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give us forms that are rigorously subordinated to definite
conceptions, fitted, as only a true poet can fit them, to
the dramatic and emotional requirements of the respective
Songs.
The present translation has sought to reproduce as
closely as may be the rhymes and the rhythms of the original.
It is as nearly as possible a line-for-line translation,
and its stresses are, in number and position, those of the
text, in all but a small minority of cases. Occasionally it
has been found necessary to end a line with a single stressed
syllable, where the original has a feminine ending. This
has been done reluctantly, and only when it has seemed
unavoidable except at too great a sacrifice of the meaning.
The exigencies of rhyme have made the translation of the
sections in which it occurs somewhat less literal than the
translator could have wished, but he trusts that he has
nowhere departed from the spirit of the original text. If
obvious colloquialisms sometimes occur, it must be
remembered that Björnson used them also, a fact of which the
rhetorical purists among his critics did not fail to remind
him. One of the marked characteristics of the poem is
its free juxtaposition of prosaic words and phrases with the
loftiest forms of poetical expression.
The Notes which have been provided at the close of this
volume are not numerous, but they fill many pages because
of the lengthy citations from the sagas which are needed
for a comparison of Bjornson’s work with its sources. It
seems desirable to make very clear the distinction between
what was supplied by the poet’s creative imagination and
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