On translating 'Beowulf' Read online

  The translation of the compounds sets a different problem, already glanced at above. A satisfactory solution will seldom be arrived at by translation of the elements separately and sticking them together again: for instance, by rendering the 'kenning' or descriptive compound gleo-beam 2263, denoting the harp, as 'glee-beam', or (avoiding the etymological fallacy) as 'mirth-wood'. Of brimclifu 222 an accurate and acceptable translation may be 'seacliffs', but this is a rare good fortune. A literal rendering of 815 sele hlifade heah ond homgeap, heaðowylma bad laðan liges; ne was hit lenge ða gen ðæt se ecghete aðumsweoran æfter wælniðe wæcnan scolde would be like this: 'hall towered high and horn-spacious; war-surges awaited of hostile flame; it was not at hand yet that the blade-hate of son-father-in-law after slaughter-malice should awake'. But this is certainly not modern English, even if it is intelligible.

  It is plain that the translator dealing with these compounded words must hesitate between simply naming the thing denoted (so 'harp' 1065, for gomen-wudu 'play-wood'), and resolving the combination into a phrase. The former method retains the compactness of the original but loses its colour; the latter retains the colour, but even if it does not falsify or exaggerate it, it loosens and weakens the texture. Choice between the evils will vary with occasions. One may differ in detail from the present translation, but hardly (if one respects modern as well as ancient English) in general principle: a preference for resolution.

  The compounds found in Old English verse are not, however, all of the same kind, and resolution is not in all cases equally desirable. Some are quite prosaic: made for the expression of ideas without poetic intention. Such words are found both in verse and prose, and their translation depends simply on their meaning as a whole. It is not necessary to 'resolve' mundbora,[7] since the simple words 'protector' or 'patron' get as near as we can to the meaning of this word.

  A larger, intermediate, class is formed by those words in which composition is used as a natural and living device of the contemporary English language. The distinction between verse and prose or colloquial use here lies mainly in the fact that these compounds arc more frequent in verse, and coined with greater freedom. In themselves - even those which are only used, or at least are only recorded, in verse - they would sound as natural in contemporary ears as would tobacco-stall or tea-drinker in ours. Of this class are heals-beag 'neck-ring', bat-weard 'boat-guard', and hord-wela 'hoard(ed) wealth' - three examples which (probably by mere chance) only occur in Beowulf, No 'Anglo-Saxon' who heard or read them would have been conscious that they were combinations never before used, even if he had in fact never met them before. Our language has not lost, though it has much limited, the compounding habit. Neither 'neck-ring' nor 'boat-guard' are recorded in the Oxford Dictionary,[8] but they are inoffensive, although 'hoard-wealth' is now unnatural. This class of compound is in general the one for which compound equivalents in modern English can with discretion most often be found or made.

  But it shades off, as the intention becomes more fanciful or pictorial, and the object less to denote and more to describe or recall the vision of things, into the 'poetic class': the principal means by which colour was given to Old English verse. In this class, sometimes called by the Icelandic name 'kenning' (description), the compound offers a partial and often imaginative or fanciful description of a thing, and the poets may use it instead of the normal 'name'. In these cases, even where the 'kenning' is far from fresh and has become the common property of verse-makers, the substitution of the mere name in translation is obviously as a rule unjust. For the kenning flashes a picture before us, often the more clear and bright for its brevity, instead of unrolling it in a simile.

