Beowulf : the monsters and the translators

Beowulf: the monsters and the translators Chris McCully Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex cmccully@essex.ac.uk www.chrismccully.co.uk

A professional interest • Didn’t come to Beowulf via Tolkien or film • Studying the poem since 1980 • Comparative codification of the structure of opening 1000+ lines (Sievers, Bliss, Pope) • Basis for many theories of OE metrics • Basis for book chapters (e.g. chapter 5 of The Earliest English, 2005) • Beowulf has helped to pay the bills

And yet…. • In 2004 I hadn’t been back to Beowulf systematically for years • Used the poem as a hunting ground for metrical or linguistic problems • Poetic interest > purely (and merely) a philological interest • ‘Read the thing as a poem, Chris’

Beowulf and Greenland • 2004 trip to remote parts of Greenland. Took Wrenn edition of Beowulf with me (pb., lighter to carry than e.g. Klaeber’s edition) • Read at night by torchlight in a tent. No other human for hundreds of square miles. • The monsters are real

In 2005 began to translate parts of the poem • OE translations published in Old English Poems and Riddles (Carcanet/Fyfield, 2008) • Riddles, charms, elegies (Wanderer, Seafarer), devotional poems (Dream of the Rood), belated epics (Maldon), rhythmical prose (Aelfric, Wulfstan) – and parts of Beowulf • Variety of Old English writing, generally couched in one metrical form

Why didn’t you translate all of it? • Heaney had recently published his translation (1999) • Steve Glosecki was then working on his own translation • Bob Bjork and John Niles then working on a new scholarly edition of the poem • And so in 2006-8 I worked merely on ‘Beowulf: the Greatest Hits’

…and there I thought I’d left it • Readings at University of Oxford (Chris Jones), Rylands Reading (University of Manchester, 2012) • Translations generally well-received. Translation of The Seafarer, which I’d dedicated to Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh) was read at his funeral, which touched me greatly.

Translation of The Seafarer (extract, opening of poem) The Seafarer for Derek Britton Truth? I can seal it in song’s reckoning, tell its stories: times of hardship I owned often, unease and toil; how I’ve borne both bitterness and breast-care, known sorrow’s surges in the surging keel, 5 wave-roiling terror - they wore me, saw the narrow night-watch nailed to the boat-prow as the cliffs unsteadied. Cold, constriction: my feet were fettered, frost-bound and cramped, clamped, ice-locked, though my cares ravened there, 10 hot round the heart, and hunger tore at the spirit’s tiredness. Time’s slaves can’t think – those day-dawdlers dwelling fair on land – how I lived winter, wretched, sorrowful, on the exile’s path, an ice-cold sea, 15 deprived alike of praise, friends, profit, frost-candles in clothes, flogged by hail-nails…. Nothing to hear there but the hail, sea-yell on terror’s frozen track....

Yet Beowulf wouldn’t leave me alone… • MUP asked me to translate all of it (2009) • Kept fretting about how to translate the opening line (esp. the opening word of the poem, Hwæt…) • Worried about lexical balance (between Romance and Germanic diction) • The excerpts seemed to go across well in occasional readings • Renewed interest in epic (via African poetry/PhD student in Groningen, 2012-13) • Renewed interest in oracy and literacy

Over 250 translations of Beowulf Marijane Osborne gives an annotated list of Beowulf translations (https://acmrs.org/academic-programs/online-resources/beowulf-list) • Poem translated since 1815 (first complete translation, by Thorkelin, into Latin) • First complete English translation by Kemble (1837) – this was a prose translation • Beowulf translated into Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish (which one might expect)…but also into Bulgarian, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese (a comic-book version), and even Hindi • Work based on (or more or less distantly related to) Beowulf includes rock-opera scores, film scripts, musicals, plays (including, I’m afraid, one of my own [a five-night run at South Trafford College, 1991]) and novels

If I was going to take on a new translation….why another? • Metrical interest • Increasing interest in metrical and linguistic continuity (as opposed to linguistic and literary change) • Mighty technical challenge • Magic vanishing from the world…or perhaps, merely from my world, with its (my) growing sense of vulnerability and impending mortality • Summary and execution of a lifelong preoccupation

Other metrical translations of Beowulf extant †Lehmann, Ruth P. M. 1988. Beowulf: An Imitative Translation (Austin: University of Texas Press). The cover copy of this translation advertises it misleadingly as "the only one available that preserves both the story line of the poem and the alliterative versification of the Anglo-Saxon original" (back cover). Imitative meter is an important element in Lehmann's presentation and the only aspect of translation she discusses ( pp. 16-18). (Also see Rebsamen, 1991.) Though occasionally obscure or sloppy, often her terse, clear diction works well. The book abounds, however, in misprints and errors of fact surprising from this noted scholar. (Marijane Osborne, https://acmrs.org/academic-programs/online-resources/beowulf-list, accessed 28 August 2014; Magennis (2011) has similar reservations, as also about the metrical translation of Rebsamen [1991, updated 2004], which he dubs ‘idiosyncratic’)

Could I, accordingly…. • Develop a new metrical translation of the poem? • Construct something readable in present-day English? • Provide a reliable text attractive to those beginning to study the poem? • Ensure that whatever I did was consistent with what I believed about epic, about poetic and linguistic continuity, about poetic diction and the scriptist nature of the original Beowulf text? • …and could I, in re-making something old, ‘make it new’?

