The Interjecting Narrator

I noticed that in almost every chapter of the text, we have the narrator butting in and letting us know that something very bad is going to happen. Every time the narrator appeared I kept asking myself if these constant interjections were changing the way I was reading the text. From the third page of the text, we know that this will not be a tale with a happy ending. We know that the beautiful princess (Kriemhild) will find her prince charming (Siegfried), but the narrator reminds us that they will certainly not live happily ever after. “What terrible vengeance she took on her nearest kinsmen for slaying him in days to come! For his life there died many a mother’s child” (p.19). The next interjection occurs six pages later when the narrator proclaims (as Siegfried departs for Worms and many of his people weep), “I imagine their hearts had truly foretold them that it would end in death for so many of their friends” (p.25). Moreover, these interruptions occur again on pages 32, 42, and 61.

While the first part of the text is essential to set up the exposition of the tale, these interjections provide us with a different reading of the text. We know from the beginning that Kriemhild will be the downfall of the epic’s hero, Siegfried. We know that she will cause his and many others destruction, yet we don’t know how.

What is also important to note is that these interjections are focused around the future for Siegfried and Kriemhild. Yet while these two are the text’s protagonists thus far; Gunther, Brunhild, and Hagen also play a significant role in the first eight chapters. The only indication we have of Gunther’s future is that we are told he will eventually forget how loyally Siegfried served him when he helps Gunther win Brunhild’s hand in marriage (p.61). Of Brunhild’s future we learn that she will never return to Isenstein (p.75). As to Hagen’s future it is unclear. On page 65, Dancwart (Hagen’s brother) notes, “what a shameful way of dying if we are to perish at the hands of women!” Although the narrator does not explicitly tell us that Hagen (and possibly Dancwart) are going to die because of a female, his interpolating indicates that this will be the case. The narrator has repeatedly reminded us that many men (the important character’s in this text) will perish because of Kriemhild’s “vengeance” (p.19).

In other words, are we just waiting for these horrible things to happen? Does the beginning of the text feel like a long digression? Inevitably, these questions have led me to others. How will this text survive without its hero, Siegfried? And most importantly, what role will these women really play? I can’t wait to find out.