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The
discussion and analysis presented after these
translated stanzas is our
opinion. Read the translations for yourself and our analysis, but also seek
out varied sources and come to your own conclusions.
STANZA 35 OF THE
HAVAMAL
Auden & Taylor:
The tactful guest will take his leave
early, not linger long: He starts to stink who outstays his
welcome, in a hall that is not his own.
Bellows:
Forth shall one go, nor stay as a
guest in a single spot forever. Love becomes loathing if one
long sits By the hearth in another's home.
Bray:
A guest must depart again on his way, nor
stay in the same place ever, if he bide too long on another's
bench the loved one soon becomes loathed.
Chisholm:
Then the guest should go. He should not
stay too long in one stead. When one stays loo long in another's
house, love turns into loathing.
Hollander:
Get thee gone betimes, a guest should
not stay too long in one stead; life grows loath if too long
one sits on bench, though in he was bidden.
Terry:
Don't stay forever when you visit
friends, know when its time to leave; love turns to loathing
if you sit too long on someone else's bench.
Thorpe:
A guest should depart, not always stay in
one place. The welcome becomes unwelcome if he too long
continues in another's house.
DISCUSSION AND
ANALYSIS OF STANZA 35
Quite simply, do not over-stay
your welcome.
The appropriate amount of time one can
stay depends on the guest, the host, and the situation.
You have to be wise enough to know how long a welcome you can
expect, and to anticipate when your visit might begin to run too
long. As an aside not mentioned at all in this stanza, one
thing a guest can do to help extend their visit or their welcome, is
to be as helpful as possible as a guest. Offer to buy or cook
a meal. Pitch in with the work that needs to be done around
the house. There are ways a guest can respect and gift their
host, that makes them welcome again...and
welcome longer.
An underlying meaning we can take from this,
is a good host probably needs to set some expectations about the
length of stay that is welcome. Hospitality would require that
the host be able to approach this topic in a polite but
straight-forward manner.
I think it is interesting that Auden and
Taylor are the only ones who interpret lines 3 and 4 in
this way:
He starts to stink who outstays his
welcome, in a hall that is not his own.
This almost seems like an attempt to
reference the old Ben
Franklin quote:
Guests, like fish, begin to smell
after three days
Every other translator seems to interpret
lines 3 and 4 to have "love turning to loathing," or "welcome
turning to unwelcome." It is just sort of quirky when
translator do what Auden and Taylor did here by turning that into a
reference about "stinking." I think if that word or that
meaning were in the original Old Norse, we would see some indication
of it in at least one of the
other translations...
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