A four-position half-line • Four-position half-line drawn from Cable (1991) • Prototypically, one position = one syllable, e.g. gomban gyldan (‘tribute to-give’, Beo.,11a) 1 2 3 4 and hunger tore (Seafarer, 11a, above) 1 2 3 4

Strong constraints on how half-lines end • Half-lines end on some kind of stressed syllable (whether primary or secondary stressed), or on one and exactly one unstressed syllable. Examples: ymbsittendra (Beo. 9b, ‘about-sitters’, neighbouring tribes) 1 2 3 4 (position 4 unstressed) fæder ellor hwearf (Beo. 55b, ‘father elsewhere-departed’) 1 2 3 4 (faeder is resolved (= one position), position 4 secondary stressed)

Old English metrics as a dynamic (a constraint set and ranking) (1) Position: Each half-line spans four filled positions (2) Closure: Position 4 filled by one stressed syllable or resolved equivalent, or on exactly one unstressed syllable (3) ‘Beginnings free, endings strict’ (< Hayes and OT constraint sets – this apparently a metrical universal) (4) Expansions: Only one expansion per half-line (5) Extrametrical elements: Verbal prefixes, the prefix ge- and the negative particle ne (not) may be extrametrical These constraints are ranked such that (1) is more important than (2) etc. Note that any expansions will always fall earlier in the line (and never in position 4 because of the high ranking of constraint (2)). Essentially, what we’re dealing with is an interactive constraint set – a metrical dynamic spanning the half-line

Sievers’ Five Types…and the ‘One Type’ of dynamic metrics • Sievers’ 1885 view of OE/Germanic metre is often if not invariably presented as if there are ‘Five Types’ of half-line • Type A / x / x • Type B x / x / • Type C x / / x • Type D / / \ x or / / x \ • Type E / \ x / When learning about OE poetic form, most students are exposed to nothing but ‘the Five Types’

In dynamic metrics, only one ‘Type’ • The erstwhile ‘Types’ A through E are merely statistically-determined variants of one underlying pattern. (NB. This is what Sievers originally claimed in his 1885 articles.) Type A is statistically more frequent than B, B than C etc. • Even if true, the ‘Five Types’ would be very difficult for aspirant Anglo-Saxon poets (and scribes) to learn. The transmissibility of poetic form must be reckoned with.

Examples: expansions of the underlying pattern • Expansions siþþan gēara īu 1 2 3 4 (from The Wanderer, ‘since of-years ago’, since long ago; expansion in position 1) æt þæm wīgplegan 1 2 3 4 (from Maldon, ‘at the battle-play’; expansion in position 1)

Expansion: ‘resolution’ • Short stressed syllable followed by one consonant and an unstressed syllable (…CVCV… where V is stressed) can count as just one stressed syllable, cf. Tennyson In cataract after cataract to the sea (a line of pentameter) fæder ellor hwearf (Beo. 55b, ‘father elsewhere-departed’) 1 2 3 4 (faeder is resolved (= one position))

Alliteration • ‘Crude or unskilled thumping’ (Edith Sitwell) • Problem for modern translator: maintaining the old alliterative patterning (3 alliterating lifts per long line, but never alliteration in the final position of the long line) makes the alliteration very (too) overt. • Prototypically gomban gyldan: þæt wæs gōd cyning • This pattern can be maintained…. my feet were fettered, frost-bound and cramped but the result can seem aurally wearisome. One must accordingly make use of single, crossed, repeated or transverse (or merely ‘eye-’) alliteration. These existed as occasional variants in the originals.

