[In the following essay, Mowatt explains why taking a historical approach in analyzing the Nibelungenliedis unsatisfactory; Mowatt then offers suggestions for studying it using a structural approach.]

A. THE HISTORICAL APPROACH; ITS USE AND ITS LIMITATIONS

The Nibelungenlied is a work of medieval literature, and is usually interpreted historically. There are good reasons why this has been, and will no doubt continue to be so. The Court Epic and Lyric are not easily accessible to a present-day audience, and even students of German are sometimes reluctant to make the effort of understanding which they require. The research of medievalists has succeeded in lessening the gap between the modern and medieval mind, and in giving us at least some idea of what Middle High German authors were trying to do. We can feel for them as they struggle to turn Celtic mythology into Christian fable, or heroic saga into courtly entertainment. Their efforts to disembody sex, however salutary they may have been at the time, are not so well received; but even Minnesang invites respect for the sheer impossibility of the task it sets itself.

Nevertheless, the historical approach, however useful, is only one among many. There are other correctives to a first, uninformed, common-sense reaction, and realization of this fact has gradually gained ground. Anything written since the eighteenth century is felt now to be, at least in theory, accessible to a modern audience on its own merits. The reader who states that he can see nothing in Goethe's Faust is no longer certain to be referred firmly to its eighteenth-century background and Goethe's biography. He will now often be referred instead to certain aspects of the work itself which may have escaped his notice. This second alternative has always existed, and indeed came naturally to men like Goethe and Herder; but during the dark ages of nineteenth-century historicism it was obscured. It is only recently that it has come into its own, achieving a well-argued body of theory, and a noticeable influence on practising critics and scholars, even in Germany.

All this applies, unfortunately, to ‘Modern Literature’ only. The Middle Ages, as everyone knows, were different. They were, for example, deficient in ‘historical sense’. To the nineteenth century, with its own hypertrophied organ, this was enough to condemn them to the most historical of interpretations. An age which could cheerfully shuffle historical events, or advocate in the same breath Germanic and courtly ethics, Christian and Celtic mythology, individual license and social restraint, was obviously inaccessible. Its productions could only be explained, never understood. This defeatist attitude to courtly literature has its linguistic analogue in ‘Germanic Philology’. Both are unhappily still with us.

But this is not to say that the Medievalists, in their historical stronghold, are unaware of what is going on outside. They know of it, and they deal with it in one of two ways: with boiling oil, or more recently, with the kiss of death. The boiling oil technique involves a withdrawal into an expertise so profound that medieval literature becomes meaningless to everyone but a medievalist, and the stronghold is preserved. The kiss of death usually takes the form of a generous rejection of historicism, followed by a rigidly historical interpretation. The intruder sees his weapons borrowed and blunted, all to no purpose, and the stronghold is again preserved. The Nibelungenlied has suffered much from the first of these defences, so that common-sense rejection by most readers, and historical dismemberment in Germany have been the rule. The second defence appears in an article by B. Nagel.¹ After some opening remarks about the advisability of interpreting a poem in its own right, he sets to work with a primitive concept of structural symmetry in one hand, and the Intentional Fallacy in the other. His results are not noticeably different from those of more thorough-going historicists. The same approach, at second hand, is found in a review of Professor Panzer's book: Das Nibelungenlied. The reviewer is able to say:²

Methodisch befindet sich der Verfasser übrigens ganz auf der Linie der modernsten literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung.

In support, he quotes the chapter-headings and the author's preface. Professor Panzer's ‘method’ is thus equated with his intention, and his achievement, which is nothing if not historical, is overlooked in the process. A more honest attempt at a genuinely ahistorical interpretation was made by W. J. Schröder,³ but he too misled himself by fixing his structural insights on to a historical time-scale inherited from previous research.

In practice, then, German scholars still hold to the distinction between medieval literature, which needs to be protected from ‘neuzeitliche poetischästhetische Wertungen oder gar moderne Impressionen',⁴ and modern literature, which can look after itself. Apparently this is no longer the case in English studies, or at least not entirely. Henry Bosley Wolf, reviewing a book on Beowulf, could say in 1954:⁵

(The) … study … is a valuable addition to the growing corpus of literature treating this Old English poem as a work of art.

