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A Readable Beowulf: The Old English Epic Newly Translated

by: Stanley B. Greenfield
en

0809310600  9780809310609  9780585220659 

 


A Readable Beowulf: The Old English Epic Newly Translated
By Stanley B. Greenfield


 


Product Description:

 

Stanley B. Greenfield, one of the world’s foremost Anglo-Saxon scholars, writes of why, after more than thirty years of study, he undertook the Herculean task of rendering Beowulf into con­temporary verse: “I wanted my translation to be not only faith­ful to the original but, as the late John Lennon would have put it, ‘A Poem in Its Own Write.’ I wanted it to ‘flow,’ to be easy to read, with the narrative movement of a modern prose story; yet to suggest the rhythmic cadences of the Old English poem. I wanted it both modern and Old English in its reflexes and sen­sibilities, delighting both the general reader and the Anglo-Saxon specialist. . . . I wanted it to reproduce the intoxication of aural contours which… might have pleased and amused war­riors over their cups in the Anglo-Saxon mead-hall, or those monks in Anglo-Saxon monasteries who paid more attention to song and to stories of Ingeld than to the lector and the gospels.”
 
Greenfield has succeeded to a remarkable degree in reaching his goals. An early reviewer of the manuscript, Daniel G. Calder of UCLA, wrote: “I find it the best translation of Beowulf.
One of the great problems with other translations is that they make the reading of Beowulf difficult. Greenfield’s translation speeds along with considerable ease. . . Scholars will find the translation fascinating as an exercise in the successful recreat­ing of various aspects of Old English poetic style.”

 



Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: An Experiment in Translation
Rating: 5

In this translation of "Beowulf," the translator set himself the very difficult task of working in a meter which suggests that of the original, but does not depend directly on either its obvious feature of alliteration (likeness of initial sounds of stressed words) or the less obvious patterns of length and stress. The goal, as he explains in "On the Translation," was equivalency, not imitation. The metrical resemblance is to be found in whole passages, not in specific lines and half-lines.

His choice for this was the unusual purely syllabic line, avoiding use of the standard modern English reliance on metrical units, or feet, with the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables. The lines are mainly nine syllables long, with some shorter or longer (eight or ten), which does reflect the presence of actual variations in Old English meter. This syllabic line tends to produce a caesura, or mid-line pause, which is another marked feature of the original.

(In fact, Benjamin Thorpe, an early nineteenth-century editor of "Beowulf," printed the half-lines as individual lines, doubling the apparent length, confusing the distinction been pauses and the ends of verses, and sometimes obscuring the alliteration linking half-lines.)

Alliteration appears in the translation, but is not used as a structural principle; a decision which allows for more freedom to select the right word, instead of the one that fits with the rest of the line. (Old English verse had a large specialized vocabulary to fit these needs, with many ways to say things like "sword," or "warrior," or "king" -- areas in which modern vocabulary is comparatively impoverished.) The resulting translation flows nicely. Concise footnotes supply clear explanations; and there is additional information in the "Glossary of Proper Names."

I have a test for translations from the (few) languages with which I have some familiarity. Is a comparison with the original language mutually enlightening? Does it offer interesting ways of looking at the original, and suggest new layers of meaning in the translation?

In this case, some of Greenfield's accomplishments will be noticed only by those already familiar with the Old English, or with a copy of it open while reading the translation. He often uses a Modern English cognate (related by common origin) word, or at least a homophonous (sound-alike) term, (whatever the exact etymology) -- although always a clear modern exion, never an obscure and archaic, or completely obsolete word, in the manner of William Morris. (Who at points in his notoriously odd nineteenth-century verse translation seems to have been trying to translate the Old English of "Beowulf" into something rather like the Middle English of Chaucer; a rather pointless exercise, requiring a glossary of its own.)

With Greenfield, the result is sometimes a quiet pun. Near the opening lines, we learn of a Danish ruler; "Often Scyld Scefing shattered the hosts, / unsettled many a nation's mead-hall..." This is a close-enough rendering of the literal meaning. In the second line, the original has "monegum maegthum meodosetla ofteah," "from many kin-groups mead-benches took away." (The mead-halls are where the benches would be found, and are implied by the Old English poetic compound.) So "unsettled" here is, first of all, "disturbed," but also, in this context, is un-settled, "deprived of settles" (backless benches). Not something that leaps out at the reader, and distracts attention away from the work, but present nonetheless. A little reward for those of us who have puzzled over how best to translate the unfamiliar image.

The 1990s saw a lot of work on the text of "Beowulf," driven in part by new technologies, which allowed a re-examination of the unique manuscript. A cluster of new text editions followed. Greenfield's work is based largely on the then-standard editions of Friedrich Klaeber (1936, with supplements 1941, 1950) and C.L. Wrenn (second edition 1958, revised by Michael Bolton, 1973). However, I have yet to see really dramatic changes in readings that would be critical on the level of verse translations, so for most purposes, especially including reading for pleasure, this remains a soundly based piece of work. I happen to agree theoretically with arguments for prose translations; but this is one of the examples that shakes the theory.

The Introduction is by Alain Renoir (Professor of English at Berkeley; and, yes, part of *the* Renoir family; he is author of a famous article on cinematic effects in "Beowulf"), and combines a general introduction to "Beowulf" and its poetry with a discussion of the present translation. He gives a very good overview of the heroic ethos of the Old English poem, its mixture of feuds and selflessness, success and failure; and of the displacement in the main narrative from human conflicts to struggles with a variety of monsters. (Which are at the same time somehow nearly human, or driven by their response to humans; this is not a simple-minded adventure story.)

There are half a dozen full-page illustrations, and a few page decorations, all quite attractive, by Sarah Higley (whose name I found in the Preface; Southern Illinois University seems to have missed including it any of the usual places.)

(I should point out that, while Stanley B. Greenfield [1922-1987] is identified in the book, correctly, as Professor of English at the University of Oregon, he was a Visiting Professor at UCLA when I took courses in Old English there. He handled the introductory course, and later the "Beowulf" seminar. That I actually learned quite a bit of Old English may be a tribute to his teaching ability; that I have retained much less than I hoped is my problem. I mention this fact to be fair, since I might be thought to have a bias in his favor, and in favor of this translation, which he was working on at the time. And, come to think of it, Alain Renoir spoke at UCLA, and I had a brief conversation with him... . Well, Old English wasn't the most crowded academic field.)