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A review by ceadda
The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes by Anonymous
4.0
(Hollander's Translation)
A difficult book to rate. I enjoyed the first third of the poems, having to do with the gods and giants, but I suspect this was only because I was already familiar with these myths and could follow along.
The last two-thirds of the poems have to do with the heroic legends that partly inspired Wagner's Ring Cycle. I wish I had read a prose version of this story first as the poetic version(s) was hard to follow. Especially since the story was chopped up among 20 different poems each telling different parts of the story (with lots of overlap), some focusing on different characters, with sometimes contradictory versions of the narrative. If it wasn't for the translators explanations I might not have realized it was a single story. I didn't enjoy this section of the book as much, mostly because of the repetition (Betrayal! Revenge murder! Repeat!) I was glad when it was over.
The very last poem was just a list of dwarves mostly cribbed from The Hobbit.
I believe that the skalds who composed these poems expected their audience to be already familiar with the myths and legends depicted as the stories are very sparsely and artistically told with many sudden unexplained jumps in setting or character. I had the feeling while reading these poems as if I was reading a play minus the stage directions, that a lot of the action was being depicted by actors I couldn't see so that I was missing a great deal of what was happening in the story. I would have been completely and utterly lost without the footnotes.
I read this book as part of National Poetry Month (April) 2015.
A difficult book to rate. I enjoyed the first third of the poems, having to do with the gods and giants, but I suspect this was only because I was already familiar with these myths and could follow along.
The last two-thirds of the poems have to do with the heroic legends that partly inspired Wagner's Ring Cycle. I wish I had read a prose version of this story first as the poetic version(s) was hard to follow. Especially since the story was chopped up among 20 different poems each telling different parts of the story (with lots of overlap), some focusing on different characters, with sometimes contradictory versions of the narrative. If it wasn't for the translators explanations I might not have realized it was a single story. I didn't enjoy this section of the book as much, mostly because of the repetition (Betrayal! Revenge murder! Repeat!) I was glad when it was over.
The very last poem was just a list of dwarves mostly cribbed from The Hobbit.
I believe that the skalds who composed these poems expected their audience to be already familiar with the myths and legends depicted as the stories are very sparsely and artistically told with many sudden unexplained jumps in setting or character. I had the feeling while reading these poems as if I was reading a play minus the stage directions, that a lot of the action was being depicted by actors I couldn't see so that I was missing a great deal of what was happening in the story. I would have been completely and utterly lost without the footnotes.
I read this book as part of National Poetry Month (April) 2015.