The situation here is made even more complex because the narrative structure of the psalm and the stance of the speaker are much debated, no matter what the language version. The litany of curses may be the speaker’s own malediction against his enemies; if so, he himself falls into the evil cursing mode of his foes. Alternatively, these curses may be the speaker’s recollection of, or imagined rendering of, those his enemies have hurled at him (or might hurl at him); if so, he seems to delight too much in giving voice to their wicked words, becoming a curser himself in this act of recalling or rendering their curses. In either case, the curser seems to take on the worst aspects of those who curse him and ends up cursing himself.
The deepest meanings of any poem are often locked in the unconscious elements of the language, in the tones and suggestions, the ambiguities and ambivalences. In a translation, some of these hidden elements are buried in the sources themselves and sometimes have to be recovered like lost treasures in a hidden trove. What the OE translator was thinking when he turned the dangerous oil of the curses into a bone-saver, we’ll never know (and perhaps he was uncertain of this himself), but somehow the solution lies locked in the combined treasure of translation and source text. In the art of translation, the poet necessarily claims certain prerogatives as he or she moves from one text to another, from one language and culture to another. These poetic moves need to be grounded in the original language and text, but they also need to fly a little as they take wing in the new language. My hope is that the image of the “pulpy healing” catches something of the failed shift in meaning from the Latin to the OE wording and adds a little something to the double treasure-house of words.
This act of translating the OE metrical psalms is further complicated because they are translations of a Latin text that is a translation of a Hebrew text (with perhaps a Septuagint Greek text in between). An analysis of this movement across four bridges connecting five languages (Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Old English, modern English) remains beyond the scope of this work, but it certainly beckons anyone who loves the psalms and knows all of the languages involved.
OLD ENGLISH POETICS AND STYLE
Old English poetry is different from Modern English poetry in a multitude of ways beyond the metrical differences. It is important in any translation to understand the larger modes of composition and then try to build them into the translations themselves. Those modes included in the discussion here are vocabulary (including compounds and kennings), patterns of repetition (including formulas, variation, apposition, parallelism, parataxis, and envelope or ring structure), and the tonal or rhetorical devices of humor, irony, and litotes.
Vocabulary
One aspect of Old English vocabulary evident in the poems is the large number of words for certain common or important concepts such as man, warrior, sword, horse, battle, sea, ship, Lord, soul, glory, etc. A seafaring people, for example, will have a greater variety of words for the sea than a landlocked people. The poems also have a specialized vocabulary with an increased number of poetic or even archaic words, creating a larger wordhord, “word-hoard,” for the poet to work with. Beowulf, for example, includes unique words such as bolster, “cushion,” cenðu, “boldness,” and hæf, “sea,” and compounds like ær-fæder, “fore-father,” muð-bona, “mouth-destroyer,” and wis-hycgende, “wise-thinking.” Mitchell and Robinson note that Beowulf has seven hundred unique words not found elsewhere in Old English (1998, 25). Tinkler observes that The Metrical Psalms of the Paris Psalter contain 207 unique words (13). Griffith lists a number of words found only in OE poetry, not in the prose (1991, 183–85). The variety of words enables the poet to make fine distinctions of meaning and meet the alliterative requirements of the poetic lines. It also makes the poetry seem different from everyday prose. It creates a special world by combining the everyday and the unusual—just as Beowulf brings us into a world of history and myth, meadhall drinking and monsters marauding, and Genesis ushers us into a biblical world of promises and imperfections, salvation and scheming, lost faith and the fall. The Old English wordhord, “word-hoard,” makes the poetic worlds both realistic and rare.
