Step 5 of 12 · Sorrow and Healing
Brand from brand
Why this step
Stanza 57 says brand kindles from brand and spark from spark: a man opens out by speaking with another, and becomes too closed through silence. The entry reads it as conversation being the way people light each other up, and silence as something that can shut a person in. It is the poem’s case for telling someone.
The text, stanza 57
57.
Brand kindles from brand until it be burned,
spark is kindled from spark,
man unfolds him by speech with man,
but grows over secret through silence.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanza 57 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
From the Lorebook
A fire is kindled from one brand to another and a spark from a spark; so a man opens up through speaking with another man, and closes in on himself through silence.