Porter's Ring translation formatting

[REP]

I'm currently reading Porter's English translation of the Ring, and I can't help but notice that it's formatted with staggered indentation. In poetry, this is usually done to notate rhyme schemes, stanzas, or some other form of structure -- or accommodate overflowing lines. In the Porter translation, however, there doesn't seem to be any method to it. Lines appear to be indented at random.

So my question is, what is the purpose of these indentations? What are they notating?

And secondly, do these indentations appear in Wagner's original text? That would be very interesting to me if they do, but none of the other printed librettos I've seen have them.

REP

[Bert Coules]

REP wrote:

> And secondly, do these indentations appear in
> Wagner's original text? That would be very
> interesting to me if they do, but none of the
> other printed librettos I've seen have them.

I can't speak of the originals, either in manuscript or print, but the
earliest complete texts in my collection, which date from 1910 (the
Breitkopf & Härtel Text Books series) have exactly the same indentation as
the 1977 Faber edition of the Porter.

J P Jackson's The Ring of the Nibelung, a prose introduction to the work
published in 1882 and compiled from letters written to the press by the
author during the 1876 premiere of the entire cycle (and you can't get much
nearer the source than that, lucky man) includes many textual extracts, all
of them with the same layout used by the B&H series and by Porter.
Presumably, Jackson had access to a contemporary publication of the whole
thing and reproduced what he saw there.

I hope this helps.

[Bert Coules]

Another example, though not this time from my own collection (alas): the
first known English singing translation of a Ring opera, written by one
Alfred Foreman in 1873 (he sent a copy to Wagner but, as far as I know, the
composer's response (if any) hasn't been preserved. The extracts from
Foreman which I've seen all maintain the indentations, as does the version
by Frederick and Henrietta Louise Corder used in the first Schott vocal
scores in the early 1880s.

The weight of the evidence does seem to suggest that the layout is Wagner's
own.

[Bert Coules]

Sorry for the disjointed reply, but I've just dug out two examples of
Wagner's textual manuscripts: both are first drafts, one a brief extract
from Siegfried's Death, the other a page from Tristan. It might be a
consequence of the relative lengths of the two, but the Siegfried's Death
poem is *not* indented while the Tristan is.

[REP]

Hm, very interesting! Thank you very much for all the examples, which, if nothing else, confirm that the indentation is not unique to Porter. I was hesitant to draw too much meaning from the formatting, but now that it looks more likely that the indentations are Wagner's own, I think I'll take a closer look at them. They could reveal a great deal about Wagner's writing process, his poetry, and his unique approach to musical form and text-setting.

At first glance, broken phrases seem to be indented far more often than longer lines. But other than that, I don't see any organizing method. More to come later maybe.

REP

[Bert Coules]

Glad to be of assistance. On a sudden thought I just took a look at The
V�lsunga Saga in my undated but clearly elderly edition, translated by
Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris and published by Walter Scott.

The main poem itself is printed with the lines all fully left-justified, but
in the lengthy scholarly introduction, quotes are set out rather
differently. This is Loki talking:

What fish of all fishes,
Swims strong in the flood,
But hath learnt little wit to beware?
Thine head must thou buy,
From abiding in hell,
And find me the wan waters flame.

In case the formatting doesn't make it intact to the group, the first and
second lines are indented, as are fourth and fifth. This pattern is
repeated in almost - but confusingly, not every - verse that's quoted.