Whether true or not, this is a breathtaking thought for a Germanist, and it is comforting to turn to Tolkien's description of the situation eighteen years earlier. In tones reminiscent of Quiller-Couch on History of Literature, he summarizes previous research as follows:⁶

Beowulf is a half-baked native epic the development of which was killed by Latin learning; it was inspired by the emulation of Virgil, and is a product of the education that came in with Christianity; it is feeble and incompetent as narrative; the rules of narrative are cleverly observed in the manner of the learned epic; it is the confused product of a committee of muddle-headed and probably beer-bemused Anglo-Saxons (this is a Gallic voice); it is a string of pagan lays edited by monks; it is the work of a learned but inaccurate Christian antiquarian; it is a work of genius, rare and surprising in the period, though the genius seems to have been shown principally in doing something much better left undone … ; it is a wild folk-tale (general chorus); it is a poem of an aristocratic and courtly tradition (same voices); it is a hotch-potch; it is a sociological, anthropological, archaeological document; it is a mythical allegory … ; it is rude and rough; it is a masterpiece of metrical art; it has no shape at all; it is singularly weak in construction; it is a clever allegory of contemporary politics … ; its architecture is solid; it is thin and cheap (a solemn voice); it is undeniably weighty (the same voice); it is a national epic; it is a translation from the Danish; it was imported by Frisian traders; it is a burden to English syllabuses; and (final universal chorus of all voices) it is worth studying.

Most of this, and certainly the last unison could apply equally well to the Nibelungenlied literature. The discord in the inner parts is ascribed by Tolkien to the historical bias of Beowulf studies. Speculation about origins, he points out, is no help in interpretation. The fact that all scholars nevertheless approve of the poem merely shows that they are all reacting to the same thing, and that this thing is not the object of their divergent researches. The Nibelungenlied also excites an admiration in scholars which their utterance does nothing to explain, and both works have been made to carry the blame for this contradiction. The disunity is projected into Beowulf as a discrepancy between lofty style and ignoble theme; into the Nibelungenlied as a contrast between heroic matter and courtly treatment. The real disunity lies of course in the conflict between true appreciation and irrelevant research. The excellence of both works can only be dependent on their whole structure. Occupation with the text, for whatever extraneous reason, brings increasing familiarity with this structure, and even enthusiasm for the works. And this has nothing to do with the pallid admiration we profess for the poet's skill in welding disparate elements together, or in making the two halves of the Nibelungenlied roughly equal in size. Such condescending glances over the poet's shoulder are out of place. It is the final result of his labours which makes its impact on us, and this is what we should analyse.

As with most great works of literature, the common-sense reaction is defensive. It is more comfortable to reject, or laugh at a structure than to submit to it. All one needs is a firm and unquestioned absolute, such as ‘how people behave’, or ‘what I expect from a work of art’. Since the traditional interpretation of the Nibelungenlied is essentially a relativistic counter-blast to such smugness, it seemed advisable to list some of these common-sense reactions before suggesting a different corrective. The relativism to be offered in this case is not, of course, historical, but aesthetic. A view is put forward of the basic structure of the poem, and an attempt is made to show how some of the traditional objections can be resolved in the light of this suggestion.

Two standards frequently applied by common sense are those of psychological credibility in the characters, and logical consistency in the plot. The Nibelungenlied is peculiarly vulnerable to such an assault. There is, for instance, a notable discrepancy between what we are told of the characters, and what they in fact do. Thus: Siegfried is said to be strong, beautiful, kind, considerate, accomplished, an exemplary and fabulously rich king. But what are we to make of his callous and deceitful treatment of Brünhilt? His wife-beating? All this nonsense about dwarves and dragons? And if he is going to be so polite and patient in his wooing of Kriemhilt, why does he turn up as a landless knight and offer to fight her brother? There is also something highly disreputable about his past. He knows more about Brünhilt than one would expect from his upbringing, and one wonders sometimes exactly what went on at Xanten. We read, for instance:

er begunde mit sinnen                    werben scoeniu wîp,
di trûten wol mit êren                    des küenen
Sîvrides lîp

(26, 3-4)

De Boor⁷ tries hard to make this sound innocent, by translating trûten as ‘hätten geliebt’; but it could equally well mean ‘liebten’ in the lowest sense, and indeed Gunther seems to suspect Siegfried's tendencies in this direction when he warns him off Brünhilt:

‘Âne daz du iht triutest’                    sprach
der künec dô
‘die mîne lieben frouwen                    anders bin ich
es vrô.’

