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
