Beowulf (3 page)

The dragon is yet one more indication of the poet's originality. To quote Tolkien again: “. . . real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare. In northern literature there are only
two
that are significant.” One is the third monster in
Beowulf
and the other (which is briefly referred to in
Beowulf
) is found in several Icelandic works, most elaborately in the
Völsunga Saga
. But this dragon was once a man, a brother of Sigurd's foster father who became a dragon in order to guard a rich treasure and was mortally stabbed by Sigurd, then carried on a lengthy conversation with his slayer before dying. Compare this with the
Beowulf
poet's dragon and you have once again a sample of the poet's inventive powers. Dragons were of course familiar to Anglo-Saxons as large flying flame-throwing serpents who traditionally guarded treasures, but nowhere else in Germanic literature is there such a dragon as this.

Old English poetry has no stanzaic form and no rhyme (with the exception of a few later poems) except by accident. It consists of lines which run on to form sentences, each line composed of two half-lines, or verses, with a natural pause between them, so that the sentences may conclude at line-end or between half-lines. There is no set number of syllables per line—in
Beowulf
a normal line contains between eight and twelve. The half-lines are tied together by alliteration of consonants or vowels, any vowel alliterating with any other vowel through an emphatic pronunciation of stressed words that causes a sharp release of breath approximating a consonantal sound.

Each half-line has two strong stresses. Alliteration occurs only on stressed syllables. The first stress of the second half-line, called the “head-stave,” cannot alliterate with the second stress of that half-line, but it must alliterate with one or both stressed syllables of the first half-line. Recitations of Old English poetry were accompanied in some way by a harplike instrument—indeed, it is called a
hearpe
in Old English—which may have been used to accentuate stresses, possibly to “fill in” for a missing stress in a defective half-line, but there is no way of knowing just how this was done.

Old English half-lines contain clearly defined stress patterns, bunching the two strong stresses at the beginning and then stepping down through secondary to weak, or bunching them both in the middle between weak stresses, or separating the two strong stresses with descending steps through secondary to weak, or approximating the Modern English iambic or trochaic measures. There are five of these patterns with a variation on one, some of them difficult to achieve in Modern English since secondary stress is not as clear or frequent today as it was a thousand years ago. These half-lines, or verses, with their clearly defined rhythmic forms, are the primary building blocks of Old English poetry and derive from a strictly oral tradition of pagan Germanic poetry at a time when there were no manuscripts, when minstrels carried tales in their heads and recited long poems, partly from memory and partly through the use of an oral-formulaic system which permitted them to compose as they went along, drawing upon a large store of “prefabricated” half-lines or entire lines and mixing them with fresh inventions. Some entire lines are pale clichés, adding nothing to the poem, like “on that day of this life” (which occurs three times in
Beowulf
), but they give the minstrel time to think ahead. This is not peculiar to Germanic poetry—such lines are more frequent in the
Odyssey
, another poem derived from an ancient oral tradition, than in
Beowulf
.

Because of the primary importance of the half-lines, which must have been recited slowly and clearly with distinct stresses and a natural pause between them in most cases, they are separated in this translation by a space, as editors print the original. There is often a contrast between both the rhythm and the content of half-lines which also brings them together in a way difficult to describe, and sometimes they seem to float, repeating each other with variation and usually contrasting in rhythm, or acting as brief clauses with an absence of coordinates or subordinates that seems natural because of the pause between them in an oral presentation.

Since I am unaware of any translation of
Beowulf
that makes a serious attempt to imitate the original, I have tried in this translation to accomplish three things—to adhere strictly to the rules of alliteration, to imitate as closely as is practical the stress patterns of Old English half-lines, and to choose Modern English words and compounds that give at least some idea of the strength and radiance of the original while also reflecting the tone of the poem. A few restrictions upon the placement of unstressed syllables and requirements of quantity have been noted by modern scholars, and though these were certainly observed by the best poets, I have relaxed them at times to accommodate the stress patterns of Modern English and occasionally ignored other “rules” for the sake of a clear and forceful verse. I have often given up the secondary stress in one type of half-line (strong-secondary-weak-strong) because I had to choose between an awkwardly contrived verse and good words, and I usually chose the good words. Also, some “formulaic” half-lines are lacking a syllable when translated into Modern English (e.g., “Beowulf spoke” and “Ecgtheow's son”) because I have preferred their simplicity to syllable counting.

