Tolkien's Beowulf

[Bêthberry]

Heeeerrre's Squatter taking us back to school. A previous discussion on Droust and Beowulf.


And, the comparison of Heaney's with Tolkien's translation on, of all threads, Tolkien is not Yeats

Oh, what the heck. Why not copy the translations here.

Tolkien's translation of Beowulf and his men setting sail:

On went the hours: on
ocean afloat
under cliff was their craft.
Now climb blithely
brave man aboard; breakers
pounding
ground the shingle. Gleaming
harness
they hove to the bosom of the
bark, armour
with cunning forged then cast
her forth
to voyage triumphant,
valiant-timbered
fleet foam twisted.


The same passage by Heaney:

Time went by, the boat was
on water,
in close under the cliffs.
Men climbed eagerly up the
gangplank,
sand churned in surf, warriors
loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining
war-gear
in the vessel's hold, then
heaved out,
away with a will in their
wood-wreathed ship.


It appears, Hookbill, that Tolkien wanted a translation which maintained many of the stylistic and linquistic traits of the Old English language, whereas Heaney is providing a modern version.

What Fordim is providing I would not hazard to say.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I've got to say that I can't imagine a translation more moving and powerful than Heaney's. For years I've been watching people struggle with that initial "Hwaet!" and coming up either with silly monosyllabic, pseudo-archaisms like "Lo!" and "Hark!", or ignoring it completely. My delight was complete when I opened Heaney's version and read there simply, "So."

[Lathriel]

I think it is silly that the Tolkien estate won't let Beowulf be published. Besides Beowulf has very little to do with Lotr. It might have helped inspire Tolkien but other than that I can't think of a good reason.
Talking about inspiration there is a good book called Tolkien's ring by David Day which has most of the myths that inspired Tolkien. E.G. Lidelungelied,some Norse sagas and more. I found it a very enjoyable read.So if you can't get Beowulf this might help,for a little while.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Well, without knowing exactly what the situation is it would be very difficult to judge what's being done and why. If the Tolkien estate has withdrawn the right to publish after having granted it in the past then there must be some fairly strong motivation for the decision, and any attempt to work out what has been done and why would be pure speculation.

Sadly, it might make very good commercial sense for Christopher Tolkien to edit his father's manuscripts himself. Although he's not as respected as either his father or Michael Drout, Tolkien junior does possess the knowledge of the subject that he would need to attempt that, and he does have an advantage in his intimate knowledge of his father's personality and handwriting, which varied from beautiful medieval book-hands to a virtually illegible scrawl. A lot of money could be made, and a scholarly reputation enhanced, by this sort of undertaking. CRT doesn't have much of a reputation at present, although I remember fondly an edition of Hrolfs Saga Kraka that he co-edited.

Then again, there may have been creative disagreements concerning the treatment of the material, or possibly some falling-out over other issues, so it may not be down to money at all. The stupidity of the estate's decision would be relative at least to its reasoning or lack thereof, although if money did turn out to have been a major element it would probably seal forever the estate's reputation for milking Tolkien to death.

Turning to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, it is indeed a very nice read, and he did solve the problem of hwæt inventively. To my mind, though, he's too concerned with giving the poem his own personal stamp, which I suppose is an occupational hazard for a poet. Also Heaney isn't a professional Anglo-Saxonist, and his Old English simply isn't as good as that of people who work in that field. Admittedly being a poet must be very useful when considering how to render Old English into sensible modern sentences, but to my mind a professional's grasp of Old English is more important in a translator.

On the subject of archaism, I'm afraid I have to bow to Tolkien himself. My Old English isn't up to spotting archaic words in Beowulf, which is difficult enough given the varied dating of the poem; but Tolkien says that it makes heavy use of archaic language and I see no reason to argue with him. Certainly, unlike Seamus Heaney's own poems, Anglo-Saxon verse makes use of specifically poetic words and self-consciously formal and artificial diction, so that 'Hark!' doesn't seem very out of place when translating it. If I were told to modernise the term, I would probably translate with 'Listen!' since Beowulf is a formal piece, and deserves at least to be rendered in standard English. The narrator was well-educated and courtly, not a scullion, Anglo-Irish or otherwise, so the trawling of colloquial speech for translations of his words rather insidiously changes their whole complexion. All that just from the first word! To paraphrase Tolkien, therein lies the inescapable agony of ancient English verse for those that have a yen to translate.

Not that such objections are important for a general audience. Heaney's translation is easy on the eyes and tells the story in a way that a modern audience will appreciate. It shows off his own poetic skills very well, and it certainly doesn't harm its material. What it can do, though, is to create a false impression of the source material, and to suggest that our current distaste for formalised and artificial language was current among the early Anglo-Saxons.(1) True, their vernacular prose tends to be fairly matter-of-fact, but not their poetry, and often not their Latin either.

For these reasons, I think it would be nice to have Tolkien's translations for the sake of comparison. He's another well-known name, but rather than a poet dabbling in philology, Tolkien was a philologist dabbling in poetry. To see how his effort compares with Heaney's and the original would be fascinating, and certainly couldn't injure one's understanding of Beowulf. I would also expect Tolkien's translation to be a moving piece in itself unless his faculties completely failed him.

As for the matter of publication, I suppose that's up to the Tolkien Estate now, and I hope rather than expect that scholarship, not the bottom line, will be their guide. It was nice to see that some of my old comments on this subject came in useful at last, not to mention that I've got into Bêthberry's signature, if only by reference.

**
1 - Here I have to go out on a limb and accept that the current manuscript (c. 1000) was copied from an eighth-century archetype. There are numerous arguments for several dates of composition from c.650 to 1000, the terminus ante quem being the date of the manuscript.

[Lathriel]

I just realized that there are several movies coming to theatres concerning Beowulf. Maybe this is what the Tolkien estate has waited for. Commercially it would be a smart idea to publish Tolkien's translation shortly after the movies have arrived in theatres.

[Legolas]

Do list the movies for us!

I'm currently moving through Beowulf in my British Literature course (having just done so last semester in World Literature, a more abbreviated situation with the same professor).

[Maerbenn]

I know of these:

Beowulf & Grendel
Beowulf
Beowulf: Prince of the Geats