(655, 1-2)

Gunther is supposed to be a great and powerful king, and a loving brother. But he does very little to deserve this description. He dithers, and is often over-ruled by his vassal. He says he loves his sister, but he connives in her humiliation, removing first her husband, and then her fortune. He is apparently something of a warrior at the end, but it is not at all clear whether he survives so long through his own prowess, or merely because Hagen and the others have looked after him so carefully. In the Saxon War, Siegfried leaves him safely at home, saying with benevolent contempt:

‘Her künec sît hie heime’,                    sprach
dô Sîvrit,
‘sît daz iuwer recken                    mir wellent volgen
mit.
belîbet bî den frouwen                    und traget hôhen
muot.
ich trouwe iu wol behüeten                    beidiu êre unde
guot.’

(174)

He does take one firm step, on his own decision, against Siegfried's advice; and that is to go after Brünhilt. But the whole thing is a dismal failure, and he commands no more respect as a lover than as a king. Hagen is described as strong, loyal, and terrible. In a sense, his actions bear this out, especially in the second part, but we are forced to condemn him for his barbarity and deceit. This reaction is not indeed particularly modern, and seems to have started in the thirteenth century with the author of MS.C. Furthermore, the means he uses are disproportionate to his ends. Why murder Siegfried after all? Gunther shows no such feverish concern for his wife's honour. Apologies are made (861), the crime of ‘sich rüemen’ is denied on oath (858), and everyone (including Hagen!) is prepared to gloss over the awkward matter of the ring and the girdle. ‘We had better keep our wives in order in future’ is Siegfried's conclusion. Brünhilt, admittedly, remains unhappy, and her tears move Hagen to swear revenge (863-4); but Gunther, who is after all her husband, seems quite unperturbed. Perhaps he is wondering whether he should hit her himself, or stand down in favour of Siegfried again. At all events, his thoughts are the reverse of homicidal.

er ist uns ze saelden                    unt ze êren geborn

(872, 2)

he says, with some emotion. In order to persuade him that his guide and protector needs murdering, Hagen has to introduce a new sin for Siegfried, that of standing in the way of Gunther's territorial expansion (870). He blends this with the rabble-rousing slogan ‘suln wir gouche ziehen?' (867), at the same time insisting that it is Brünhilt's public humiliation that is the real issue (867; 873). And yet, if it had not been for Siegfried, there would have been no Brünhilt for him to insult, and Gunther's own territory would already have been appropriated by the Saxons. Can it be that Hagen is jealous? And what had poor Kriemhilt done to deserve the treatment she gets from Hagen after her husband's death?

Brünhilt as a character is impossible. No one could be so ‘vreislîch’ and so ‘minneclîch’ at the same time. There is something peculiarly distasteful about the thought of this shot-putting amazon dissolving into tears in order to get Siegfried murdered. We can only agree with her husband, who remarks after their first night together:

want ich hân den übeln tiuvel                    heim
ze hûse geladen.

(649, 2)

Kriemhilt presents difficulties only to the initiated. Common sense accepts readily her progression from sweet maiden, via proud wife, to embittered widow. She is a little mercenary, but then so is everyone else.

The historical answer to these objections is well known. The details are still in dispute, but there is a common, all-purpose hypothesis underlying all such solutions, namely that the poet was courtly, and his ‘Stoff’ was not. Thus the magical, superhuman attributes of Siegfried, Brünhilt, and to a lesser extent Hagen, were traditional; the rest were his own contribution. Similarly, the fate of the Burgundians and Kriemhilt's revenge were supplied by legend or pseudo-history, whereas the details of their behaviour were taken from contemporary customs. All inconsistencies can be explained from this postulate. Either the poet would have liked to change his ‘Stoff’, but did not dare; or he tried to, but did not succeed. The other sort of question, such as ‘Why does Hagen kill Siegfried? Why are the Burgundians so obstinate at the end? Why is everyone so mercenary?’ is ruled out as being anachronistic, and resolved by reference to Germanic or medieval ethical principles, such as ‘Sippentreue’, or ‘milte’.

As far as the causal explanations of inconsistencies are concerned, it is clear that they are quite irrelevant to our understanding of the Nibelungenlied itself. They deal exclusively with its genesis, and cannot be invoked to veto its interpretation. The unmistakable relationship between Siegfried and Brünhilt,⁸ for instance, cannot be dismissed from the Nibelungenlied simply because it is also found elsewhere. The historical explanations of morals and motives, on the other hand, are not so much irrelevant, as limiting. If we confine ourselves to them, then we are assuming that the differences between the Middle High Germans and ourselves are more fundamental than the similarities.

