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Robert Southey is considered to be one of the major Romantic poets. He held
office as Poet Laureate from 1813 to his death. Southey had a
life-long interest in Norse poetry. On several occasions, he seems to
have planned a long poem on a Norse theme.The Modern Language
Review, 27.2 (1932): 149–67.Joan of Arc
(1796), Thalaba (1801) and Madoc
(1805) are the best known. Thalaba is an
“Oriental” fantasy, in the preface to which Southey tells us
that he was inspired to poetic experiment by the use of irregular
verse and mythological subject matter in Frank Sayers’s Dramatic Sketches of the Ancient Northern Mythology
(1790).Thalaba, the Destroyer (London:
T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1801), vii–ix.
The two poems “Race of Odin” and “Death of Odin”
are based on the theory that Odin was a historical chieftain who had
been deified. Through a false etymology, Odin’s Æsir (the word
used in Norse mythology about the family of the gods) were interpreted
as “Asia-men”, who had travelled from beyond
Europe’s borders to a new settlement in Scandinavia. This
historicizing and euhemerist theory was known through the works of
Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic historian, poet and politician. It is
found in the prologue to the Prose Edda and with
variations in Ynglinga saga
(which makes up the first part of Heimskringla)
(both from the 1220s). Snorri speaks of Odin’s flight from
military aggression in his homeland (either Troy or the Black Sea),
presumably alluding to the Roman imperial advances under Pompey. If we
square this with verifiable history, Odin’s migration can be
placed in the first century BC. We know from historical texts that
Mithridates VI, Rome’s most formidable antagonist in the East,
had to yield to Pompey.
The idea of Odin’ Æsir as a retinue of migrating Asians was
intensely discussed (and believed as historical fact) in the
eighteenth century.History of European
Ideas.The Prelude:
or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind (Text of
1805), rev. ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford: OUP, 1970), Bk.
I, ll. 185–9: “I would relate/ How vanquished
Mithridates northward passed./ And, hidden in the cloud of
years, became … Odin, Father of a Race …”. In
William Drummond’s Odin. A Poem (London,
1817), the eponymous hero is identified with Phamaces, son of
Mithridates.Odin. A Drama
(1804), taking the form of Greek tragedy, and William
Drummond’s high-flown verses in Odin. A
Poem(1817).
Southey’s poems fall within his radical period and have
anti-establishment connotations. He turned to conservatism in later
years, as did fellow poet-radicals Wordsworth and Coleridge. Southey
probably sees Odin’s desire to revenge himself on imperial Rome as
applicable to the fight against the state terrorism of the 1790s. To
be sure, a similar theme is taken up in the dedicatory epistle (see
below), which Southey contributed to Amos Cottle’s translation of the
Poetic Edda. In a passage (not included
below) from the poem, Southey names revolutionary heroes forced to flee
their homelands due to political persecution: the French Marquis de
Lafayette (1757–1834), the English Joseph Priestly
(1733–1804) and the Polish-Lithuanian Andrzej Tadeusz
Kościuszko (1748–1817), who are all celebrated as
“Persecuted men! … sufferers in the cause/ Of Truth and
Freedom!”
***
Source: Poems, containing The Retrospect, Odes, Elegies,
Sonnets, &c. by Robert Lovell, and Robert Southey(London,
1795), 97–102.
Robert Southey’s dedicatory poem to Amos Cottle was prefixed to the
latter’s English translation of the Poetic
Edda, which was entitled Icelandic Poetry, or The
Edda of Saemund (1797). Amos’s brother, Joseph, later
gave an explanation of how this work was produced.
A young friend of my brother’s wanted more information respecting the Scandinavian Mythology than he could obtain from English books, and during one of Amos’s long Cambridge vacations, he kindly undertook to translate literally for his friend the whole of the Edda of Sæmond, with the notes. Soon after he had commenced the work, Mr Southey (between whom and my brother there existed reciprocal respect), seeing his engagement advised him rather to makeversethe vehicle of his translation in the free manner of Gray’s “Descent of Odin,” one of the poems. This advice was adopted and was the origin of my brother’s translation of the “Edda of Sæmond”.Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections: Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, during His Long Residence in Bristol, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Rees & Co., 1837), 110.
The poem takes metaphors from the Norse tradition to serve a radical agenda.
Southey sees Gothic bloodiness as part of a primitive but sincere
creed, while he condemns the hypocrisy of Christian priests, who in
the past have pretended to benevolence; their prayers constitute “a
bloodier hate than ever rose/ At Odin’s altar”. It is
impossible not to read this as connected with Southey’s deeply felt
antipathies against the Roman Church, since he levels precisely such
criticisms of hypocrisy against Papal wars in his anti-Catholic
diatribe Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain
and Portugal, published the same year.Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain
and Portugal (London: T.N. Longman and O. Rees,
1799); see for example 427–31.Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
(1796), to which he refers in a later footnote.
***
Source