Title: Universal Hero.
Topic(s): Literature/Linguistics -- English Literature -- Anglo-Saxon & Medieval
Subject(s): BEOWULF (Book)
Source: World & I, Sep2000, Vol. 15 Issue 9, p247, 5p
Author(s): Napierkowski, Thomas
Abstract: Reviews the book `Beowulf,' translated by Seamus Heaney.
AN: 3510896
ISSN: 0887-9346
Database: Blackboard

 

Section: BOOK WORLD

REVIEW

UNIVERSAL HERO

The Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney's faithful rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf conveys both the power and significance of the original work. BEOWULF

Translated by Seamus Heaney New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000 213 pp., $25.00

The quip is that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Americans and Britons have purchased Seamus Heaney's verse translation of Beowulf for reasons of "cultural correctness," making it an international best-seller, and have then promptly shelved the volume, unread, in their bookcases. That would be a shame. The truth of the matter is that Beowulf is a magnificent poem and Heaney's translation is arguably the best modernization to date of that fine but generally inaccessible work.

Even an exemplary translation of a mediocre poem is not generally noteworthy. One of the judges of the Whitbread Prize is reported to have dismissed Beowulf as "a boring book about dragons." One can only hope that the report is inaccurate or that the comment was spoken facetiously. Beowulf is one of the great landmarks of English literature.

The story of the poem is simple enough. A Scandinavian hero named Beowulf engages in three mortal challenges. As a young thane or warrior of the Geatish court, Beowulf undertakes the first two adventures to rescue the Danish king Hrothgar and his people from the ravages of the troll-like monster Grendel and, later, from the revenge of Grendel's mother. Years later, an elderly Beowulf, now himself king of the Geats, is killed while defending his people from the attacks of a fire-breathing dragon. Here, it would appear, is the stuff of fairy tales, not great poetry; yet the experience of the poem--its organic, indeed synergistic, union of theme, style, and language (what Heaney describes as the "the cadence and force of earned wisdom")--belies this facile conclusion.

At one level, the poem is the portrait of an idealized warrior. Beowulf embodies all the qualities admired by the Anglo-Saxons, including some that those unfamiliar with the culture of the period might not expect. He is, of course, fearless, strong, and loyal, but he is also intelligent, articulate, courteous, and, above all, committed to the service, comfort, and joy (even peace) of his people. At another level, however, a level clearly cultivated by the poet, Beowulf examines universal and timeless issues. In a sophisticated series of contrasts that extend from the very structure of the poem to the pairing of stressed and alliterated words (for example, sceadu-genga and sceotend in line 703), the poet defines not only the young Beowulf and the old Beowulf, the idealized thane and the model king, but the heroic and the monstrous, the light and the dark, the human and the inhuman. Even the choice of nonhuman opponents for Beowulf, which some critics deprecate but which the poet quite consciously made, contributes to the poem's primal power. No one has made this point more effectively than J.R.R. Tolkien:

It is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant than this imaginary poem of a great king's fall. It glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important.

The moral and ethical assumptions of the poet on some of these points might seem foreign to many in the twentieth century. That need not surprise us; indeed, it forces an even closer examination of the monstrous and heroic in our own deeply troubled age.

Like the contents of Beowulf, the techniques of Anglo-Saxon verse are sophisticated and demanding. Alliteration; a four-stress line divided into two staves, or hemistiches, with two stressed syllables in each half; repetition through appositives, synonyms, and synonymous words and phrases; end-stopping lines; kennings (compound words of metaphoric quality--e.g., "whale-road" for ocean); a swift narrative style that doesn't bother to explain allusions; and an overwhelming preference for oral presentation--all these constitute a verse tradition that is formal, highly stylized, and polished. What is remarkable about the Beowulf poet is not just his mastery of this rigorous technique but the manner in which he makes the technique work to achieve his goals.

Finally, the poem's language also plays a special role in the achievement of Beowulf. Although the diction of Anglo-Saxon verse is built around a specialized poetic vocabulary, it is an elemental language, one not yet enriched by the modern English habit of borrowing; consequently, there is heavy recourse to compounds, synonyms, and figures of speech, especially metonymy. Here again, Beowulf stands apart, displaying what M.B. Rudd described as "a magnificence of language which leaves critic and translator helpless." E. Talbot Donaldson, himself a scholar and translator of a fine prose version of Beowulf, characterizes the style of the poem as an "extraordinary richness of rhetorical elaboration alternating with--often combined with--the barest simplicity of statement."

A masterpiece

How well, then, does Heaney's translation serve the original? Well indeed; so well that, of all the translations that exist, his seems to convey best to the uninitiated reader a feel for both the power and significance of the poem and the techniques of its poetic tradition and author.