Alliteration, examples from current practice the narrow night-watch nailed to the boat-prow [standard] as the cliffs unsteadied. Cold, constriction: [repeated] my feet fettered, frost-bound and cramped, [standard] clamped, ice-locked, though my cares ravened there, [single] 10 hot round the heart, and hunger tore [standard] at the spirit’s tiredness. Time’s slaves can’t think – [crossed] those day-dawdlers dwelling fair on land – [standard] how I lived winter, wretched, sorrowful, [eye-alliteration] on the exile’s path, an ice-cold sea, [single] 15 deprived alike of praise, friends, profit, [transverse]

‘Diction’: another problem In my first attempts to translate the opening of Beowulf – something I’d fretted about for years – I got things very wrong. Here’s a discarded initial draft of opening 10ll..I’ve underlined the things that turned out to be problems: Now then. On the ness of time, news: of Spear-Danes vanished in years’-dark, valiant princes, victories and vanity, violence and endurance. It was Scyld Scefing, the sure founder, the Eruli’s terror, who overturned benches, 5 was rampant in the halls of surrounding clans. First a foundling, far from his origins, honour helped him flourish; he was himself honoured under the teeming heavens. Even tribes distant across the dark whale-roads owed duties to him. 10 Even at the time I wasn’t sure. Part of the problem was that I knew where the poem was going – that vanity was a theme recapitulated in the poem’s closing lines. Another problem was that I wanted to find a demotic sort of diction, which in the first instance would by my diction (note that ‘Now then’ is a Yorkshire-ism). So what does one do?

The reader over your shoulder • Grevel (Lindop) trenchantly pointed out some shortcomings: (a) ‘Now then’ sounds like a demented Anglo-Saxon policeman; (b) the lexicon used elsewhere is far too Latinate (victory, valiant etc.) • There was a further problem with the (notorious) word Hwæt that opens the poem. Is it an exclamation or call for attention…or is it (recent research) a subordinating conjunction (roughly that-which)? Many translators render the word as Lo! (Tolkien did so)…but who says Lo! These days?

Lo!....

…or not-Lo! Now from yore-days, in the yards of time we heard of Spear-Danes and how they were sped by courage, how doomed in blood were their best of men. It was Scyld Scefing, their sure founder, the Eruli’s terror, who overturned benches, 5 was rampant in halls of surrounding clans. First a foundling, far from his beginnings, honour helped him flourish; he was himself honoured under the teeming heavens. Even tribes distant across the dark whale-roads owed duties to him. 10

What I tried to get at was… • The conflation of time (‘then’ and ‘now’) • Diction is plainer (beginning not origin, doomed in blood instead of victories and vanity) • Emphasis on tribalism and kinship (this seems to me epically important) • Retained metrical ambiguity of the opening… • But couldn’t rid the lines of all Latinate/Romance diction (e.g. flourish, honour) Translating the first ten lines like this – so many false starts, hesitations etc. – took months. I have no idea why I didn’t abandon the whole plan.

But after a while some fluency returned… ‘What troop are you who bring trappings of war - ‘keen-bright byrnie and keel’s wave-blade – ‘from your home’s havens here across the ocean, ‘across the sea-currents? I was sent holmwards 240 ‘to this kingdom’s rim as a coast-scout, guard ‘of the sea-border, so that no brutal aggression ‘might trespass our land from its outlying boundaries. ‘And never have shield-guests with unshattered battle-rims ‘more brazenly arrived; nor have you bothered to gain 245 ‘permission from the clan and its mighty chiefs ‘beforehand. There’s been no consent. Yet in your fine bearing ‘and apparent lordliness you appear as no mere ‘feckless foot-soldier in a frayed war-shirt. ‘May your demeanour and well-meaning face 250 ‘never come to mock you! But nevertheless ‘I here must ask of your origins and coming: ‘you won’t follow further into fair Dane-land ‘unless you go as spies. So you, gelder of ‘distance, spume-traveller, speak. Let me hear 255 ‘to the point, plainly and without posturing: ‘where did you come from? What caused your coming?’

And to date…. • Around 1000 lines of the opening complete in draft, with another 700 lines of various other parts of the poem complete (including the closing lines) • The original is 3182 lines long • My aim is to have the translation completed by 2016, with the apparatus and commentary to add in late 2016 or 2017

Monsters and translators • One further problem is how to render the monsters – Grendel, Grendel’s Mum and last, the dragon. • G and G’s Mum are humanoid and one can use human-related terms in which to describe them and their motives. (The Beowulf poet does likewise, describing Grendel ironically as a rinc, a warrior.) But the dragon is entirely Other, something supernatural • The critical cliché has it that it would take something supernatural to defeat Beowulf • But how render the dragon? • I’ve tried speeding up the pace of the half-lines, using what are effectively enjambed half-lines • I’ve also tried contrasting the diction of monkly/scribal asides (Latinate) with the generally Germanic diction used to describe the dragon • And I’ve tried to use bird-imagery (raptor, with an echo in dialectal rooked [robbed]) in a way to OE poets using birds-of-ill-omen as symbols in many poems about battle’s carnage. Therefore the dragon is (in this translation, as in the original poem) both a raptor and a ‘wyrm’ – a sort of scaled bird.

