these forms of myth and saga live again for us upon a modern stage, and
the failure of this work with its wealth of poetic beauty and many scenes
of highest dramatic effectiveness to maintain its place as an acting
drama is sufficient evidence that the yawning gap that separates the
sentiment of the modern world from that of the early centuries in which
these sagas grew is not to be bridged over by the drama, however easy and
indeed delightful it may be for us to allow ourselves to be transported
thither to that romantic land upon the wings of epic story. Wagner in his
music-drama in three parts and prelude has followed in the main the saga
in its Northern form [8] up to the death of Siegfried and Brunhild, but
to the entire exclusion of the latter part of the story in which Atli
(Etzel) figures; his work has accordingly hardly any connection with the
Nibelungenlied here offered in translation. Only the pious loyalty of
national sentiment can assign a high place in dramatic literature to
Wagner's work with its intended imitation of the alliterative form of
verse; while his philosophizing gods and goddesses are also but decadent
modern representatives of their rugged heathen originals.

[7] The curious will find a list of these in the introduction to Piper's
edition, cited below, Chapter 7.
[8] See above, Chapter 2.


6. Modern German Translations

The language of the Nibelungenlied presents about the same difficulty to
the German reader of to-day as that of our English Chaucer to us. Many
translations into modern German have accordingly been made to render it
accessible to the average reader without special study. In the year 1767
Bodmer in Zurich published a translation into hexameters of a portion of