Compounds
The Anglo-Saxons loved to shape new meanings out of old words by creating compounds such as beag-gifa, “ring-giver” (lord, king), heofon-flod, “sky-flood” (rainstorm), eard-stapa, “land-stepper” (wanderer), and hreþer-bealo, “heart-bale” (distress). The latest editors of Beowulf count 903 distinct compounds, of which 518 are unique to the poem, observing that “on average there is a compound in every other line” (Klaeber 4, cxii). Orchard’s list of battle compounds in Beowulf from beado-grima, “war-mask,” to wig-sped, “war-success,” runs to two pages (2003, 70–72). Each compound is a miniature yoking of perceptual worlds. Orchard argues that “in producing such compounds … the Beowulf-poet is effectively offering a number of snap-shots or perspectives both simultaneously and in sequence, and allowing the audience the chance to savour (or not) the multiplicity of meanings offered” (2003, 73). I have tried to keep these compounds in most cases, even when they might seem strange to a modern ear. Such strangeness is part of the act of reading poetry from another language and culture and appreciating the otherness of that perception and poetic vision.
Kennings
A kenning is a special compound that calls a noun something it is not, then modifies it with a contextual clue. Examples of kennings include ban-hus, “bone-house” (body), hilde-leoma, “battle-light” (sword), hwæl-weg, “whale-road” (sea), and hilde-nædre, “battle-snake” (arrow). Kennings can also be constructed with a genitive modifier such as rodores candel, “heaven’s candle” (sun), and homera laf, “the leaving of hammers” (sword). In each case, the kenning is like a compressed metaphor. For example, in ban-hus, the unnamed thing (body) is compared to another quite different named thing (house), but modified with a contextual clue (a bone-house). Each of these kennings implies a hidden metaphoric analogy:
This, in turn, sets up four possible kennings: (1) a body is a bone-house; (2) a house is a timbered body; (3) a bone is a body-timber; and (4) a timber is a house-bone. This begins to make each kenning look like a new slant upon the world—a way of crossing categories to re-perceive reality. Each kenning is like a miniature riddle which invites the reader to solve the word (or creature or concept) in disguise and to consider reshaping our perceptual lenses to see the world with poetic eyes (for more on kennings and riddles, see Williamson, 1982, 29 ff., and Stewart, 1979, 115 ff.). A related Old English device calls something by one of its typical aspects, then modifies it, such as weg-flota, “wave-floater” (ship), and beag-gifa, “ring-giver” (lord, king). Such constructions are sometimes called half-kennings or kend heiti (see Brodeur, 251).
Variation (Parallelism, Parataxis)
The basic construction pattern of Old English verse is built on the syntactic repetition of phrases with semantic variation. A phrase which is repeated exactly constitutes a formula such as the common opening of riddles, Ic wiht geseah, “I saw a creature,” or the common closing, Saga hwæt ic hatte, “Say what I am called.” The formulaic ending might be varied to Frige hwæt ic hatte, “Discover what I’m called.” In Beowulf, there are formulas such as Hroðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga, “Hrothgar spoke, protector of the Scyldings,” which is repeated three times. There are variations on this such as Beowulf maþelode, bearn Ecgþeowes, “Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow” (nine examples). Such formulaic renderings are common in Old English poetry. They may have first been formulated in an earlier oral tradition and incorporated into the literature, or they may have been simply literary formulas. Other shorter, half-line formulaic examples include goldwine gumena, “gold-friend of men,” mearum ond meðum, “with horses and treasures,” and sigor-eadig secg, “victory-blessed man.” Orchard lists some forty pages of such formulas in Beowulf (2003, 274 ff.).
The use of repetition with variation can help to define or subtly nuance a description via epithets, such as the poet’s description of Grende
l as “a hell-fiend / A grim hall-guest called Grendel, / Moor-stalker, wasteland walker” (101b–03). It can also describe an action by stages or degrees, as in the description of Grendel’s eating of Hondscio:
He seized the first sleeper, slit his body,
Bit open his bone-house, drinking his blood,
Swallowing flesh, feasting on hands and feet,
Eating greedily the unliving one. (739–42)
In passages like these, the lines or half-lines move forward, repeating the syntactical pattern of a noun or verb phrase while employing in each case semantic variation. When this occurs without any clear indication of coordination or subordination, it is called parataxis. It produces a pattern of rolling phrases with variations of meaning. The phrases often repeat grammatical patterns, creating formal appositions (see Robinson, 1985, for more on this). In the Old English lines for the translation above, the verbs are more directly parallel (“seized,” “slit,” “bit,” “drank,” “swallowed,” etc.), but in the translation I have varied this a bit by shifting from past tense verbs to participles. This is a useful translator’s trick to keep the repetition from becoming overbearing to a modern reader.
