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A Window Into the Anglo-Saxon Renaissance

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A Window Into the Anglo-Saxon Renaissance Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 9, Number 2-3, Summer-Fall 2000 COMMENTARY A Window into the Anglo-Saxon Renaissance eamus Heaney’s new translation of trast to the Romantic, Nineteenth-cen- SBeowulf—an Irish poet (and Nobel tury “revivalism” associated with Laureate) translating the Anglo-Saxon Richard Wagner and the like, the sup- epic—has gone through six printings so posed “return” to Germanic antiquities far this year in the United States, and in the form of the Nibelungenlied and a more in Britain (where it came out last nostalgia for the gods of Valhalla. In year), and has been on the bestseller list fact, those revivals, or, rather, modern for weeks, an astonishing feat for a verse constructs only tangentially related to translation of a heroic poem of 3,200 the actual pre-Christian myth and folk- lines written in Anglo-Saxon England lore of the Norse peoples, are artificial in sometime between the Seventh and the extreme: The truth of the matter Ninth centuries A.D. is, that the oldest epic poem we have in Although it is unclear why so many any Germanic language—namely, people are buying this apparently rather Beowulf—is Christian, and the literary Beowulf: A New Verse esoteric work—as media coverage keeps products of the first literate Germanic Translation reminding us, Beowulf is rarely read language—namely, Gothic—are trans- by Seamus Heaney outside college courses in English litera- lations of the Bible. New York, Farrar, Straus and ture—what is certain, is that this is a Giroux, 2000 wonderful translation of a wonderful The Translation 213 pages, hardcover, $25.00 poem, the masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon Heaney’s verse gives us both the direct- high culture and earliest surviving epic ness and the loftiness of the poem’s poem in any Germanic language. heroic language, sometimes with gor- in His splendour He set the sun and Beowulf is, in brief, a tale written geous adjectives piled high; sometimes the moon down in English, in England, but set short, sharp, alliterative. to be the earth’s lamplight, lanterns among the Danes, Swedes, and Consider the following passages. for men, Frisians—the Anglo-Saxons’ homeland First, we are near the opening of the and filled the broad lap of the world before they migrated, during the great poem (lines 81-98), reading the descrip- with branches and leaves; and Völkerwanderung of the Germanic peo- tion of the great hall Heorot, hall of the quickened life ples, into Britain. Beowulf tells of war- Danes’ king Hrothgar: in every other thing that moved. rior-heroes fighting evil, of loyalty and Now, another passage from the courage, of betrayal and doom—and, of . The hall towered, Heaney translation, toward the end of a Christian sense of self and others. For, its gables wide and high and awaiting the poem (lines 2417-2421). Here, the far from being a barbarian saga, or cele- a barbarous burning. That doom old king Beowulf readies himself for his bration of pagan Norse mythology, as abided, fateful, fatal final battle. This is a pas- one might suppose, Beowulf was written but in time it would come; the killer sage Heaney himself quotes in his intro- by a Christian poet, sometime in the first instinct duction, comparing Beowulf’s mood to two centuries after the evangelization of unleashed among in-laws, the blood- that “of other tragic heroes: Oedipus at the Anglo-Saxons. lust rampant. Colonnus, Lear at his ‘ripeness is all’ It is for this reason, therefore, that Then a powerful demon, a prowler extremity, Hamlet in the last illumina- Beowulf can truly be called an epic, in through the dark, tions of his ‘prophetic soul’”: the best sense of the word: Because it nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed created a people, using the already him The veteran king sat down on the ancient “Beowulf matter” of oral poetic to hear the din of the loud banquet cliff-top. tradition, which celebrated the deeds of every day in the hall, the harp being He wished good luck to the Geats pagan ancestors, to transform the pagan struck who had shared tribal society the Anglo-Saxons brought and the clear song of a skilled poet his hearth and his gold. He was sad with them to Britain, into what would telling with mastery of man’s at heart, become the Christian civilization of beginnings, unsettled yet ready, sensing his death. Anglo-Saxon England. how the Almighty had made the earth, His fate hovered near, unknowable Hence, Beowulf stands in utter con- a gleaming plain girdled with waters; but certain. 