Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/518

Rh 476 N I C N I C of the Burgundian kingdom by the Franks. Moreover, almost all the mythological features of the tale have dis appeared, ethical influences having become more prominent. The curse on the hoard is little more than a picturesque survival, for although it symbolizes, sometimes very effec tively, a kind of mysterious fate in the background, the destinies of the various characters would not have been different if it had been altogether omitted. If the characters are less grand, they are more human ; and their motives have a closer resemblance to those represented in modern poetry. It is true that Kriemhild works as much desolation as Gudrun, but her cruelty is not so revolting, and it does not spring, like Gudrun s, from passions ex cited by a blood-feud, but from wounded love. The Nibelunyenlied is composed of stanzas of four lines, the first line rhyming with the second, the third with the fourth. Each line is divided into two parts by the caesura, the first part having four accents, the second part three, except in the last line, where the second part has also four accents. Some of the rhymes indicate poverty of resource, and the diction is very simple ; but the poet displays much artistic skill in the handling of the traditions which it was his task to weave into a continuous narrative. He selects his incidents with fine tact, and almost invariably places them in relations which are fitted to bring out their full significance. Character he is able to conceive powerfully and vividly. Perhaps the only character who loses anything by his mode of treatment is Brunhild, who is certainly far less impressive in the Nibelunyenlied than in the Norse poems. Kriemhild, on the other hand, is a splendid creation of imaginative genius. First we see her as a simple maid, gentle and modest ; then her powers are awakened by love ; and when the light of her life is suddenly quenched all her tenderness dies. She has then but one end, to avenge her husband s death ; and for its accomplishment she sacrifices everything repose, the possibilities of new happiness, and at last existence itself. The transitions are startling, but not unnatural in a rude age ; and in the earlier stages of Kriemhild s career they are lightly and delicately touched. Towards the close, when her vengeance is being sated, the style is intensely concentrated, vivid, and impassioned ; but the change does not take the reader by surprise, for he is prepared for it even in the brightest scenes of the poem by hints of inevitable ruin. Siegfried is less complex than Kriemhild, but not less poetically presented. He is a flawless hero, strong, brave, loyal, and generous ; and it is possible, as some critics suppose, that in the original myth he personified the radiance of summer in conflict with the approaching gloom of winter. Hagen is as sombre and tragic a figure as Siegfried is bright and genial ; and, notwithstanding his guilt, he commands a certain admiration, for his crimes are only a manifestation of his fidelity to the royal house he serves. Another character wrought with great imagina tive power is Riidiger, who was probably introduced into the tale for the first time by the author of the Nibdunyenlied. His part is subordinate, but it suffices to evoke the expression of all the most brilliant and attractive qualities of the age of chivalry. There are twenty-eight manuscripts of the Nibchmgcnlicd, some of them complete, others in fragments, and they date from the 13th to the 16th century, so that the poem must have been studied until about the time of the Reformation. It had been entirely for gotten when, in the middle of the 18th century, Bodmer, the Swiss poet and critic, issued some portions of it along with the &quot; Klage,&quot; a poem of the same period describing the lamentations at Etzcl s court over the fallen heroes. In 1782 C. H. Myller published the first full edition, using in the latter part Bodmer s text. Very little attention, however, was given to the recovered epic until the writers of the Komantic school began to interest themselves in mediaeval literature. Then the Nibelungcnlicd was read with enthusiasm ; and in 1807 Von der Hagen provided an improved text with a glossary. An epoch in the study of the poem wasn marked by Lachmann, who in various writings contended that it consisted of twenty ancient ballads, that these ballads had been put together about 1210, that the collector or editor had connected them by stanzas of his own composition, and that in the ancient ballads themselves he had inserted unauthentic verses. Lachmann held that the Munich manuscript (A), which is the shortest, contains the purest text, and that it was extended by the authors of the texts in the St Gall manuscript (B) and the Lassberg manuscript (C). This view guided his labours in preparing his edition of the Nibelungcnlicd (1826) ; and the theory was for some time generally accepted. Hahn, however, in 1851, and Holtzuiann, in 1854, suggested doubts whether the critical canons by which Lachmann had distinguished authentic from unauthentic stanzas were valid ; and Holtzinann sought to prove that C, the longest manuscript, not A, the shortest, is nearest the original form of the poem. This occasioned an animated controversy, in which many eminent scholars took part. In 1862 Pfeiffer gave a new aspect to the question by maintaining that in the 12th and the early part of the 13th century every poet considered it a point of honour to invent a new kind of stanza, and that, as we possess lyrics by the Austrian poet Von Kiirenberg, which are in the same measure as the Nibelungenlicd, we are bound to conclude that he was the author of the poem. Developing this hint, Bartsch argues that the Nibdungenlied was written about 1140 ; that in its original form the lines ended not in rhymes but in assonances ; that about 1170 a younger poet introduced the principle of rhyme, although imper fectly, into his predecessor s work ; that between 1190 and 1200, when rhyme was considered essential, two poets, independently of one another, completed the transformation which the second poet had begun ; and that the work of the one is represented by manu script C, the work of the other by manuscript B, of which A is an abbreviated form. Bartsch regards B (entitled Nibdungc N6t) as that which approximates most closely to the work of the first poet ; and this he has made the basis of his admirable critical edition, published separately in two volumes, and in one volume in the series of Deutsche Classikcr des Mittdcdters. If Bartsch s view be correct, the poem must have been greatly injured by its successive transfor mations. His theory is supported by the facts that assonances survive in all the manuscripts, and that the rhymes are not nearly so good as might have been expected from the creative energy with which the general scheme of the work is conceived. The NibelungenUed has been rendered into modern German, among others, by Simrock, Bartsch, Marbach, and Gerlach. See H. Fischer, Die Forschungen iiber das Nibelungmlied st-it K. Lachmann ; and Paul, Zur Nibelungenfrage. A full and interesting resume&quot; of the poem occurs in the works of T. Carlyle (Misc., vol. iii.). (J. SI.) NIC^EA, or NICE, still called ISNIK, i.e., eis Nt/catW, was an important town of Asia Minor, in Bithynia, on the lake Ascania. Antigonus built the city on an old deserted site, and soon afterwards Lysimachus changed its name from Antigonia to Nicsea, calling it after his wife. Under the Roman empire Nicaea and Nicomedia disputed the title of metropolis of Bithynia. After Constantinople became the capital of the empire Nicaea grew in importance, and the Byzantine walls, which are still well preserved, are very extensive. On the council held there in 325 A.D. see CREEDS and COUNCIL. The possession of the city was long disputed between the Greeks and the Turks. It remained an important city for some time after its final incorporation in the Ottoman empire, but has decayed till it is now a poor and insignificant village. Strabo describes the ancient Nicaea as built regularly, in the form of a square, with a gate in the middle of each side. From a monument in the centre of the city all the four gates were visible at the extremities of great cross-streets. NICANDER, a Greek poet, physician, and grammarian, succeeded his father Damnajus or Xenophanes as heredit ary priest of Apollo at Clarus, the famous temple in the territory of the Colophonians. Hence he is often called Colophonius. He wrote a great number of works both in prose and verse, of which two are preserved. The longest, Theriaca, is a poem in about 1000 hexameters on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 600 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes. The works of Nicander are praised by Cicero, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers. A Greek writer in the