departs.
Book III: Brynhild
He now rides south to the kingdom of the NiblungNibelung
The German Nibelungen and the corresponding Old Norse form Niflung is the name in Germanic and Norse mythology of the royal family or lineage of the Burgundians who settled at Worms....
brothers and their sister Gudrun
Gudrun
Gudrun is a major figure in the early Germanic literature centered on the hero Sigurd, son of Sigmund. She appears as Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied and as Gutrune in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.-Norse mythology:...
. The witch Grimhild
Grimhild
In Norse mythology, Grimhild was a beautiful but evil woman. She was married to king ],] kind of southern Rhine, Burgundy. She had three sons named; Gunnar, Hogni, Guttorm, and a daughter Gudrun. She is the sorceress who gave Sigurd a magic potion that makes him forget that he ever married his...
, their mother, gives Sigurd a philtre that makes him fall in love with Gudrun. Completely under her spell, he marries her and sets out to win Brynhild for Gudrun's brother Gunnar
Gunther
Gunther is the German name of a semi-legendary king of Burgundy of the early 5th century...
. Visiting Brynhild again, this time magically disguised as Gunnar, and again penetrating the fire that surrounds her, he reminds her that she is promised whoever can overcome the supernatural fire, and so deceives her into reluctantly vowing to marry Gunnar. Brynhild goes to the Niblung land and carries out her promise, but is so distraught at this tragic outcome that she urges the Niblung brothers to kill Sigurd, and, when they have done this, she commits suicide so that she and Sigurd can be burned on a single funeral pyre.
Book IV: Gudrun
The widowed Gudrun now marries Brynhild's brother, king Atli, but Atli and the Niblung brothers fall out over the question of who is to have Fafnir's treasure. The Niblungs are murdered at Gudrun's instigation, but she, in desperation, burns down king Atli's hall, kills Atli with a sword-thrust, and throws herself from a cliff to her death.Genesis
MorrisWilliam Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
first came across the story of the Volsungs
Volsung Cycle
The Völsung Cycle is a series of legends in Norse mythology that were first recorded in medieval Iceland. The original Icelandic tales were greatly expanded with native Scandinavian folklore, including that of Helgi Hundingsbane, which, in turn, originally appears to have been a separate tradition...
, "the grandest tale that ever was told" as he later called it, as a student at Oxford, when he read a summary of it in Benjamin Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon.-Biography:After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, he returned to England in 1830, and in 1832 published an English version of Caedmon's metrical paraphrase of portions of the...
's Northern Mythology, ever after a favourite book of his. In his The Earthly Paradise (1868-70) he included a versification of the story of Sigurd
Sigurd
Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) is a legendary hero of...
's daughter Aslaug
Aslaug
Aslaug, Aslög, Kraka, Kráka or Randalin, was a queen of Scandinavian mythology who appears in Snorri's Edda, the Völsunga saga and the saga of Ragnar Lodbrok.-The Legendary Aslaug:...
, which he may have taken from Thorpe. In 1868 he began to learn Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
from the Icelandic scholar Eiríkr Magnússon, and embarked with him on a series of collaborative translations from the Icelandic classics. In 1870 they published Völsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, claiming uncompromisingly in the preface that "This is the Great Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
was to the Greeks".
Influence on later fantasy writers
Magnússon and Morris remained the only English translation of Volsunga SagaVolsunga saga
The Völsungasaga is a legendary saga, a late 13th century Icelandic prose rendition of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan . It is largely based on epic poetry...
until Margaret Schlauch's version in 1930. As such it influenced such writers as Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
, who adapted it in his Red Fairy Book, and J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, who read it in his student days.
The many parallels with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings include both general themes such as the warrior-hero with mighty sword in a world of elves, dwarves, and men, as well as specific details such as the hero's riding the mightiest horse named Greyfell (p. 183; cf. Tolkien's Snowmane, ridden only by Gandalf), and an elf-ring that would be "the seed of woe to the world and the foolish wasters of men" (p. 106).
Other authors have been inspired more or less directly by the Norse Myths, following in Morris' lead. For example Kevin Crossley-Holland
Kevin Crossley-Holland
Kevin John William Crossley-Holland is an English translator, children's author and poet.-Life and career:Born in Mursley, north Buckinghamshire, Holland grew up in Whiteleaf, a small village in the Chilterns...
published his own translation of the myths, Axe-age, Wolf-age as well as stories based on the myths.
Composition
While still working on the prose translation MorrisWilliam Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
wrote to Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton
Charles Eliot Norton, was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.-Biography:Norton was born at...
:
I had it in my head to write an epic of it, but though I still hanker after it, I see clearly it would be foolish, for no verse could render the best parts of it, and it would only be a flatter and tamer version of a thing already existing.
His passion for all matters Norse was stimulated by two visits to Iceland in 1871 and 1873, and his eventual decision to write the poem may have also been influenced by his knowledge that Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
was bringing his own Volsung epic
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
to completion. This was a prospect he regarded with horror. In 1873 he wrote:
I look upon it as nothing short of desecration to bring such a tremendous and world-wide subject under the gaslights of an opera: the most rococoRococoRococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
and degraded of all forms of art – the idea of a sandy-haired German tenor tweedledeeing over the unspeakable woes of Sigurd, which even the simplest words are not typical enough to express!
