Epic poem, in the original. I read a prose translation.
Original languages: Icelandic, Middle High German. [First entry here in German]
I read the Penguin Classics edition (1965), translated by A.T. Hatto.
Finally a plot again! And the scholarly apparatus by A.T. Hatto is excellent, and witty as well. Hatto also very helpfully illuminates and explains the plot holes and inconsistencies. And also, in great consideration for the reader, Hatto puts his “introduction” after the Nibelungenlied text.
The wit and wisdom of Hatto:
“Faced with self-contradictions, lapses, or incongruities in the use of epithets, one declares them to be merely apparent, and bangs one’s head on one’s desk till illumination should come.” (p. 300)
“.. if one remembers how certain of our contemporaries go grubbing for motives in the dustbin of the mind” (p. 313)
And Hatto has a ton of penetrating observations about the plot and characters.
Last thoughts on the Nibelungenlied
I did like the book, and the scholarly apparatus, quite a lot. It had a very good plot, with love, sex, revenge, lots of violence, travel, kings, queens, and more.
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