William Morris: Poet, Craftsman, Socialist

by Elisabeth Luther Cary

‘manet alta mente repostum
Judicium Paridis, spretæque injuria formæ.’

This is rendered in a prose version by a fine and versatile scholar, ‘deep in her soul lies stored the judgment of Paris, the insult of her slighted beauty.’ Mr. Morris translates:

‘her inmost heart still sorely did enfold
That grief of body set at naught by Paris’ doomful deed.’

Can anything be much less Virgilian? Is it even intelligible without the Latin? What modern poet would naturally speak of ‘grief of body set at naught,’ or call the judgment of Paris ‘Paris’ doomful deed’? Then ‘manet alta mente repostum’ is strangely rendered by ‘her inmost heart still sorely did enfold.’ This is an example of the translation at its worst, but defects of the sort illustrated are so common as to leave an impression of wilful ruggedness, and even obscurity, than which what can be less like Virgil? Where Virgil describes the death of Troilus, ‘et versa pulvis inscribitus hasta’ (‘and his reversed spear scores the dust’), Mr. Morris has ‘his wrested spear a-writing in the dust,’ and Troilus has just been ‘a-fleeing weaponless.’ Our doomful deed, is that to be a-translating thus is to write with wrested pen, and to give a rendering of Virgil as unsatisfactory as it is technically literal. In short, Mr. Morris’s Æneid seems on a par with Mr. Browning’s Agamemnon. But this,” Mr. Lang is careful to add, “is a purely personal verdict: better scholars and better critics have expressed a far higher opinion of Mr. Morris’s translation of Virgil.”

Mr. Lang’s whimsical despair over the affectations of language which abound in the translation of the Æneid with less pertinence than in many other writings of Morris where also they abound, recalls the remonstrance that Stevenson could not resist writing out in the form of a letter although it was never sent on its mission. Acknowledging his debt to Morris for many “unforgettable poems,” the younger writer and more accomplished student of language protests against the indiscriminate use of the word whereas in the translations from the sagas. “For surely, Master,” he says, “that tongue that we write, and that you have illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue, where has one sense, whereas another.”

The translation of the Æneid was published under the title of The Æneids, in the autumn of 1875. Morris had written a good part of it in the course of his trips back and forth on the Underground Railway, using for these first drafts a stiff-covered copybook, which was his constant companion. In the summer of the same year he had brought out a volume of the translations from the Icelandic which he was making in collaboration with Mr. Magnusson, calling it Three Northern Love-Stories and Other Tales. He had still, he declared “but few converts to Saga-ism,” and he regarded his translating from the Icelandic as a pure luxury, adopting it for a Sunday amusement. During the winter of 1875-76, however, he was embarked on a cognate enterprise of the utmost importance to him, although he thought, and with truth, that his public would be indifferent to it. This was the epic poem which he called The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, based on the Volsunga Saga, the story of the great Northern heroes told and re-told from generation to generation, polished and perfected until the final form, in which it preserves the traditions of the people who cherish it, is the noblest attained in the Icelandic legends. Morris had published a prose translation of the saga in 1870, and the following passage from his preface shows how deeply his emotions were stirred by his subject:

“As to the literary quality of this work we might say much,” he writes, “but we think we may well trust the reader of poetic insight to break through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by finding amidst all its wildness and remoteness such startling realism, such subtlety, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move himself to-day. In conclusion, we must again say how strange it seems to us, that this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should never before have been translated into English. For this is the Great Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the tale of Troy was to the Greeks—to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has been—a story too—then should it be to those that come after us no less than the Tale of Troy has been to us.”

In the course of the following six years, during which he was constantly increasing his intimacy with the literature of the North, an impulse not unlike that which tempted Tennyson toward the Idylls of the King led him to try the winning of a wider audience for the tale of great deeds and elemental passions by which he himself had been so much inspired. In the prose translation he had given the Volsunga Saga to the public as it had been created for an earlier public of more savage tastes and fiercer tendencies. Now he proposed to divest it of some of the childish and ugly details that formed a stumbling block to the modern reader (though plausible and interesting enough to those for whom they were invented), and to add to the “unversified poem” rhyme and metre, emphasising the essential points and such characteristics of the actors as most appealed to him. A comparison of the saga with the poem will show that in his effort to preserve the heroic character of the antique conception by accentuating everything pleasing, leaving out much of the rudeness and cruelty, and adorning it with copious descriptive passages, he robs the story of a great part of the wild life stirring in its ancient forms, and more or less confuses and involves it. The modern poem really requires for its right understanding a mind more instructed in its subject than the prose translation of the old saga, and readers to whom the latter is unfamiliar may find a plain outline of the story not superfluous.