Old English poetry cannot always be translated line by line, though this is sometimes possible if the words survive in Modern English. I have therefore not hesitated to translate words or half-lines from one line and place them two or three lines below or above in order to achieve the best effect.
Beowulf
is a poem, and what I have tried to produce here is another poem, closely reflective of the original. A line like
tholode thrythswyth thegnsorge dreah
cannot be literally translated into prose or verse with anything like the effect of the original. It literally means “he suffered strength-strong thane-sorrow he suffered,” so that
thrythswyth
, a superb compound invented by the poet and composed of noun and adjective, is completely lost, and only the second compound may be salvaged. I have therefore translated “stooped in shadows stunned with thane-sorrow”—not literal but (I hope) decent poetry. I have also freely invented my own compounds, always attentive to both meaning and Old English poetic form, and have never misrepresented in any important way what is said or done in the poem.

I have respected the Old English spelling of names to retain the flavor of the original, but have stuck to one spelling throughout. I have silently compensated for manuscript corruption and destruction and have chosen what I consider to be the best interpretation of perplexing words, phrases, and sometimes entire sentences.

I have reluctantly inserted into the translation, at the beginning and in other places throughout, a few prose explanations of obscure passages that are important to the poem and were obviously clear enough to an Anglo-Saxon audience. I can think of no other device for solving this problem except the use of footnotes, which I dislike, or rewriting, expanding, and clarifying these passages, which would violate the poem and destroy their effect.

My debt to those who came before me is profound. The translation is based upon five modern editions of
Beowulf
—those of F. Klaeber, C. L. Wrenn, E. V. K. Dobbie, A. J. Wyatt as revised by R. W. Chambers, and the standard German edition by three successive editors referred to as the Heyne–Schücking–von Schaubert edition. And now I have the new Mitchell-Robinson edition as well. My thinking over the years has been influenced by scores of essays, monographs, and books. Old English scholarship during the past century has been magnificent, and I would be lost without it.

One request: If readers will pause from time to time and read a few lines aloud, slowly and emphatically and with slight pauses between half-lines, they may find a faint echo of what a recitation probably sounded like, though the harp is forever silenced.

In “The Making of
Beowulf
,” an inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Durham in 1961, G. V. Smithers said that “English literature begins with a masterpiece, which has no comparable Germanic antecedents in the same literary kind or form.”
Beowulf
is indeed the first masterpiece in English, and it also had no followers, Germanic or otherwise, in the same literary kind or form. As I have said elsewhere, it seems to me that the poet is here presenting his personal elegy for the demise of an old and in many ways admirable tradition at the moment when it was giving in to and merging its best qualities with a new one. There is no other poem quite like it, and this translation has been done in honor of the nameless poet who created it, in an attempt to make his poem live again for the modern reader.

 

 

S
CYLD
S
CEFING
,
the first name mentioned in the poem, seems to come
from the
mists of legend. Later in the poem, a Danish king named Heremod, who died without an heir, is mentioned. Thus the mysterious arrival of Scyld, an unknown child drifting ashore in a boat, began a new dynasty.
Yrse
, the fourth child of Healfdene (whose name, not in the poem, is supplied from Norse tradition), was married to Onela, a Swedish king who plays a part in the final third of the poem.

The ominous words “Gables . . . waiting for hate-fire” refer to another Norse tradition, not developed in
Beowulf
, of a long-lasting feud between Danes and Heathobards. According to this tradition, Hrothgar marries his daughter to Ingeld, the new young king of the Heathobards, but this merely postpones hostilities, and the Heathobards attack, burning Heorot, though they are finally vanquished. Upon Hrothgar's death, his nephew Hrothulf takes the throne and kills Hrethric, Hrothgar's elder son. Hrothgar's younger son Hrothmund and his other nephew Heoroweard are also in line for the throne. These four people are merely referred to in the poem with portentous overtones.

The descent of Grendel and other monsters from Cain after the biblical flood is explained in the early Middle Ages by the corruption of Noah's son Ham, whose offspring continued the breed of monsters begun with Cain.

One important note for pronunciation: The initial consonant cluster “sc-” should be pronounced as “sh” in “show.” Thus “Scyld Scefing” (above) should be pronounced like “Shyld Shefing.”