Nibelungenlied

About Nibelungenlied

“Des todes waffen      ie ce sere sneit.”
— Death's sword ever was too sharp.
“Der Nibelungen Lied könnte die deutsche Ilias werden.”
— The Nibelungenlied could become the German Iliad.
“Was aber Lebendigkeit und Gegenwart der Darstellung, dann die Größe der Leidenschaften [und] Charaktere…darf sich das Lied der Nibelungen kühnlich mit der Ilias messen.”
— In liveliness and immediacy of portrayal and the greatness of passion and characters the Song of the Nibelungen is comparable to the Iliad.
“The Nibelungen Song, though based on the bottomless foundations of Spirit, and not unvisited of skyey messengers, is a real, rounded, habitable Earth, where we find firm footing, and the wondrous and the common live amicably together. Perhaps it would be difficult to find any Poet of ancient or modern times, who in this trying problem has steered his way with greater delicacy and success.”
— Thomas Carlyle, "The Nibelungen Lied" (1831), in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (London: Chapman & Hall, 1857) vol. 2, p. 236.

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