Some such improbable assumption is at the root of any attempt to substitute ‘Geistesgeschichte’ for literary interpretation. Social forms and symbols are only the raw material of literature. The Middle High German poet does not just hold up a succession of banners issued by the Zeitgeist, and marked ‘minne, thirteenth century’, or ‘triuwe, Germanic’. He selects from the ones available to him, and arranges them in patterns. In doing so, he refines and qualifies his ready-made symbols by juxtaposing and opposing them to others. The structure which results is not the one which was already available to all medieval thinkers. Nor is it necessarily inaccessible to us. Relations can be meaningful, even when the units related are unidentified. If it were not so, there would be no algebra. It follows that unfamiliar symbols need present no obstacle to understanding, as long as we direct our attention to the relationships the poet has established between them. There is a knight-errant in John Osborne's Look back in Anger, and the audience is not mystified. Conversely, no amount of familiarity, acquired or inherited, will supply the precise meaning of a symbol in any particular work. We have learnt, for instance, that walt for the medieval mind had quite different associations from those we have inherited from the Romantics. It was a terrifying place, something to be run from, rather than sat in. And yet, when we read of Erec and Enîte:

und als si kâmen in den walt
ûz der sorgen gewalt
wider ûf ir kunden wec,

(lines 6760-63)

we realize that this generalized information is not enough. A wood, for Hartman as for Eichendorff, is wild, as opposed to cultivated country, and its precise function in Êrec has still to be worked out. At all events, it seems to be preferable to Limors, and even to Penefrec (lines 7239-41).

B. STRUCTURAL APPROACH AND ANALYSIS

There is still room, then, for a structural approach to the Nibelungenlied. The common-sense objections may be due not to lack of historical information about the pieces, but to lack of insight into the pattern. In looking for such a pattern, the main characters provide the most obvious and convenient units to start with. The fact that they are the focus of common-sense incredulity is not due to chance. Even when this lay reaction is discounted, it remains true that Siegfried, Brünhilt and the Court at Worms are presented as discrete entities. As W. J. Schröder⁹ has observed, they are delineated before they are brought together. With the partial absorption of these two strange characters, the smooth facade of the Court itself begins to split; distinct and warring units appear in the shape of Gunther, Hagen and Kriemhilt, so that we wonder what can have held them together in the first place. In any case, their emergence as individuals is essentially a by-product of the impact of Siegfried and Brünhilt on Gunther's court. If the nature of this impact is to be understood, a reasonable first step would be to examine closely the delineation of these three entities, Brünhilt, Siegfried and the Burgundian Court, as offered by the text.

Brünhilt is the strong silent virgin. She lives a long way from everybody. Everybody has heard of her. Only the strongest and bravest man can win her. Unsuccessful suitors get killed. The symbol is not very hard to interpret. It is a challenge to the male principle to assert itself. Sexual conquest is equated with physical prowess, and the best man is equated with the strongest. The second-best man is warned to keep off; if he ignores the warning, he is punished by death.

If we disregard causal explanations of how this symbol found its way into the Nibelungenlied, and look instead for its nearest relation within the work, we cannot help thinking of Siegfried. Nor, indeed, can Brünhilt,¹⁰ for he is the obvious candidate;—strong, beautiful, proud, and with a youthful eagerness to try out his strength. One thinks of his challenge to Gunther when he arrives at Worms. He openly equates kingship with conquest, and the right to rule with physical strength. Furthermore, as Hagen and Gunther are well aware, he is the only man who knows the way to Îsenstein, or what to do when he gets there. He alone is strong enough to overthrow Brünhilt, both in the contest, and in the bed. But he not only knows how to deal with Brünhilt; he also embodies, in his own right, a set of hyperbolic qualities which are complementary to hers. She is strongest in defence; he is strongest in attack. She is impenetrable; he is impervious. Both are misused by Gunther, but whereas she is mistaken, he is misled. They are in fact extreme versions of female (unassailable) and male (irresistible), with a strong tendency to make contact.

In the world where Siegfried and Brünhilt belong together, there are no rules for civilized and sophisticated behaviour. It is often said that theirs is an ‘uncourtly’ world, and from the point of view of the thirteenth century this is no doubt true. But what is far more important is that it is essentially an anti-social, uncompromising world, where only absolutes and superlatives apply.