Chasing the dragon But the worm stirred, and war’s strife began: he sniffed among stones, scenting – implacable – his enemy’s smell, whose secret craft by stealth had disturbed the strength waiting…. 2290 (An undoomed man may well survive woes and miseries if he’s meritable, bears the Lord’s favour….) Then, furious, the dragon nosed out man-trace, meaning to find the one who’d troubled his terrible dreams: 2295 shifted, enraged, through the shape of his cavern, to its outer ness. No one was there in that burnt fastness; yet his blent evil intended terror; at times he looked again for the rifled cup, only to discover again 2300 that someone already had robbed him of the gold, ancient treasure-token. Until evening came anxiously he waited, waited wretchedly…. The enraged raptor, rooked in his shelter, would repay his foe with fire, avenge 2305 the pilfered cup. With departing day the worm set to - no intention now of wallowing within its walls, but to work in flames, bright-scaled with fire….

Monsters, critics and hobbits Fitting it is that his fellows should praise 3175 a man’s memory and merits with love once his spirit’s been fetched from its frame of life. And so they lamented, these men of the Geats - companions, a brotherhood - the passing of their lord. They said that of all earthly rulers 3180 he’d been the mildest man, and the most gentle, kindest to his clansmen - and couth in fame. One critic complained (in a blog) that ‘couth’ was ‘clunky’. He appeared to dislike the translation intensely. (He knew what he liked, as it were. Perhaps he’d have preferred hobbits.) Now couth < OE cūþan ‘to know how to’. And in the translation, Beowulf is elegised as someone who ‘knew how to’ bear his own considerable fame (with gentleness, modesty and so on).

Couth in Bolton • I put the couth problem – and confessed my own inadequacies and bafflements as a translator of Beowulf - to the audience (150 souls) at the 2012 Rylands Reading. • I read the closing lines of the translation. • At question-time, one audience member told me that just as in my own variety of English, ‘couth’ was fine. ‘We use “couth” all the time in Bolton,’ she said, to a roomful of Northern nods. • And that was deeply encouraging.

Beowulf, translation and translators • The problems I confronted interested me and I wondered whether similar problems would be encountered by those translating from or into other languages. And therefore I wondered whether LiFTS might host a new series of talks about the processes of translation. • Five talks each year, 2014-16. • Collection of the talks into publishable form • Publication by Carcanet • Inaugural talk by Michael Schmidt in November 2014 – Michael will be talking about translations from Latin.

Re Writing the Poem – new translation series, LiFTS • is it necessary for a translator to have scholarly or other knowledge of the language from which he/she is translating? • do you habitually make several/many drafts of your poems/translations? • is your typical method of re-writing (or redrafting translations) to change a line, a word - a ‘piece by piece’ mode? Or do you often make more wholesale changes? • on what grounds do you become dissatisfied with your translations? • how far is your re-drafting impelled by considerations of tone? Or of metrical structure? Or of vocabulary? • do you have any method of ‘ultimate arbitration’ - for example, reading the translation aloud after its composition, and making any changes consequent on that? • how far are your re-writings influenced by the eventual look of the text on the page? Do you strive for a similar graphic setting to that of the originating text? • do you show or read your work to others while it is in the process of construction? If so, how do others’ comments influence your re-drafting procedures? • have your methods of translating and (re)writing changed over the years? • how far do considerations of audience influence your translating and re-writing? • in translating, to what extent do you consult other translations of the same poem or poet? And what power do such translations have in your own (re)writing? • do you come back to abandoned drafts after a longer or a shorter interval? • do you agree that ‘first thoughts are so often better than second thoughts’ (C.H. Sisson)? • how far do you agree that a poetic translation ‘is never finished, it is only ever abandoned’ (Valéry)?

What they’ve said…. "Another recent Fyfield book is Chris McCully's versions of Old English poetry. McCully has combined the acuity of the scholar and the talents of a poet to produce a muscular set of translations which get as close to the sheer physicality of Old English poetry and the life portrayed there as may be possible. His Introduction is compelling: it is scholarly without being inaccessible, in tone lively and personal. He declares 'In the end I have merely tried to make the poems as attractive to readers as they are to me.' In this he surely succeeds." - (about Old English Poems and Riddles); Matt Simpson, 2008 OE Poems and Riddles also used on some first-year university syllabuses. Fortunately or unfortunately, I work in a more encouraged way because of the reviews. Ultimately, I suppose translators and writers are alike trying to have forms of conversation with their historical or current constituencies.

Thank you Selected or comprehensive references available on request, but one very useful conspectus of Beowulf translations into modern English verse is Hugh Magennis, Translating Beowulf (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011). Draft revised September 25th, 2014 Chris McCully

Beowulf : the monsters and the translators