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There was a previous post by Squatter about this same text.
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Indeed there was.
My post is a little more circumspect than you make it sound, so I've linked to it.
That was a chance meeting, reported to me by chance by my then supervisor (chairless for now). I suppose that when two Anglo-Saxonists meet at a conference and both of them happen to be Tolkien fans, and one of them happens to be engaged in a project that involves Anglo-Saxon literature and Tolkien it's inevitable that the subject should crop up. Since it was well known on the course that I'm a fairly obsessive collector of all Tolkien information, it's not terribly surprising that I heard about the meeting not long afterwards. I tried to make it clear in my post that there was only a suggestion that the Estate's motives were financial, mainly because I wasn't privy to the original conversation.
What you've said about Tolkien's verse translation is exactly what I would expect from him, having compared
Gawain and
Pearl with his Modern English versions. His aim seems always to have been nothing less than a complete translation. It was not enough to tell a modern English reader what a text literally meant: he wanted to render the author's every nuance and device, whilst simultaneously preserving the metrical structure, rhyme, stress and alliteration of the original. Tolkien was probably the best qualified person of his generation to translate
Beowulf: he had a genuine poetic sensibility as well as the detailed technical understanding of both the original language and modern English required to create an accurate rendering. He was also well versed in all aspects of Beowulfiana as they were known at his time: themes, history, provenance, parallels and cultural context. Not only that, but he was himself at the cutting edge of research into the poem.
I own a copy of Crossley-Holland's translation, which was always a useful aid to study. If he and a former occupier of the Merton chair, not to mention Drout himself, are impressed then this work is an important contribution to scholarship, and would almost certainly be adopted as one of the standard texts for teaching
Beowulf. It's iniquitous that it's languishing in a box somewhere waiting to deteriorate into illegibility. There seems something excessive about the extent to which access to Tolkien's papers is controlled. Plenty of people have seen Tolkien's papers, and I haven't heard one thing said that suggests they contain anything that could damage his reputation, even if mishandled. Even a little more openness from the Estate about their selection criteria wouldn't go amiss. At least they could relieve the old Templar who has to challenge all comers to single combat... wait, that's something else.
I think that the Tolkien Estate is shooting itself in the foot by refusing to present its stance on certain issues except through lawyers. All it would take sometimes is a hundred words or so from Christopher Tolkien posted on a website somewhere and a lot of this mistrust would evaporate. Obviously the terms of contractual agreements can't just be trumpeted abroad, but perhaps a brief explanation when a long-awaited party is suddenly cancelled would help to reduce the amount of impertinent speculation and ridiculous conspiracy-theorising. Perhaps this is why they've started their own website. I think that issues like the
Beowulf translations may end up being addressed there, and if that's what the Estate plans to do then their public relations advice has suddenly improved dramatically. I agree that a young and outgoing face giving interviews will probably do no harm to relations between Tolkien's heirs and the rest of the world, and that will reduce the need for heavy-handed legal measures. All in all, I hope that the Estate is realising that they and Tolkien's fans have no reason to be at odds with one another, provided that each party respects the other. Then again, I'll wait to see what they do with their website before I start patting anyone on the back.