Where did EJ get the expression »Stahlgewitter«? We had a discussion on the List back in '98 with no definite results. EJ himself was not sure, he mentioned in a late speech in Madrid that he probably got it from Icelandic literature. There are in fact three kennings in the sagas that might be translated as »Stahlgewitter«: stála thrymr (Thorkell Gislasson 12) stála thrima (Thorthr Sjáreksson 3) stála thrima (Egil Skallagrimsson Lausavisa 18) But as fas as I know EJ did not read Old Icelandic, and none of the German translations I could locate did in fact translate one of the above terms as »Stahlgewitter«. So I believe that after all EJ coined the expression himself, maybe under the impression of having read a German translation of the sagas [ none of which which, I repeat, included the exact expression »Stahlgewitter«]. When friends pointed out to him that the origin of the word was Icelandic he used to say that was probably so. It was in a way, something like an osmotic influence, but as far as I can make it out, it was no direct quotation. In case you are interested in more details I copy below excerpts from my postings in '98 about the »Stahlgewitter« problem. "Bertil, thank you for pointing out that EJ himself believes that he got "Stahlgewitter" from the saga of Egil. (1) This might be another step towards the solution of our problem. So far, two possibilities seem to be ruled out definitely. First, "Stahlgewitter" was not taken from the Edda (because Egilsson's authoritative LEXICON does not list any such kenning in the EDDA). Second, though EJ might have found it in Egilssaga, he could not have found it in Niedner's translation of this text in the Thule series. Niedner translates "stala thrymir" in Lausvisa 18 of Egil with "attack" (angreifen). It is not a faulty translation. On the contrary, Niedner is an ingenious translator. He manages to render the complex form of the scaldic verses in German. This is quite a feat because of the complex rules the scalds followed when writing their poems. Rule One says: you must have two words alliterate in one line (Stabreim), and another word at the beginning of the next line must show the same alliteration. (This rule is less strict than it sounds because all vowels are regarded as alliterations per se.) Rule Two: in each line there must be an interior rhyme (Binnenreim). Here are the Icelandic and German versions of that stanza in question with the above formal requirements marked: the alliterations in upper case letters, the interior rhymes underlined: Valkostom hlothk Vestan Vang fyr merkestanger Ott vas El thats sottak Athgils blaom nathre; hathe Ungr vith Ungla Aleifr thrumo stala; Helt, ne Hrafnar sulto, Hringr a vapna thinge. (A rough translation into English: In the west I covered the fields with heaps of corpses, the fight was furious, I killed Adgils with the blue snake (= name of Egil's sword). Young Aleif raised a thunder(storm) of steel against the Angles. The ravens did not stay hungry, and there was work for Hring in the battle.) The scalds, having thus fettered themselves with those and other rules (though, as the above example shows, the rules were not always followed to the letter) did not write sentences following the patterns of ordinary spoken language or those of the matter-of-fact narrative of the actual saga story. What they produced were clusters of words whose meaning had to be deciphered and could not be taken in at one glance. Because of this difficulty, the modern editors of the Icelandic texts usually add prose versions of the scaldic stanzas in their footnotes. The artistry of this poetry lay in the choice of kennings and in the dexterity with which the formal rules were obeyed. So a translator may quite legitimately decide to focus on rendering faithfully the formal traits. In order to achieve this he has to make concessions as regards other aspects of the text - the old translator's dilemma: traduttore - traditore. Niedner did quite well in rendering the alliterations and interior rhymes in German: Machtvollen Muts liess fallen Mann ich vorm banner. Ehernes spiel! stets weher Adgil Biss Blau-natter. drängten Eng die Angeln Aleif Anzugreifen! Heiss ward's - raben kreisten -- Hring beim waffenthinge. However, in order to achieve the feat of having analogous alliterations and interior rhymes in his German text, he had to abandon the ideal of translating all nouns by nouns, verbs by verbs, etc.. He resorted to translating "stala thruma", a kenning composed of two nouns, and meaning " battle" or "attack ", by the one verb "attack". So there is no "Stahlgewitter" in Niedner's translation. Honi soit qui mal y pense. All this means simply that we have to look for some other translation of Egilssaga in which EJ found in fact "Stahlgewitter" in the German rendering of the stanza quoted above. There exist, as far as I could find out with the help of my friend Heiko Uecker of the Germanistisches Seminar Bonn (who also taught me the rules of scaldic poetry), the following translations before Niedner: 1) Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué (1813) 1) Karl Lachmann (1816) 1) Ferdinand Khull (1888) 1) Arthur Bonus (1907) Bonus's ISLÄNDERBUCH was quite popular in his time. There are several reprints, an edition for young people and even a special edition printed in Switzerland for the benefit of German prisoners of war as vol. 15 of the "Bücherei für deutsche Kriegsgefangene". Does this indicate that in WWI the Icelandic sagas were so popular at the front that it seemed appropriate to make sure that even those German soldiers who had the bad luck to be taken prisoners of war could read them? And that Leutnant Jünger, known as a fighter and a bookworm, might have carried his Bonus in his field pack? So the posting of my next instalment of this saga of the hunt for a word depends on how fast interlibrary loan is in Nordrhein-Westfalen.... (1) Im Wagen erfuhr ich von Erdmuthe einige Islandwörter; die Sprache ist bildhaft wie bei den Skalden ¾ bei einem, ich glaube: Egil, fand ich "Stahlgewitter" bald nach dem ersten Weltkrieg, (SIEBZIG VERWEHT I, p. 511, 3.8.68) Günter Rebing" "No Stahlgewitter in Bonus 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 with "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 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. 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" ----- Original Message ----- From: Andrea S To: jüngerlist Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 3:34 PM Subject: [Juenger-list] Juenger and Iceland Perhaps anyone could help me. Do anyone know what is the Icelandic poem which gave Juenger the title for his "Storm of steel"? Iceland was a great interst of Juenger: in "The Total Mobilization" appear the icelandic volcano Hekla. A my Icelandic friend told me that the original term which signify the "retreat in the forest" is "SKOGARGANGUR" in icelandic. In "Der Waldgang" he told about the sacredness of the residence in the ancient Iceland against the Power who try to enter even the houses (for him the sacredness of the house is granted by the family father, who to defend his property and his sons and wife can always kill any intruder). Thanks
Markup © John King, July 2001.