On Translating Beowulf

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ON TRANSLATING BEOWULF

ON TRANSLATION AND WORDS

No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the making, or at any rate the

publishing, of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a trans-

lation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre (to say

no more). The process has its dangers. Too many people are willing to form, and even to print,

opinions of this greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art after reading only such

a translation, or indeed after reading only a bare 'argument', such as appears in the present book. On

the strength of a nodding acquaintance of this sort (it may be supposed), one famous critic informed

his public that Beowulf was 'only small beer'. Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn

funeral-ale with the taste of death. But this is an age of potted criticism and pre-digested literary

opinion; and in the making of these cheap substitutes for food translations unfortunately are too

often used.

To use a prose translation for this purpose is, none the less, an abuse. Beowulf is not merely in

verse, it is a great poem; and the plain fact that no attempt can be made to represent its metre, while

little of its other specially poetic qualities can be caught in such a medium, should be enough to

show that 'Clark Hall', revised or unrevised, is not offered as a means of judging the original, or as a

substitute for reading the poem itself. The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid

to study.

If you are not concerned with poetry, but with other matters, such as references to heroic names

now nearly faded into oblivion, or the mention of ancient customs and beliefs, you may find in this

competent translation all that you require for comparison with other sources. Or nearly all - for the

use of 'Anglo-Saxon' evidence is never, of course, entirely safe without a knowledge of the lan-

guage. No translation that aims at being readable in itself can, without elaborate annotation, proper

to an edition of the original, indicate all the possibilities or hints afforded by the text. It is not

possible, for instance, in translation always to represent a recurring word in the original by one

given modern word. Yet the recurrence may be important.

Thus 'stalwart' in 198, 'broad' in 1621, 'huge' in 1663, 'mighty' in 2140 are renderings of the one

word eacen; while the related eacencræftig, applied to the dragon's hoard, is in 2280 and 3051

rendered 'mighty'. These equivalents fit the contexts and the modern English sentences in which

they stand, and are generally recognized as correct. But an enquirer into ancient beliefs, with the

loss of eacen will lose the hint that in poetry this word preserved a special connotation. Originally it

means not 'large' but 'enlarged', and in all instances may imply not merely size and strength, but an

addition of power, beyond the natural, whether it is applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength

possessed by Beowulf (in this Christian poem it is his special gift from God), or to the mysterious

magical powers of the giant's sword and the dragon's hoard imposed by runes and curses. Even the

eacne eardas (1621) where the monsters dwelt may have been regarded as possessing, while these

lived, an added power beyond the natural peril. This is only a casual example of the kind of

difficulty and interest revealed by the language of Old English verse (and of Beowulf in particular),

to which no literary translation can be expected to provide a complete index. For many Old English

poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they

come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history.

Yet the compactness of the original idiom, inevitably weakened even in prose by transference to our

looser modern language, does not tolerate long explanatory phrases. For no study of the

fragmentary Anglo-Saxon documents is translation a complete substitute.

But you may be engaged in the more laudable labour of trying actually to read the original poem.

In that case the use of this translation need not be disdained. It need not become a 'crib'. For a good

translation is a good companion of honest labour, while a 'crib' is a (vain) substitute for the essential

work with grammar and glossary, by which alone can be won genuine appreciation of a noble idiom

and a lofty art.

Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) is not a very difficult language, though it is neglected by many of

those concerned with the long period of our history during which it was spoken and written. But the

idiom and diction of Old English verse is not easy. Its manner and conventions, and its metre, are

unlike those of modern English verse. Also it is preserved fragmentarily and by chance, and has

only in recent times been redeciphered and interpreted, without the aid of any tradition or gloss: for

in England, unlike Iceland, the old Northern poetic tradition was at length completely broken and

buried. As a result many words and phrases are met rarely or only once. There are many words only

found in Beowulf. An example is eoten 'giant' 112, etc. This word, we may believe on other

evidence, was well known, though actually it is only recorded in its Anglo-Saxon form in Beowulf,

because this poem alone has survived of the oral and written matter dealing with such legends. But

the word rendered 'retinue' in 924 is hose, and though philologists may with confidence define this

as the dative of a feminine noun hōs (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Old High German and Gothic

hansa), it is in fact found in this line of Beowulf alone; and how far it was not only 'poetical', but

already archaic and rare in the time of the poet, we do not know. Yet we need to know, if a

translation strictly true in verbal effect is to be devised. Such lexical niceties may not trouble many

students, but none can help finding that the learning of new words that will seldom or never again

be useful is one of the (accidental) difficulties presented by Old English verse. Another is presented

by the poetical devices, especially the descriptive compounds, which, if they are seldom in fact

'unnatural', are generally foreign to our present literary and linguistic habits. Their precise meaning

and full significance (for a contemporary) is not always easy to define, and their translation is a

problem for the translator over which he often must hesitate. A simple example is sundwudu,

literally 'flood-timber' or 'swimming-timber'. This is 'ship' in 208 (the riddle's bare solution, and

often the best available, though quite an inadequate, rendering), and 'wave-borne timbers' in 1906

(an attempt to unfold, at the risk of dissipating it, the briefly flashed picture). Similar is swan-rad,

rendered 'swan's-road' in 200: the bare solution 'sea' would lose too much. On the other hand, a full

elucidation would take far too long. Literally it means 'swan-riding': that is, the region which is to

the swimming swan as the plain is to the running horse or wain. Old English rad is as a rule used

for the act of riding or sailing, not as its modern descendant 'road', for a beaten track. More difficult

are such cases as onband beadurune in 502, used of the sinister counsellor, Unferth, and rendered

'gave vent to secret thoughts of strife'. Literally it means 'unbound a battle-rune (or battle-runes)'.

What exactly is implied is not clear. The expression has an antique air, as if it had descended from

an older time to our poet: a suggestion lingers of the spells by which men of wizardry could stir up

storms in a clear sky.

These compounds, especially when they are used not with but instead of such ordinary words as

scip 'ship', or sæ 'sea' (already twelve hundred years ago the terms of daily life), give to Old English

verse, while it is still unfamiliar, something of the air of a conundrum. So the early scholars of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thought: to them, even when they understood Ælfred or Ælfric

well enough, 'Saxon poetry' often seemed a tissue of riddles and hard words woven deliberately by

lovers of enigma. This view is not, of course, just: it is a beginner's misapprehension. The riddle

element is present, but Old English verse was not generally dark or difficult, and was not meant to

be. Even among the actual verse-riddles extant in Anglo-Saxon, many are to be found of which the

object is a cameo of recognizable description rather than a puzzle. The primary poetic object of the

use of compounds was compression, the force of brevity, the packing of the pictorial and emotional

colour tight within a slow sonorous metre made of short balanced word-groups. But familiarity with

this manner does not come all at once. In the early stages - as some to whom this old verse now

seems natural enough can doubtless well remember - one's nose is ground close to the text: both

story and poetry may be hard to see for the words. The grinding process is good for the noses of

scholars, of any age or degree; but the aid of a translation may be a welcome relief. As a general

guide, not only in those hard places which remain the cruces of the expert, this translation can be

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摘要：

ONTRANSLATINGBEOWULFiONTRANSLATIONANDWORDSNodefenceisusuallyofferedfortranslatingBeowulf.Yetthemaking,oratanyratethepublishing,ofamodernEnglishrenderingneedsdefence:especiallythepresentationofatrans-lationintoplainproseofwhatisinfactapoem,aworkofskilledandclose-wroughtmetre(tosaynomore).Theprocessha...

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On Translating Beowulf

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