[Bêthberry]

Thanks for the elaboration of similarities, Faramir and Pitch. This relationship is, I think, substantially different from the one that Eden implied in Tolkien's early writings and for that reason I think the question is quite a bit different than one of unacknowledged debt and influence which he tried to argue.

I see a few other differences, such as those of metre and rhyme scheme. "Bilbo's Last Song" is much more like Tennyson's "Blow, bugle, blow", particularly with its sonority and alliteration. The themes of sea and death and melancolic longing are common in Victorian poetry-- such as, as I'm sure you know, Arnold's"Dover Beach" and even Swinburne's 'In the Bay", which uses the 'harbour-bar' image a little over ten years before Tennyson does. However, what I think is the most importance difference between the two poems, in spite of their similarities, is their provenance.

Right you are that "Crossing the Bar" is traditionally set at the end of Tennyson's collected poems. Hallam Tennyson in his Memoir reported his father's last request, which has been honoured down through the years. However, Tolkien's "Bilbo's Last Lay" (the original title of this lyric) was written under a very different context. As Tennyson Sr.'s request makes clear, he conceived of the poem as a conclusion to his entire life's work and a fitting end. He must have assumed the audience that existed for all his work. With Tolkien, however, we have a very different situation. He wrote the poem for one person, his secretary, and she kept the poem private until after his death. I don't know what prompted the writing--was it to thank her for years of work with him, was it at her request for a final song from Bilbo, did they discuss Tennyson's final lyric? Certainly Tolkien never asked his editors to include it in future editions of LotR and he never asked his son Christopher to make it public as his final work. Did Tolkien ask that the poem be kept private, at least until after his death? More contextual knowledge of the poem would be helpful.

You see, I think "Bilbo's Last Lay" is an elaborate literary joke on Tolkien's part. He had a lively and even wicked sense of humour, as, I think, most professional medievalists do. Even his title, "Lay" is full of punnery and was ultimately rejected because it's association with medieval lays would not be widely appreciated. It is very important that the speaker in Tennyson's poem would appear to be the poet himself whereas Tolkien's poem clearly identifies Bilbo. This is not Tolkien's last poem, but Bilbo's. And Bilbo, while a wonderful character, is clearly at times the repository of some affectionate humour over his scribblings and his inopportune habit of falling asleep. Perhaps one could suggest that Tolkien was here providing a comment on Tennyson's role as the expositor of elven lore for a new age.

You see, I doubt very much that Tolkien had much admiration for Tennyson. This could explain the absence of any comment on him, as much as simple lack of knowledge of the elder poet's work. I would love to know what is in Tolkien's Arthurian romance, the one which Humphrey Carpenter and Verlyn Flieger mention as uncompleted so I could compare it with Tennyson's Idylls. But I am not the only one who finds Tennyson's Arthurian romance a disappointment. According to Roger Sale, in his review ("Tennyson as a Great Poet") of John D. Rosenberg's The Fall of Camelot, quite a few others have as well. Henry James apparently thought Tennyson's Arthur was "rather a prig" and Swinburne thought he was reduced "to the level of a wittol, Guinevere to the level of a woman of intrigue, and Lancelot to the level of a 'co-respondent' ". Hopkins offered "Charades from the Middle Ages" as a title while Swinburne, again, suggested, "Idylls of the Prince Consort" (p. 443). That's quite a cat fight, to borrow a comparison from the American figure skater Johnny Weir, as most of these writers have fairly prestigious credentials in medievalism themselves. Was it simply professional jealousy? What I would like to do is suggest where Tolkien thought Tennyson didn't 'get it quite right' as a way of explaining why "Bilbo's Last Song" could be an elaborate literary joke rather than evidence of deep and abiding influence.

To do that, I'd like to present some of Tolkien's thoughts on translating Old English into modern English. Faramir, you have thoughtfully referred to Tolkien's Letter 171 which offers some explanation of what Tolkien thought a modern translation should be. I'd like to expand on that.