119 © 2000 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, deploys a marvelously powerful musi- Bottom left: Oldest extant Beowulf manuscript, cality dominated by alliteration, rather written on vellum c. A.D. 1000. Left: 10th century than rhyme. Alliteration in Anglo- Viking ceremonial axe-head. Below: Dragon- Saxon poetry is, as Anglo-Saxon scholar head of the wooden stem-post of a Viking ship, Robert Diamond puts it, not an embell- c. A.D. 700. ishment, but a structural necessity; one The Granger Collection in which verses are arranged in alliterat- ing pairs, with the first half of a line (the “on-verse”) having two alliterating pairs of syllables, and the second half (“off- verse”) only one. To translate this directly, or literally, into modern English poetry, is impossi- ble. The effect would be something like the spoof “Witan’s Wail” in the comic history 1066 and All That. Heaney solves The Granger Collection the problem beautifully, not (necessarily) adhering to the alliteration scheme the characteristic of ancient epic poetry Beowulf poet uses, but evoking it in (readers of Homer will recall some richly intricate patterns which echo, of his fixed phrases: the wine-dark rather than mimic, the Anglo-Saxon. sea, rosy-fingered dawn, grey-eyed Here is an example from the very Athena, Zeus Cloud-Gatherer). outset of the poem; the poet is telling the The recurring fixed phrase points story of Scyld Scefing (pronounced back to an oral tradition, in which Shield Sheafing, translated by Heaney as repetition, and the use of fixed mat- Shield Sheafson). Scyld is described as ter to fill out a poetic line, enable flourishing: the minstrel or singer reciting the we¯ox under wolcnum, weorD- poem to remember it more easily. myndum ah. Heaney handles this material é deftly, using these images where or, transliterated and slightly modernized: they will be compelling and excit- wax under wolcnum, worth-myndum The Granger Collection ing, or evocative, but not enslaved thah. to them, able to abandon them if cases by italic) is no longer paired in the they threaten to become simply doggerel Wax means to grow, to flourish—as it same way as in the Anglo-Saxon verse or cant, or impede the flow of the poem still does today. Under has not changed architecture, but it is paired, and cross- he has created through his translation. meaning. Wolcnum has become the connected, just as in the original; the I highlight the above with emphasis rarely used modern English word welkin meaning is intact, and the line is metri- because, at bottom, that is what Heaney (sky, heaven)—and there is at least one cally satisfying. has done: create a new poem, and for modern translation of Beowulf that ren- Another striking feature of Anglo- good reason. One cannot translate a ders that phrase as “wax under Saxon poetry lies in its rich use of poem literally, and have it still be poetry, welkin”—great for etymologists, but metaphor, combinations of thoughts or since in poetry, evocation and metaphor unintelligible to most readers. (Another things which make us see the world dif- are everything. There exist perfectly modern translation supplies “prosper ferently, offer new analogies, possibili- respectable, and extremely useful, prose under heaven”—accurate as to meaning, ties, ironies; and incidentally, enable us translations of great poetical works; but but dead as to the poetry of the passage.) to see through the eyes of the Anglo- really to translate a poem, to give us in In the “off-verse,” worth means Saxons in an age long past. Thus, the our own time and idiom, the poetic worth; myndum means mind or now-famous images for sea—“whale- impact of the original, means essentially remembrance, and so worth-myndum road” (hron-rade); or sail—“sea-shawl” to write a new poem, which will, as close- has the connotation of fame, praisewor- (mere-hraegla); or ship—“wave-crosser” ly as possible, create in our minds the thiness. (weg-flotan); or language—“word- experience that the original poem creat- Here is how Heaney translates it: hoard” (word-horde); for skeleton, ed in the minds of its first hearers or “bone-cage” (ban-cofan). readers. as his powers waxed and his worth These and many more occur fre- That, of all the translators of Beowulf was proved. quently, as fixed phrases, part of the thus far, Heaney is uniquely qualified to The alliteration (signified in both poetic stock (or word-hoard) that is do. 120 The Poem the Northern beserker-hero so beloved and find friendship in the Father’s But, why Beowulf at all? of the Romantics, the battle-axe-swing- embrace. There is no doubt that Beowulf is a ing champion actuated by rage. At first, Perhaps most moving of all, is the great work of art. In the “ringing, before he performed his great feats, advice the old king Hrothgar gives the singing” language of Old English, as one Beowulf’s countrymen regarded him as young Beowulf, embarking on his great reviewer called it,1 it is the story of the a weakling, precisely because of this battle against Grendel.
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