muninnhuginn | H-e-e-e-r-e's Ulrich! (Reply)

As Geoffrey Chaucer (in the person of Paul Bettany) might say. A bit of a slow read, but I'm through with another book (actually last week sometime, but this is the first good opportunity to write it up):

Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
Ulrich von Liechtenstein, The Service of Ladies

Not entirely satisfying since it's not complete ("translated in condensed form" it says) and it's always hard to judge the quality of verse in translation. It's language is a little too American for me, certainly.
It's an autobiography, sex and sparring or, maybe, love and lancing. A little long on the tallying up of lances broken, it has touches of wonderful humour and horror--and a knight going round dressed as the goddess of love to honour his lady; medieval surgery; love songs a-plenty. A Knight's Tale has nothing on that. (Actually, I'm not sure The Knight's Tale has all that, either.) What I appreciated most was that depiction of, apparently unselfconscious, naked, and not necessarily appealing, emotion that renders medieval literature raw and vivid but which can, because of our modern squeamish embarrassment, sometimes make it hard to engage with the characters. That and the mixture of high and low, exalted love and grimy low-life detail that lends it a similar feel to the multifarious cavalcade of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The quotes:

on spending an uncomfortable and stormy night hidden in a field of grain
From wet and cold I almost died,
but I had other ills beside.
Although I should leave something out
I really ought not talk about--
the unnamed insects caused me grief
the whole night long without relief,
they didn't give me any rest.
That night I boarded many a guest.

a Thomas Covenant moment, with Ulrich, disguised as one himself, sitting down with a group of lepers
The hands I saw were so decayed
they looked--I dare not tell you how;
it's more than manners will allow.
Upon my honor, I contend,
my hair in horror stood on end.

A foul disease was there disclosed.
Some fingers were as decomposed,
the flesh and bones as foul and rotten
as those of bodies long forgotten
and buried for a hundred days.
It's true, and not an idle phrase:
no dog could have such evil breath;
already they belonged to death.

the effects of rejection by his lady
I wept there as a child who fears
and I was nearly blind with tears;
I wrung my hands the while I wept.
My aching heart could not accept
this sorrow and with pain was racked.
In every joint my members cracked
as one breaks sticks to feed a flame.
My grief was not a childish game.

when a fellow knight correctly identifies the cause of Ulrich's distressed state
... the blood
came from my mouth, in truth a flood
out of my nose began to race
till it had reddened all my face.

So, now to locate the complete version in (modern) German. I'm not sure I feel able to cope with the original text.