Nothing could be more different from this than the court at Worms, where a respect for traditional forms and loyalties serves to inhibit all response to a new situation, such as the arrival of Siegfried, or the Saxon War. Gunther is the symbol of this formal excellence; on his own ground (politics, keeping the peace), he is admirable; it is only when he steps outside this that his limitations become apparent. Gunther's world is of course ‘courtly’,¹¹ but again the actual medieval details are not the interesting thing. The interesting thing about Gunther's world is that it is carefully regulated, with a set procedure for every event. It is in fact ‘society’, as against ‘nature’, the harmonious group as against the identified pair.

So far, we have considered only the ready-made symbols. The structure of the Nibelungenlied lies in the way in which they are brought together, and the inevitable results. Thus Siegfried and Brünhilt are both brought to Worms, and rather uncomfortably acclimatized to law and order. Brünhilt's difficulties are well known, but Siegfried is also reluctant in a more unobtrusive way: he makes several attempts to leave the court, only to be held back by the hope of Kriemhilt.¹² Gunther, on the other hand, takes it into his head to go after Brünhilt. In order to do this, he has to call in Siegfried, and ask him to take over something that every man should really do for himself. His scheme works, after a fashion, but it is all based on trickery and deceit; Siegfried doesn't make a very good vassal, and Gunther makes a very poor Siegfried. It is only a matter of time before he meets the fate of all second-rate suitors, and is killed. Since he stands for a whole way of life at Worms, the whole homogeneous society has to perish with him. In this sense, the quarrel between Gunther and Kriemhilt in the second part is seen as an internal struggle in a society that has lost its bearings. Their mistake was to introduce the disruptive force of Brünhilt and Siegfried into their nicely balanced world; and in this, Kriemhilt is just as culpable and tenacious as the others. Once they have tried brute strength, their established forms cease to work. Even when they have removed Siegfried, the immediate embarrassment, and Brünhilt has faded away, they still cannot agree, and they go on squabbling over the treasure, which is all that is left, until they wipe each other out.

It could be said, then, that we are presented with two pairs of characters, adapted to very different environments, and showing correspondingly dissimilar behaviour patterns. The pairs are brought together and reshuffled, after the manner of the molecules in Goethe's chemical analogy. But, as in the Wahlverwandtschaften, the uncomplicated fortunes of inorganic compounds can only be a starting-point. In both works, the natural (or elective) affinities are confused, qualified and complicated out of existence by the demands of social organization. The pairs: Siegfried-Brünhilt and Eduard-Ottilie are never completely realized. The process is inhibited in the Wahlverwandtschaften by the inertia of the pairing already accomplished. In the Nibelungenlied, it is wilfully pushed in another direction, and the compounds which actually result are highly unstable. The pairs Siegfried-Kriemhilt and Gunther-Brünhilt embody tensions which cannot be ignored indefinitely.

If we examine the Nibelungenlied with this working hypothesis in mind, many of the apparent flaws in the work are seen to be features of the overall structure. Gunther the great warrior and Gunther on the bedroom wall is a direct result of his two incompatible functions: king at Worms, and husband to Brünhilt. Siegfried the courtly gentleman and Siegfried the supernatural strongman is similarly structural. He arrives at Worms like something from another world, and consciously represses his natural instincts in order to fit in. His one motive, in arriving and in staying, is the acquisition of Kriemhilt. The others, after their first fright, use him, with disastrous results for themselves. He uses them, or better, he manipulates their set of conventions (in his subordination to Gunther, in the Saxon War, and in his very correct courtship of Kriemhilt), with equally disastrous results. Having created this impossible situation, he blandly assumes that everything will be all right. On two occasions he relaxes so much that he forgets the courtly rules he has adopted. His advice to Gunther on keeping one's wife in order, for instance, is quite monstrously inapplicable, both to Gunther's marriage, and his own.

‘Man sol sô vrouwen ziehen’                    sprach
Sîfrit der degen,
‘daz si üppecliche sprüche                    lâzen
under wegen.
verbiut ez dînem wîbe,                    der mînen
tuon ich sam.
ir grôzen ungefüege                    ich mich waerlichen
scham’.