The pattern of syntactic repetition with variation can be useful in situations where a single translation of a half-line fails to capture the original ambiguity, no matter what the word-choice in Modern English. For example, in the opening line of The Wanderer, the an-haga or “lonely one” (literally “hedged-in one”) is said to are gebideð, which is ambiguous. The verb gebideð can mean “waits for, expects, experiences,” and the object ar can mean “honor, glory, grace, mercy.” So then, does the wanderer experience, or merely wait for, mercy? Is it honor he wants, or grace? I try to capture some of this ambiguity through the device of repetition with variation by translating, “Waits for mercy, longs for grace.” Similarly, in the last half-line of Beowulf, the poet says of Beowulf that he was lofgeornost, which means something like “eager for praise (fame, glory).” There is great debate about whether the hero at the end of the poem is being praised for his proper pursuit of honor or judged for his pride in wanting to fight the dragon alone and his greediness for the dragon’s gold. The most recent editors of the poem argue that “the reference is either to glory earned by deeds of valor … or to the king’s liberality toward his men … or both” (Klaeber 4, 271). I’ve tried to keep some of the ambiguity of this concluding half-line by expanding it into a repetition with variation: “Most desiring of praise, most deserving of fame.”
The patterned repetition of half-lines can occur with an abrupt caesura between them so as to highlight a stark sense of change or reversal, which is called edwenden. In Klaeber 4, the editors note that this sense of reversal is common in the poem: “Joy alternates with sadness, good fortune with ill, in what seems like an endless process of reversal” (cx). So, for example, when Beowulf asks King Hrothgar if he’s had a pleasant night’s sleep after he’s cleared the hall of Grendel, Hrothgar responds with great anxiety and sadness because Grendel’s mother has entered the hall, killing Æscere. In my translation Hrothgar cries out: “Don’t talk of dreams. My life’s a nightmare!” (1322). Sometimes this sense of sharp contrast is carried by the phrase oð ðæt, “until,” which indicates a sudden sense of danger or unexpected outcome, such as when the poet says that the thanes in Heorot who are celebrating the newly built hall were “Surrounded by joy until a certain creature / Began to commit crimes” (100–101b), indicating the looming presence of Grendel.
Envelope/Ring
Sometimes the poetic phrases, as they repeat and vary, return to the phrase or motif with which they began. This pattern of circling back by means of repetition and variation is called an envelope or ring pattern. A well-known example comes from The Battle of Maldon (25–28):
Þa stod on stæðe, stiðlice clypode
Then stood on the shore, fiercely called out
A B
wicinga ar, wordum mælde,
the messenger of the Vikings, spoke with words,
C B
se on beot abead brimliþendra
who announced in a vow (boast) of the sea-sailors
B C
ærænde to þam eorle þær he on ofre stod.
a message to the earl where he stood on the shore.
B A
Lines 25a and 28b repeat the theme of the messenger’s location on the shore and enclose or envelop the passage. Lines 25b, 26b, 27a, and 28a all deal with the calling out of the Viking message or vow. Lines 26a and 27b deal with the reference to the messenger’s relation to the Viking troops. So the passage opens with ABC, repeats the B pattern twice, and returns home with CBA—a nice tight envelope (for more on this, see Bartlett, 9 ff.).
