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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Anon (FoGT) 30III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 30’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 606.

Anonymous LausavísurStanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise
293031

text and translation

Sveit lifir ill til átu
annlaust þokumanna,
en klaustrs búi kristinn
kalds, að lífið haldiz.

Ill sveit þokumanna lifir annlaust til átu, en kristinn búi kalds klaustrs [etr], að lífið haldiz.
 
‘The evil company of ‘fog-men’ lives trouble-free for eating, but the Christian inhabitant of the cold cloister [eats] to stay alive.

notes and context

This dróttkvætt helmingr illustrates the rhetorical figure that the Doctrinale calls antimetabola, but FoGT refers to as ansimehisaFoGT says of the figure that it occurs ef maðr snyr sva sem með orðum myrkrar skilningar ‘if one changes [the sense] with words of obscure signification’. Immediately after the citation of the stanza there is a long explanation of the meaning of the nonce word þokumenn ‘fog-men’ (see Note to [All] below).

This stanza is present in both the X (ms. papp10ˣ(36v); LaufE 1979, 252) and the Y (mss 2368ˣ(106), 743ˣ(82r); LaufE 1979, 363-4) versions of LaufE, together with a version of the prose commentary in FoGT that follows the stanza, in each case slightly differently worded. The verse text is the same in each, except that in l. 3 mss 2368ˣ and 743ˣ have klaustrs (as in FoGT), while papp10ˣ has klaustr. Neither the stanza nor the prose commentary are in RE 1665, unlike the other two anonymous stanzas in FoGT (sts 4 and 6) and two by known skalds, Þskúm Lv 1I (FoGT 27) and ESk Lv 13 (FoGT 56), which are in both sources. In papp10ˣ the extract from FoGT about þokumenn is included after Epilogus partis prioris, possibly as a later addition, while in 2368ˣ and 743ˣ it comes at the end of the section entitled Upprune nóckurra konga heita ‘The origin of some kings’ heiti’; for a discussion of the significance of these locations, see Faulkes (LaufE 1979, 179). — It is obvious from the elaborate prose explanation of the meaning of the hap. leg. þokumenn ‘fog-men’ in l. 2 (probably a calque on Lat. nebulo ‘a worthless person, wretch’) that the author of FoGT considered the use of this word to illustrate the figure he called ansimehisa. He states that the term refers to people who waste all their money on food and drink, and whose folly prevents them from seeing the light of true morality, just like people incarcerated in a dark prison. His use of þokumenn does not really illustrate the standard sense of the figure antimetabola, which the Doctrinale (Reichling 1893, 176, ll. 2610-11), following earlier authorities like Isidore of Seville, defines as cum verbis vertit antimetabola sensum: / non, ut edas, vivas, sed edas ut vivere possisantimetabola changes meaning with words: you do not live so that you may eat, but you eat so that you may live’. Thus a rearrangement of the same words in two clauses can bring about a change of meaning. This is not what FoGT’s use of þokumenn does, but it is notable that the stanza as a whole is influenced by the Lat. adage non ut edas vivas, sed edas ut vivere possis.

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [XIII], [C]. D. Religiøse og moraliserende vers af den 4. grammatiske afhandling 7: AII, 164, BII, 181, Skald II, 94; SnE 1848-87, II, 228-9, III, 160, FoGT 1884, 140, 280, FoGT 2004, 48, 73, 139-40, FoGT 2014, 32-3, 117.

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