(862)

This applies to a quite different world where a Siegfried might have married a Brünhilt, and having won her by force, would continue to keep her in order by force. But in fact it is the courtly Kriemhilt he has married, and her reaction to her good hiding is to tell Hagen, with the best of wifely intentions, how to kill her husband. Gunther's reaction to the advice is not recorded. The subject must have been painful, and a suitable reply hard to find. It is hardly surprising, in the circumstances, that only twelve stanzas later he agrees to have Siegfried murdered. Siegfried's other indiscretion comes, appropriately enough, just before his final removal from the scene. He catches a bear, and terrorizes all the courtly hunters by letting it loose in the middle of their meal. This is the last fling.¹³

Hagen's inconsistencies follow a similar pattern. He is loyal and efficient, according to his lights, but his lights do not go quite far enough. His murder of Siegfried, and his victimization of Kriemhilt are part of this limited vision. He feels that they are foreign bodies in his world, and wants to get rid of them. But the whole situation is really beyond him by this time. He knows enough about Siegfried and the supernatural to be wary of them. But he thinks he can control them, and indeed advises Gunther to use Siegfried for his Brünhilt-escapade. It is not until they arrive at Îsenstein, that he finds himself immediately out of his depth. He wants the Burgundians to hold on to their weapons, being convinced that Gunther has bitten off more than he can chew (438). But he does not realize the extent of Gunther's dependence on Siegfried. Gunther is not really in any immediate danger, and even if he were, Hagen would not be much help. This is Siegfried's world, and different rules apply.

Dô sprach ein kameraere:                    ‘ir sult
uns geben diu swert
unt ouch die liehten brünne’.                    ‘des
sît ir ungewert’
sprach von Tronege Hagene:                    ‘wir wellens selbe
tragen’.
dô begonde im Sîfrit                    da von diu rehten
maere sagen.
‘Man pfliget in dirre bürge,                    daz
wil ich iu sagen,
daz neheine geste                    hie wâfen sulen tragen.
nu lât si tragen hinnen,                    daz ist wol getân.’
des volgete vil ungerne                    Hagene Guntheres man.

(406-7)

Hagen also warns against the fatal journey to Etzel's court. Again he senses danger, without knowing how to ward if off. But this time, when his advice is ignored, he finds himself back in a world he understands. Organization of troop-movements, keeping up morale, and of course fighting, are things he can manage. We can and often do say that Hagen ‘grows in stature’ in the second part, but there is no inconsistency in the change. It is essentially the same figure in an entirely different situation.

Like Siegfried and Gunther, so too does Kriemhilt saddle herself with two irreconcilable functions: sister to Gunther and wife to Siegfried. The Kriemhilt of Part I is firmly embedded in the sterile courtly society of Worms. She and Gunther have everything in common, even to the extent of sharing a disastrous disposition to marry outside their capabilities. Gunther pretends to be a child of nature; Kriemhilt allows Siegfried to go through the motions of a love-sick Minnesinger. Between them they manage to split up the Siegfried-Brünhilt entity, acquiring roughly equal shares, and it is in this sense that their death-struggle in Part II can be called an internal squabble over the remains of Siegfried's power. But in the process, both become something else. Gunther becomes the husband of Brünhilt; Kriemhilt becomes the wife of Siegfried. The positions are precarious, ill-fitting and untenable in the long run. But the patriarchal Hagen sees it more simply. Gunther has acquired Brünhilt; Siegfried has acquired Kriemhilt. And this is how he can accept Brünhilt unquestioningly as his Queen, while resenting both Siegfried and Kriemhilt as foreign bodies at Worms.

The impossibility of Kriemhilt's position does not become clear at once. She removes, with Siegfried, to Xanten, accepting her new function, and relinquishing her old one with apparent whole-heartedness. Indeed, the separation of the two courts might have provided a permanent solution—if it had not been for Brünhilt. She is still stuck, quite incongruously, at Worms. Once deprived of her virginity, she is nothing in her own right; but this would not matter in the natural order of things, since only the best and strongest man on earth is capable of winning and marrying her. In the natural order of things, she would happily give up her virginal independence for marriage to this man; sacrifice her own power in order to harness an even greater one. On the face of it, this is what has happened; logically, Gunther is the best and strongest man on earth. Unfortunately, she cannot really believe this. She cannot convince herself that Siegfried is subordinate to Gunther, whatever anyone says. He does not behave like a vassal, not indeed look like a second-rate suitor. And so she brings the two pairs together again, and the peaceful interlude is over. The result, as one might expect, is that the real nature of the situation is made intolerably apparent, and Siegfried is murdered. It is often remarked that Brünhilt now fades out of the picture. But what else could she do? She only exists as a counterpart to Siegfried. Her duty is to preserve herself until the right man comes to claim her. For recognition of this man, she relies on the objective trial of strength, much as Kleist's characters rely, less symbolically, on their unerring ‘Gefühl’. But unlike that of Kleist's characters, her ‘Gefühl’ is in the event utterly reliable. She has played her part correctly, the right man, Siegfried, has come to claim her, she has recognized him, and given herself to him. But instead of taking possession, he immediately hands over to Gunther. She has discovered, in fact that the other half of the symbol no longer believes in it, and is quite happy to turn it into meaningless play-acting, in order to embroil himself somewhere else where he does not belong, namely with Kriemhilt. He is, evidently, too well-educated to take her seriously; as she would have known earlier, if she could have heard his knowing and detached description of her to Gunther:

‘ja hât diu küneginne                    so vreislîche
sit’.

(330, 2)

His betrayal of her is similar to Faust's betrayal of Mephistopheles, but much more final. Mephisto could presumably turn his attentions elsewhere after losing his prize; Brünhilt has only one bolt, and having shot it, she ceases to exist as a significant figure.

With Siegfried and Brünhilt out of the way, there is no reason why the court at Worms should not settle down again, with Gunther and Hagen in their traditional rôles, and Kriemhilt still dispensing ‘hôhen muot’; or so, at least, Gunther seems to think when he makes friends with Kriemhilt. Hagen, being more practical, has his doubts, but he also tries to patch things up by throwing away the treasure, and warning against Kriemhilt's marriage to Etzel. He evidently thinks that if only Kriemhilt could stop being Siegfried's wife, and go back to being Gunther's sister, the court at Worms would still be manageable.

Kriemhilt herself, at the end of Part I, and even in Part II, is rather a pathetic figure. Having once experienced Siegfried, she cannot accept Hagen's and Gunther's solution. But neither can she go on being Siegfried's wife. The marriage was impossible in the first place, and it is no accident that she is personally responsible for his death. She evidently has no idea of what she has married. How else could she conceive of Hagen as Siegfried's protector in battle? This sort of relationship is relevant to the society at Worms, but Siegfried, after all, has a ‘hurnîn hût’. From the front, to his enemies in battle, he is impervious. He is only vulnerable from behind, to his wife. His possession of this one soft spot shows that his self-reliance is not absolute. He needs, or at least is capable of taking a mate, and in this sense he is human. But the continued efficacy of his thick skin after marriage depends on complete withdrawal from social inter-dependence. Brünhilt, one feels, would have understood this. Kriemhilt does not. It was she who detached him from his context in the first place; and now, by trying to fit him into the values of Worms, she kills him.

After his death, she persists in her confusion. She refuses to go back with Sigemunt, because she feels the ties of home and family too strongly (1081). On the other hand, she refuses to take up her old place at the court, first living apart, then marrying Etzel, and all the time grieving for Siegfried. No wonder Hagen turns his suspicions to her; but in doing so, he interprets her and her treasure in the same practical terms as he had Siegfried. To him, the treasure means political power for Kriemhilt, and political danger for Worms. To Kriemhilt, it just means Siegfried, something she had once possessed, never understood, and unwittingly destroyed.¹⁴ Sinking the treasure no more solves the real problem than killing Siegfried had done. It merely drives Kriemhilt to accept a substitute for both, in the shape of Etzel, and the process grinds on to its grisly conclusion.

It is Hagen's triumph when he dies, that he has wiped away all trace of Siegfried and his treasure. It is Siegfried's and, in a way, Brünhilt's triumph that they have utterly destroyed this cosy little Burgundian society. It is Kriemhilt's tragedy, that she has helped towards both these ends; the death of her husband, and the extinction of her family. Her personal achievement is nil. It is customary to talk of Kriemhilt's revenge; but what use is revenge, when it is Siegfried that she wants? She lost him, because she was too much attached to her own society. In her efforts to get him back, she destroys that society. In destroying its last representative, Hagen, she severs her last connexion with Siegfried and his treasure. All she is left with is his sword, which is not much use against Hildebrant.¹⁵