Whatever his motives, he finally overcame his misgivings and began work on Sigurd the Volsung in October 1875, completing it the following year. He chose to write the poem in rhyming hexameter
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
s, often with anapaest
Anapaest
An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl...
ic movement and a feminine caesura
Caesura
thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, a caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae...
. In keeping with the Germanic
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
theme Morris used kenning
Kenning
A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry...
s, a good deal of alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
, and wherever possible words of Anglo-Saxon origin. This resulted in a highly artificial diction, involving such lines as:
The folk of the war-wand's forgers wrought never better steel
Since first the burg of heaven uprose for man-folk's weal.
and
So they make the yoke-beasts ready, and dight the wains for the way.
Editions
Longman
Longman was a publishing company founded in London, England in 1724. It is now an imprint of Pearson Education.-Beginnings:The Longman company was founded by Thomas Longman , the son of Ezekiel Longman , a gentleman of Bristol. Thomas was apprenticed in 1716 to John Osborn, a London bookseller, and...
. In 1898, two years after Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
's death, a revised text was published by the Kelmscott Press in an edition limited to 160 paper copies and 6 vellum copies, with wood cuts by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
. In 1910 Longman issued an edition in which some passages were replaced with prose summaries by Winifred Turner and Helen Scott. In recent years Sigurd the Volsung has been frequently reprinted, sometimes in the Turner and Scott abridged version.
Critical reception
Reviews were mostly excellent. In America The Atlantic Monthly compared it to Tennyson's Idylls of the KingIdylls of the King
Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom...
, writing that
Sigurd, the Volsung is the second great English epic of our generation...and it ranks after Tennyson's "Arthuriad" in order of time only. It fully equals that monumental work in the force and pathos of the story told, while it surpasses it in unity and continuity of interest.
Edmund Gosse
Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...
, in The Academy, enthused: "The style he has adopted is more exalted and less idyllic, more rapturous and less luxurious – in a word, more spirited and more virile than that of any of his earlier works." The Literary World agreed that it was "the manliest and the loveliest work of Mr. Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
's genius", going on to predict that "Whatever its immediate reception may be, William Morris's Sigurd is certain eventually to take its place among the few great epics of the English tongue." The note of caution as to the reaction of the 19th century reading public was sounded more strongly by several other critics. Theodore Watts
Theodore Watts-Dunton
Theodore Watts-Dunton was an English critic and poet. He is often remembered as the friend and minder of Algernon Charles Swinburne, whom he rescued from alcoholism.-Birth and education:...
, who thought it "Mr. Morris's greatest achievement", wrote in The Athenaeum
Athenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
, "That this is a noble poem there can be no doubt; but whether it will meet with ready appreciation and sympathy in this country is a question not so easily disposed of." Henry Hewlett, in Fraser's Magazine
Fraser's Magazine
Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. It was founded by Hugh Fraser and William Maginn in 1830 and loosely directed by Maginn under the name Oliver Yorke until about 1840...
, was repulsed by the Dark Age outlook he believed Morris to have adopted:
A poem...which, like Sigurd, reflects, with hard, uncompromising realism, an obsolete code of ethics, and a barbarous condition of society, finds itself irreconcilably at discord with the key of nineteenth-century feeling. Deprived of its strongest claim to interest, a sympathetic response in the moral and religious sentiment of its readers, it can only appeal to the intellect as a work of art, or as a more or less successful attempt at antiquarian restoration. It may be admired and applauded by the lettered few; but it will not be taken to the nation's heart".
After Morris's death interest in his poems began to fade, but a few enthusiasts for Sigurd the Volsung continued to speak out in its favour. Arthur Symons
Arthur Symons
Arthur William Symons , was a British poet, critic and magazine editor.-Life:Born in Milford Haven, Wales, of Cornish parents, Symons was educated privately, spending much of his time in France and Italy...
wrote in 1896 that Sigurd the Volsung "remains his masterpiece of sustained power", and in 1912 the young T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...
called it "the best poem I know" According to the great philologist
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
E. V. Gordon
E. V. Gordon
Eric Valentine Gordon was a philologist who is known for his compiling of many Germanic texts in their original language into book format...
Sigurd the Volsung is "incomparably the greatest poem – perhaps the only great poem – in English which has been inspired by Norse literature
Old Norse literature
Old Norse literature refers to the vernacular literature of the Scandinavian peoples up to ca. 1350. It chiefly consists of Icelandic writings.See:* Old Norse poetry* Edda* Norse saga* Icelanders' sagas* Kings' sagas* Legendary sagas...
", and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
went so far as to call it "the greatest epic since Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
". Contemporary judgements on Sigurd tend to depend upon the judge's opinion of Morris's verse in general, but it is commonly held by Morris scholars to be the best of his poems.
External links
- Online edition
- Discussion from The Cambridge History of English and American LiteratureThe Cambridge History of English and American LiteratureThe Cambridge History of English and American Literature was originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1907–1921. The 18 volumes include 303 chapters and more than 11,000 pages edited and written by a worldwide panel of 171 leading scholars and thinkers of the early twentieth century...
- Texts and criticism of Sigurd the Volsung at Morris Online Edition
- "William Morris and the Volsungs" by David Ashurst