Tolkien's "On Translating Beowulf" presents some of the cruxes in translating Old English. (His thought is applicable to the language generally and not limited to the great poem. ) For example, how is one to translate recurring words. The word eacen can variously be translated as 'stalwart', 'broad', 'huge' and 'mighty'. These are all somewhat acceptable to Tolkien, except that in using all these variations, we lose the

Originally Posted by Tolkien, p. 50, The Monster and the Critics and Other Essays

hint that in poetry this word preserved a special connotation. Originally it means not 'large' but 'enlarged', and in all instances may imply not merely size and strength, but an addition [italics Tolkien's] of power, beyond the natural, whether it applied to the superhuman thirtyfold strength possessed by Beowulf (in this Christian poem it is his special gift from God), or to the mysterious magical powers of the giant's sword and the dragon's hoard imposed by runes and curses. . . . This is only a casual example of the kind of difficulty and interest revealed by the language of Old English verse . . . For many Old English poetical words there are (naturally) no precise modern equivalents of the same scope and tone: they come down to us bearing echoes of ancient days beyond the shadowy borders of Northern history.

Another problem is how to convey the sense of poetic and archaic words--that is, words which for the time of Beowulfs creation were intended to convey the verbal affect of archaism. Tolkien provides multiple examples of situations where both "colloquialism and false modernity" will fail to provide "the understanding of the original which it awakes" (p. 53)--I have bolded this because I think it shows the central germ of Tolkien's feeling about translation. What is to be aimed for is something which helps render as similarly as possible the feelings of the original.

Originally Posted by Tolkien, p. 55

But, whether you regret it or not, you will misrepresent the first and most salient characteristic of the style and flavour of the author, if in translating Beowulf, you deliberately eschew the traditional literary and poetic diction which we now possess in favour of the current and trivial. In any case a self-conscious, and often silly, laughter comes too easily to us to be tempted in this way. The things we are dealing with here are serious, moving, and full of 'high sentence'--if we have the patience and solidity to endure them for a while. We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity and just to the solemn temper of the original, if we avoid 'hitting' and 'whacking' and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'; 'talk' and 'chat' and prefer 'speech'and 'discourse'. . . .

Note that Tolkien also counsels against the opposite fault of using words merely because they are old or obsolete. Diction must be, for him, words which "remain in literary use, especially in the verse, among educated people" (p. 55). So he's not calling for "antiquarian sentiment' or 'philological knowingness' (p. 56).

If we look at Tennyson's translation of an Old English poem and compare it with a contemporary literal translation, we can see some of these problems. Here's a link which provides the original Old English, Tennyson's version, a literal translation, and a line by line translation of The Battle of Brunnaburh.

I have difficulty getting passed Tennyson's Bracelet bestower, when the original is ring-giver to men. On what grounds would Tennyson forgo the culturally significant "ring" for the Old French word "bracelet'? Alliteration for the sake of alliteration destroys meaning. Why would he give us "lifelong glory in battle" rather than be faithful to the original warrior concept of "won eternal glory in battle"? To say nothing about how horribly the metre is mangled, which makes the translation full of derision. It makes a mockery of the Old English alliterative verse in its attempt to recapture it. No wonder W.H. Auden--a student of Tolkien's--said that Tennyson "had the finest ear, perhaps, of any English poet; he was also undoubtedly the stupidest" (Sale, p. 450). (Ohhh, I was right to quote Johnny Weir, this is a cat fight.) And to judge Tennyson's inability to awaken the ancient heroic ideal, consider the last verse.

Originally Posted by Tennyson, final stanza

Never had huger
Slaughter of heroes
Slain by the sword-edge--
Such as old writers
Have writ of in histories--
Hapt in this isle hither
Saxon and Angle from
Over the broad billow
Broke into Britain with
Haughty war-workers who
Harried the Welshman, when
Earls that were lured by the
Hungy of glory gat
Hold of the land.

Originally Posted by literal translation

Never was there more slaughter
on this island, never yet as many
people killed before this
with sword's edge: never according to those who tell us
from books, old wisemen,
since from the east Angles and Saxons came up
over the broad sea. Britain they sought,
Proud war-smiths who overcame the Welsh,
glorious warriors they took hold of the land.

I'll take "Proud war-smiths" as more fitting of the ancient ideal than "Haughty war-workers." And I'll sure pass on 'gat' and 'Hapt'. None of this is "moving, serious, and of high sentence."

In fairness of course, this translation is not Tennyson's finest poem. But I think it demonstrates more than adequately how not to translate Old English and how not to be a medievalist according to Tolkien. It's risible and as such I think Tolkien rather slyly and with some ingenuity found a way to parody Tennyson's final lyric.