July 25: I am confused, Gunnar

Unlike the Browning, I did actually do the reading this time.

It is a fine summer day here in Los Angeles, not too hot, brilliant sunshine, etc., and it makes me question why excerpts from the great Epic of the North have been chosen for today. Wouldn't a bitter February evening be a better choice for something like this --

Some the wolf roasted,
Some minced the worm,
Some unto Guttorm
Gave the wolf-meat,
Or ever they might
In their lust for murder
On the high king
Lay deadly hand.

This from the Lay of Brynhild, and I have to say that it is the most confusing damn reading of the year so far -- and, because it's also an obscure reading, I had to Google far and wide to figure out what the hell happened in what I just read. Maybe it would be different if I were a Wagner fan, but a kind Fate has spared me that, thank God.

My incomprehension, however, is my own fault, for the translator says:

As to the literary quality of this work we might say much, 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 a startling realism, such subtilty, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move himself to-day.

...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.

I get it now -- I'm not the right race to understand it! I don't have the necessities to fully savor something like this:

Think’st thou not, Gunnar,
How that betid,
When ye let the blood run
Both in one footstep?
With ill reward
Hast thou rewarded
His heart so fain
To be the foremost!

Honestly, I think the Iliad's crown is safe. I like Greek food better, also.