C. RESULT

One might say, then, that the Nibelungenlied is one of those works which explore some of the consequences of a confusion between two levels of organization. It shows us what happens when an individual, anti-social ideal of behaviour tries to adopt a set of conventions it does not understand, and a highly formalized society invokes forces which it cannot control. This is not a very improbable suggestion. The essential limitations of courtly rules and regulations are exposed, but the exposure has a positive side. To recognize the limitations is to understand the true function of society; and this last theme runs right through the Courtly Epic of the time. Êrec, Îwein, Parzival, Tristan, all have to forget, break or abandon the rules before they can begin to understand the point of them. Gunther, Arthur, Mark, are all variants of the same king-figure. They preside, spur on, hold back, regulate, reward and punish. All are strangely incapable of action, and depend largely on their subjects. They are, in fact, the conventions of the society over which they preside. When these conventions have positive value, they become noble figures, like Mark after the love-grotto, or Gunther in the final battle; where the rules are out of place, they become ridiculous, like Mark most of the time, Gunther in love, or Arthur with his marriage difficulties. Siegfried's nearest relation in the Court Epic is, of course, Tristan-Riwalîn. Both are adopted by model kings, and used as tools. Both are rather too efficient at their tasks, and find themselves in conflict with the Court as a result. Both kings find themselves wholly or partly alienated first from their sister, and then from their wife. The essential difference lies in the way the Court reacts to this situation. Tintagel may be moribund, but it manages to expel the two sets of lovers, and to survive.¹⁶ Worms tries to absorb them, and fails.

Like all brief accounts of structure, this one is schematic in the extreme, and leaves large areas of the work untouched. It is impossible to exhaust a complex work of literature in one, or indeed in twenty articles. It is, however, possible to suggest a tentative hypothesis as to the essential structure, based on a close study of the text. Much of the detailed evidence has been withheld, for reasons of clarity and space. Much more has not yet been considered. Both these defects are to be remedied to some extent in a following article by H. D. Sacker, in which he examines some aspects of the formal texture.¹⁷ The hypothesis itself is of practical value only. It is hoped that scholars will find it worth modifying.

Notes

1. B. Nagel, ‘Die künstlerische Eigenleistung des Nibelungendichters’, Wolfram-Jahrbuch (1953), pp. 23-47.

2. In Moderna Språk, vol. LI (1957), p. 377.

3. W. J. Schröder, Das Nibelungenlied (Halle/Saale, 1954), (reprinted from PBB, vol. LXXVI). [Illegible Text] Tonnelat, in his introduction to La Chanson des Nibelungen (translated into French), and his critical work of the same name (Bibliothèque de Philologie Germanique, vol VI (1944), and (Paris, 1916), is admittedly unhistorical, but confines himself to plot-mechanics.

4. B. Nagel, loc. cit., p. 26.

5. In MLQ, vol. XV (1954), p. 182.

6. J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf; the Monsters and the Critics (Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, 1936); reprinted from The Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. XXII, p. 7.

7. In his edition (Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters), F. A. Brockhaus (Wiesbaden, 1956); note to line 26, 4. All quotations are also from this edition.

8. The function of this relationship is discussed below, pp. 8ff.

9. B. Mergell, Euphorion, vol. LXV (1950), pp. 305ff., ‘Nibelungenlied und höfischer Roman’, contains a similar insight, though concerned with other questions.

10. She expects him to come and claim her (419-420), and is never reconciled to the fact that he does not. See p. 267, below.

11. The evidence is collected, and compared with the picture offered in the Court Epics, by N. Dürrenmatt, Das Nibelungenlied im Kreise der höfischen Dichtung, Diss. Bern, 1945.

12. cf. 123, 4; 126, 3; 132, 2; 136; 258; 289.

13. The whole hunt scene is a miniature reflection of Siegfried's changing fortunes and position at Worms. It is hoped to discuss it in a later article.

14. The relevant passages are: 1739; 1743; 1789; 2367; 2372. The symbol of the hort is also due for extensive discussion.

15. The whole passage, from 2367, 4 (welt ir mir geben widere waz ir mir habt genomen), to 2372, 4 turns on personal loss and repayment, rather than on revenge.

16. There is, however, nothing positive about its survival, as W. Schwarz has shown in his inaugural lecture: Gottfrieds von Strassburg Tristan und Isolde (Groningen, Djakarta, 1955).

17. For the distinction between ‘structure’ and ‘texture’, see E. M. Wilkinson, ‘“Form” and “Content” in the Aesthetics of German Classicism’, Still- und Formprobleme in der Literatur, pp. 18-27 (1959).

18. Since the final revision of this article, a certain amount of work on the structure of the Nibelungenlied has appeared. Some of this is mentioned in my review of Walchinger's Studien zum Nibelungenlied (p. 304 of this number). Details of the rest are contained in Walchinger's bibliography.