Humor: Irony, Understatement, Litotes, Bawdy
Old English humor often takes the form of subtle irony, understatement, and litotes (a negative ironic understatement such as saying, “He’s not a good singer” when one means “He’s a terrible singer”). This is what Frank calls the “incomparable wryness” of the poetry (2006, 59 ff.). Klaeber 4 notes a number of instances of grim humor and litotes in Beowulf (cx–cxi). When Beowulf tells of fighting the sea-monsters in his swimming match with Breca, he says he served them with his sword so that they had “little pleasure” (meaning he killed them and they had no pleasure!), and they slept late the next morning, “lulled by [his] sword” (564). When Wiglaf says to the cowardly Geats who fled from the dragon’s barrow that their lord had too few defenders, he is indicating by means of litotes that Beowulf had no defenders whatsoever except him. When the poet says of the Danes’ great woe from Grendel’s nightly visits, “that was no small sorrow they endured” (830), he uses litotes to emphasize their endless agony.
In the description of Grendel’s coming to Heorot for his nightly savagery, there are two related litotes jokes:
That wasn’t the first time he sought
Hrothgar’s home, but he never found
In his grim days before or after
Such bad luck, such hard hall-thanes. (716–19)
The first joke is told at the hall-thanes’ expense: that wasn’t the first time Grendel came there—because he comes every night! The second is told at Grendel’s expense: he never found such hard luck before or after—because following his battle-meeting with Beowulf there will be no “after.” Beowulf jokes before he goes to meet Grendel that if he loses the battle, Hrothgar won’t have to worry about feeding him at the meadhall table or burying his body since Grendel will have gobbled him up. This instance of Beowulf’s joking about his death is a traditional sign of a Germanic hero’s bravery. A great hero often indulges in dark humor on his deathbed. When Beowulf is dying, he tells Wiglaf that he would give his armor to his son if only he had one. Of course, this irony also reveals a terrible truth: without a Beowulfian heir to the throne, the Geats are in grave danger, as the Swedes and Frisians will descend upon them.
Another kind of humor occurs in the Old English double-entendre riddles when a sexual, bodily element or action is compared wittily with some tool or natural element. The woman-warrior in the bread-dough/penis riddle (Riddle 43) sees something nathwæt, (ne+wat+hwæt, “I know not what”) “rising in the corner / Swelling and standing up” (1–2). She knows perfectly well what it is and goes over to grab at that “boneless wonder” (3b–4a) before she covers it up in mock modesty with a cloth (or a bit of her clothes!). The humor in the butter churn riddle (Riddle 52) mocks the actively engaging male servant who works away at the process of “churning” and is only “sometimes useful,” serving well but usually tiring “sooner than she” (7–9). In the sword riddle (Riddle 18), the creature says that his kind of sword, the battle-sword (unlike the implied sexual sword), brings neither bedroom joy nor more children to his lord’s wife. At war he has to “stroke in brideless play / Without the hope of child-treasure” (23–24). It may seem odd that Anglo-Saxon humor finds its outlet often in sexual-bed and death-bed jokes, but these are charged moments in
any human life, and as Freud argues, humor is often an outlet for submerged desire or fear.
PROBLEM PASSAGES AND POETIC LICENSE
In any translation there are always words or passages which seem to defy translation. Often these are common words which have a wide range of meanings in the language or are idiomatic to the language, or they are passages which communicate hidden or ambiguous meanings or an emotional force in the original is difficult to translate. Sometimes these passages demand a degree of poetic license to express their forceful meanings. In this section I want to examine three such passages, the opening lines of Beowulf, the Eala repetition from The Wanderer, and the enigmatic ending of Wulf and Eadwacer. In each case I give the passage first in Old English, then in a relatively straightforward translation (with some indication of the ambiguities in the original), and finally in my own poetic rendering.
The opening lines of Beowulf look deceptively simple, but they set the tone for the rest of the poem and in some ways encapsulate some of its central themes:
Hwæt! We Gar-Dena in geardagum
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Behold (listen, well, lo)! We, about the Spear-Danes in the old days (days of yore, bygone days),
Have heard (learned from asking about) the glory (power, might, majesty, splendor) of the people’s kings (kings of a wide territory or domain),
How the nobles (princes, chiefs, heroes, men) accomplished (performed, made, brought about) glory (strength, courage, valor, dedication).
Listen! We have heard of the Spear-Danes’ glory,
The Complete Old English Poems Page 9