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SYMPHONY OF FORMS IN LILJA
Abstract
The study is devoted to Lilja, Icelandic Christian drapa dated 1300 c; attempt is made to comprehend and interpret highest artistic merits of the text which persuaded Icelanders in its spiritual power and influenced Icelandic poetic tradition. The endeavor to identify the poetic moves and principles of composition which contribute to Liljas artistry and its intrinsic magnetism implies attention to the nature of interaction between local traditions (both, eddic and skaldic), and, on the other hand, Christian liturgic verse in Latin. The study of Liljas artistry calls forth the following questions: 1) how does the skald use potential of the traditions in question, 2) what is the correlation between the common and the individual in the text. Skaldic and Christian topoi reflected in the text are few and well known; therefore, the paper is focused rather on the principles of composition and forms of speech used or created by the skald. Discussion of the forms of speech should go hand in hand with analysis of usage and versification, but the latter issues, however pertinent, could not be discussed in full and, therefore, are pending. Survey of the forms of speech in Lilja helps understand some features of narration, which made the text sound attractive, convincing and specific in the context of medieval culture of Iceland. Overview of the previous studies devoted to Lilja is not part of the paper, the last edition of Lilja, prepared by M. Chase [1], indicates all of them. Every verse from Lilja would demonstrate that Lilja is an exceptional text. However, no verse from Lilja is presented in the paper, and not without reason: translation would hardly render the forms of speech of the original. At the same time, it was O?inn who endowed Liljas skald with a flair for poetry and helped him compose Lilja. O?inn, who bears personal responsibility for all Icelandic poetry, is a militant god and will fight with a translator if the elegance and excellence of the Icelandic text is lost in translation. The method of study could be defined as philological analysis of the text.
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