Fulfill Your Role: the Song of Roland

Today we emphasize the idea that what is most important is to express what is within us and let that authentically shape the world. It was not always this way. There is an older, perhaps better way.

A while back I was reading Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West and found myself gripped by the idea that if one was looking to peer into the moment when then west was born, one would have to immerse themselves in late Medieval works like the The Golden Legend. Spengler mentions this book specifically as one of the key works which reveals the shape of the melding of the Germanic with the Christian that gave birth to the west.  To fill out my experience with the works of this era, in addition to large portions of The Golden Legend, I read Jackson Crawford’s translation of the Poetic Edda which I enjoyed immensely.  I also grabbed Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf from my local library as well as Helen Mustard’s translation of the The Nibelungenlied in the Modern Library series.  I also read Simon Gaunt and Karen Pratt’s translation of The Song of Roland.  Overall, I found the Poetic Edda and the The Song of Roland to be the most enjoyable.  The Edda has a whole section of wisdom sa…