  I have called this the poetic class, because there is a poetic intention in their making. But compounds of this kind are not confined to verse: not even those which arc poetic and fanciful. We find 'kennings' in ordinary language, though they have then as a rule become trite in the process of becoming familiar. They may be no longer analysed, even when their form has not actually become obscured by wear. We need not be led astray in our valuation of the living compounds of poetry by such current 'kennings' as the prose lichama == body, or hlafweard = master. It is true that lichama the 'raiment of flesh', discardable, distinct from the sawol or 'soul' to which it was intricately fitted, became an ordinary word for 'body', and in its later form licuma revealed the evaporation of feeling for its analysis and full meaning. It is true that hlaf-weard 'bread-keeper' is seldom found in this clear form, and usually appeared as hlaford (whence our wholly obscured lord), having become among the English the ordinary word for 'lord' or 'master', often with no reference to the bounty of the patriarch. But this emptying of significance is not true even of the most hackneyed of the 'kennings' of the poets. It is not true of swanrad 200, beadoleoma 1523, woruldcandel 1965, goldwine 1171, banhus 2508, and the host of similar devices in Old English verse.[9] If not fresh, in the sense of being struck out then and there where we first meet them, they are fresh and alive in preserving a significance and feeling as full, or nearly as full, as when they were first devised. Though lic-hama had faded into licuma, though there is now 'nothing new under the sun', we need not think that ban-hus meant merely 'body', or such a stock phrase as hæleð under heofenum 52 merely 'men'.

  He who in those days said and who heard flæschama 'flesh-raiment', ban-hus 'bone-house', hreðer-loca 'heart-prison', thought of the soul shut in the body, as the frail body itself is trammelled in armour, or as a bird in a narrow cage, or steam pent in a cauldron. There it seethed and struggled in the wylmas, the boiling surges beloved of the old poets, until its passion was released and it fled away on ellor-sið, a journey to other places 'which none can report with truth, not lords in their halls nor mighty men beneath the sky' (50-52). The poet who spoke these words saw in his thought the brave men of old walking under the vault of heaven upon the island earth[10] beleaguered by the Shoreless Seas[11] and the outer darkness, enduring with stern courage the brief days of life,[12] until the hour of fate[13] when all things should perish, leoht and lif samod. But he did not say all this fully or explicitly. And therein lies the unrecapturable magic of ancient English verse for those who have ears to hear: profound feeling, and poignant vision, filled with the beauty and mortality of the world, are aroused by brief phrases, light touches, short words resounding like harp-strings sharply plucked.

  1

  Several are to be found on p. 25 of that book: notably the renowned 'boss of horrors' for fyrena hyrde 750, here rendered 'master of crimes'; and 'genial saloon' for winsele 771, here rendered 'winehall'. The suggestion of Grand Guignol and less reputable 'pubs' is wholly false to the original.

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  2

  Those who have access to texts and editions will easily find many examples. Nouns, such as guma 'man', are the largest class, but other words of other kind are also frequent, such as ongeador 1595 'together'; gamol 58, etc. 'old'; sin 1336, etc. 'his'. In these four cases the ancestors of the normal modern words mann, togædere, ald, his were already the current words in the poet's day.

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  3

  O.E. bera; O.N. biōrn 'bear'.

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  4

  Literally 'greedy one'; O.N. freki, wolf.

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  5

  It is a habit of many glossaries to Old English texts to record, in addition to a genuine translation, also that modem word which is (or is supposed to be) derived from the Old English word, and even to print this etymological intruder in special type so that it is impressed on the eye to the disadvantage of the correct rendering. The habit is pernicious. It may amuse the glossators, but it wastes space upon what is in the circumstances an irrelevance. It certainly does not assist the memory of students, who too often have to learn that the etymological gloss is worse than useless. Students should handle such glossaries with suspicion. The reading of Beowulf is an opportunity for learning the Old English language and mastering a form of poeti
c expression. Lessons in the later history of English were better reserved for other occasions.

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  6

  Not all of these are strictly synonymous. Ceorl, mann, wer, were also current words with proper senses (freeman, human being, adult male or husband).

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  7

  The 'bearer of mund', that is, one who has taken an inferior or friendless man under his mund or 'tutela'.

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  8

  Boat-ward, in the northern form batward, is recorded from Wyntoun's Chronicle of the fifteenth century - probably made afresh and not descended from Old English.

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  9

  On swanrad see above. Beado-leoma 'ray of light in battle' is a sword (drawn and glinting); woruld-candel 'candle of the world' is the sun; goldwine 'goldfriend', is a lord or king (generous in gifts of treasure to his kin and loyal knights); ban-hus 'the house whose timbers are bones' is the body.

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  10

  middangeard.

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  11

  garsecg.

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  12

  læne lif 2845.

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  13

  metodsceaft 1180, 2815.

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