In the translation, the origin of the noble Volsung race, of which Sigurd is the flower and crown, is traced to Sigi, called the son of Odin, and sent out from his father’s land for killing a thrall. He is fortunate in war, marries a noble wife, and rules over the land of the Huns. His son is named Rerir. Volsung is the son of Rerir, and thus the great-grandson of Odin himself. He marries the daughter of a giant, and the ten sons and one daughter of this union are strong in sinew and huge in size, the Volsung race having the fame of being “great men and high-minded and far above the most of men both in cunning and in prowess and all things high and mighty.” Volsung becomes in his turn king over Hunland, and builds for himself a noble Hall in the centre of which grows an oak-tree whose limbs “blossom fair out over the roof of the hall,” and the trunk of which is called Branstock.

The poem opens with the description of a wedding-feast held in this Hall for Signy, King Volsung’s daughter, who has been sought in marriage by Siggeir, King of the Goths, a smaller and meaner race than the Volsungs. Signy is not content with her fate, but her father has deemed the match to be a wise one, and, eminent in filial obedience as in all things else, she yields. From this point for some distance saga and poem march together save for certain minor changes intended to increase Signy’s charm. During the feasting a one-eyed stranger enters the Hall and thrusts his sword up to its hilt into the tree-trunk, saying that who should draw the sword from the trunk should have it for his own and find it the best he had ever borne in his hand. This, of course, is Odin. Siggeir tries to draw the sword, and after him his nobles, and then the sons of King Volsung, but none succeeds until Sigmund, the twin of Signy, draws it lightly forth as an easy task. Siggeir is wroth and offers to buy the sword for thrice its weight in gold, but Sigmund will not part with it, and Siggeir sets sail for home in dudgeon, though concealing his feelings from the Volsungs and inviting them cordially to visit him in Gothland. Signy reads the future, and implores her father to undo the marriage and let Siggeir depart without her. (In the poem Morris has her offer herself as a sacrifice if her father will but remain in his kingdom and decline Siggeir’s invitation.) King Volsung, however, insists on keeping his troth, and Signy and Siggeir depart, followed in due time by King Volsung and his sons and nobles in response to Siggeir’s request. What Signy prophesied comes to pass and King Volsung falls at the hands of the Goths while his ten sons are taken captive. Now Signy prays her husband that her brothers be put for a time in the stocks, since home to her mind comes “the saw that says Sweet to eye while seen.” Siggeir is delighted to consent though he deems her “mad and witless” to wish longer suffering for her brothers. Here the poem departs from the original in that Morris puts the idea of the stocks into the mind of Siggeir in answer to Signy’s suggestion that her brothers be spared for a little time. Sigmund and the rest of the brothers are taken to the wildwood, and a beam is placed on their feet, and night by night for nine nights a she-wolf comes to devour one of them. (In the poem Morris hastens matters somewhat by having two wolves appear each night to despatch the brothers two at a time.) Each morning Signy sends a messenger to the wildwood who brings back the woeful news. Finally she thinks of a ruse, and on the tenth night the messenger is sent to smear the face of Sigmund, now the sole remaining brother, with honey, putting some also into his mouth. When the wolf comes she licks his face, and then puts her tongue into his mouth to get the last delicious drop. Sigmund promptly closes his teeth upon her tongue and in the struggle that ensues Sigmund’s bonds are burst and the wolf escapes, leaving her tongue between his teeth. This incident was probably not sufficiently heroic to please Morris, and in the poem no mention is made of Signy’s clever device, Sigmund gaining his freedom in a more dignified fashion and the details being slurred over lightly, with a vague and general allusion to snapping “with greedy teeth.” Sigmund dwells in the wildwood in hiding, and Signy sends to him in turn her two sons by King Siggeir, that he may test their fitness to help avenge the fate of her family. Here again Morris mitigates the stern temper of Signy for a more womanly type. In the saga when Signy finds that the boys are not stout enough of heart to accomplish her purpose she bids Sigmund kill them at once: “Why should such as they live longer?” In the poem, however, when Signy sends her son to Sigmund he is delivered with the diplomatic message that if his heart avail not he may “wend the ways of his fate,” and when it is found that his heart does not avail, he is returned in safety to his mother, Sigmund awaiting the slow coming of the competent one.