SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

88 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
and :Por's goats. Commentaries are superseded. The
manuscripts stand.
What is worse is that these commentaries fall so far short
of the truth because their aim is too low. While the
tendency of romantic antiquarianism was to build high
towers on pure sand, that of the materialistic sciences has
been to lay all the emphasis on digging down and
strengthening a foundation on which nothing has been
built. Whyis all this energy put into explaining VolusPd?
Not because of those few words which occur only there.
Not to restore it to its original form, for this is an impossible
task, and in any case would only be a stage on the road.
Not to find out where and when it was composed, for these
are also only steps towards understanding. Most commentators
will reply that the poem's value is historical,
that it demonstrates an interesting stage in literature,
culture and view of life. This is undoubtedly a great
point, but some of these people would lose all interest
in the poem if they thought it was of Christian origin.
They would not care for the experience which might still
be hidden in it, nor for the gospel which it preached. Yet
men may be Christians, even though they know and
acknowledge that Christianity developed under many
influences, and be the followers of Kant even though they
know he learned from Hume. Exposition is only an
empty name unless it considers works of literature both
as links in the chain of events and as entities of independent
value, and follows the authors along the paths which
they themselves have travelled. Admittedly, this makes
research more difficult, but it should also spare one many
an unnecessarily roundabout way, which is travelled
because every cairn by the roadside is treated as the
highest peak.
Tagore said of the researches of Europeans into Indian
literature:
For Western scholars the great religious scriptures of India
seem to possess merely a retrospective and archaeological