Book Description

Excerpt from The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald: Being the Icelandic Kormaks-Saga The story of a poet, poor and proud, with all the strength and all the weakness of genius. He loves a fine lady, a spoiled child; who bewitches him, and jilts him, and jilts him again. He fights for her, rhymes for her, and rises for her sake to the height of all that a man in his age could achieve. Then, after years, he has her at his feet, and learns her heartlessness and worthlessness. He bids her farewell, but dies in the end with her name on his lips. This is the motive of the book - very modern, we should call it; dramatic and imaginative, in the sense that it is told by one who was an artist in his craft of saga-telling. The diction is of the simplest. There is no fine writing, but the plot is balanced like a Greek play. The action drives along, in spite of episode, to its close. The ethical result is conveyed without a word of moralizing. The characters are broadly drawn, in types for all time. Without needless detail, there are touches enough of realism. It reads like a novel, and yet it is a true story. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.