No Stahlgewitter in Bonus

[Rebing@t-online.de (Rebing)]

I just got hold of the fourth edition of Arthur Bonus's ISLÄNDERBUCH of 1920 (the title page 
calls it the third edition, but the last of the prefaces is called "Vorwort zur vierten 
Auflage"). The prefaces do not mention any changes since the first edition (1907), so for 
the time being I take this text as the one EJ might have read during WWI. But my 
disappointing finding is that he cannot have found "Stahlgewitter" in Bonus because Bonus 
does not have the word. In fact, Bonus does not even translate the scaldic stanza in 
Egilssaga in which "thrumo stala" appears, that kenning which might be translated as 
"thunderstorm of steel".
 
The quest has to go on. My bibliographical sources tell me that there are other early 
translations by de la Motte-Fouqué, Karl Lachmann, Ferdinand Khull. Back to Interlibrary 
Loan... Bonus himself seems to make the situation even more complex by mentioning that 
between 1907, when he published his saga translations for the first time, and 1920 quite a 
few saga translations ("eine ganze Reihe anderweiter Übersetzungen") apart from Niedner's in 
Sammlung Thule were published.

Let me add an amusing footnote. In a former posting I speculated whether the sagas were 
regarded as Durchhalteliteratur for the soldiers in the trenches and that is why there was a 
special edition for distribution among German prisoners of war. However, Bonus himself felt 
neglected by the military bureaucrats who decided which books were to be sponsored as 
Feldpostliteratur: "Die Kulturpolitik unserer Kriegszensur hatte geurteilt, dass eine Menge 
Schundliteratur das Papier nötiger brauchte, als Fontanes Heimatromane oder auch diese alten 
Geschichten aus der geistigen Heimat unserer Art." Bonus even surmises that the censors 
might have regarded the sagas as unfit reading stuff for German warriors: "Vielleicht auch 
hatte (die Kulturpolitik unserer Kriegszensur) zu sehr zu Herzen genommen, was diese 
Geschichten über die Politik des gegenseitigen Ausmordens stillschweigend verstehen lassen, 
bis sie sich zu der lauten Selbstanklage der Kjartangeschichte aufraffen: 'Der grösste 
Schade dabei ist, dass wir Geschlechtsgenossen uns immer mehr zusammenhauen. Es sind nun 
nicht mehr viel solche Männer unter uns, wie der, gegen den es sich nun wendet!'"

Günter Rebing