The curse came
on one and all of them--a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of
witchwork destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in
one red ruin.
The "Volsunga Saga" has this unique and unparalleled interest, that
it gives the spectacle of the highest epic genius, struggling out of
savagery into complete and free and conscious humanity. It is a
mark of the savage intellect not to discriminate abruptly between
man and the lower animals. In the tales of the lower peoples, the
characters are just as often beasts as men and women. Now, in the
earlier and wilder parts of the "Volsunga Saga," otters and dragons
play human parts. Signy and his son, and the mother of their enemy,
put on the skins of wolves, become wolves, and pass through hideous
adventures. The story reeks with blood, and ravins with lust of
blood. But when Sigurd arrives at full years of manhood, the
barbarism yields place, the Saga becomes human and conscious.
These legends deal little with love. But in the "Volsunga Saga" the
permanent interest is the true and deathless love of Sigurd and
Brynhild: their separation by magic arts, the revival of their
passion too late, the man's resigned and heroic acquiescence, the
fiercer passion of the woman, who will neither bear her fate nor
accept her bliss at the price of honour and her plighted word.
The situation, the nodus, is neither ancient merely nor modern
merely, but of all time.
Pages:
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180