Even before an examination of the actual translation, three things commend this volume to the reader. First, it is a verse translation. Prose translations, no matter how artful, run the danger of giving the impression that the original is an odd short story or novella; this is a possibility against which readers and especially teachers should always be on guard. Beyond that, the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux presentation (as opposed to the version included in The Norton Anthology of English Literature) is a dual-language edition with the Anglo-Saxon text opposite the translation, thus allowing those who are inclined to compare the two. Finally, Heaney provides an introduction which demonstrates that he very much appreciates the accomplishments of Beowulf and has thought carefully about his own responsibilities and approach to the original.

His introduction sets the stage for readers by addressing the achievement of Beowulf:

What we are dealing with is a work of the greatest imaginative vitality, a masterpiece where the structuring of the tale is as elaborate as the beautiful contrivances of its language. Its narrative elements may belong to a previous age but as a work of art it lives in its own continuous present, equal to our knowledge of reality in the present.

What follows then is an impressive review of the poem's critical heritage and the ethos that pervades it--especially from one whose credentials are primarily poetic, not scholarly.

Heaney identifies, for example, the key role Tolkien played in establishing a new critical approach to Beowulf, one that has guided scholars for the last half century and resulted in a much deeper appreciation of the work. In a related manner, Heaney interprets with great sensitivity elements such as Beowulf's three struggles with preternatural demons in three separate "archetypal sites of fear" and the poem's frequently misunderstood Christian underpinnings. Additionally, he supplies a thoughtful examination of the major beliefs, customs, and practices that inform the poem. The strong personal bond between king and thane known as the comitatus (surprisingly Heaney doesn't use the word), wergild, or the legally fixed price paid as compensation for injury as a means of avoiding blood feuds, and the actual and symbolic importance of mead halls, such as Heorot Hall, as refuges against the monstrous are addressed to provide readers with the necessary background. One can disagree with some of Heaney's interpretations (among them his understanding of the poet's exclusive use of Old Testament biblical allusions) and preferences (for example, Beowulf's struggle with the dragon over his combats with Grendel and Grendel's mother); but he clearly sets the stage for an intelligent reading of Beowulf and establishes his own credentials to provide the text, albeit in translation.

Heaney then provides an equally impressive discussion of his approach to translating Beowulf. He considers virtually all the characteristics of Anglo-Saxon verse discussed above--alliteration, the four-stress line, repetition, kennings, even the oral-formulaic tradition--and then explains and justifies his handling of these techniques. He has tried, he tells us, to maintain the effect of these conventions but without slavish imitation: "In the course of the translation, such deviations, distortions, syncopations, and extensions do occur; what I was after first and foremost was a narrative line that sounded as if it meant business, and I was prepared to sacrifice other things in pursuit of this directness of utterance." In general, he chose words fine-tuned to the music of the original, a voice like that of his father's people, whom he describes as "big voiced Scullions," and perhaps, most important, "the cadence and force of earned wisdom." Once again, one can disagree with some of his decisions and even some of his justifications; but they are based on a solid and sensitive understanding of Anglo-Saxon verse, and Heaney is candid in his explanations.

Superb translation

Responding to the translation itself is an individual and complex matter. Those familiar with the Anglo-Saxon text will find any number of particulars about which to complain. Despite a rather lengthy justification in the introduction, "so" simply will not work for many as a rendering of hw3/4t, the very first word of the poem; furthermore, "That was one good king" [emphasis mine] reduces one of the most moving, albeit formulaic tributes of the poem (thaet w3/4s god cyning) to a mere colloquial, even slangy, compliment. On more systematic decisions, Heaney's slighting of the poet's use of kennings seems unfortunate, denying the poem many examples of one of Anglo-Saxon verse's most distinguishable and endearing characteristics. In fairness, however, for many readers no possible translation could adequately render passages such as the delicate rhetorical comparison of Beowulf with the Danish king Heremod in lines 1707B-1722A, or the total effect of the simple but deeply felt tribute to Beowulf that concludes the poem:

cwaedon thaet he w're wyruld-cyninga, manna mildust and mon-thw'rust, leodum lithost ond lof-geornost. (ll. 3180-82)(*)

(They [the grieving Geats] said that of the kings upon the earth he was the man most gracious and fair-minded, kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.)

For their part, those, especially in America, who have not studied the poem in Anglo-Saxon are likely to object to Heaney's heavy reliance on Hiberno-English (words like thole, berhon, and sept), which will bring the poem no closer to them and will frequently cause them to scramble for their dictionaries, disrupting the narrative's flow. Similarly, some of Heaney's lines suggest an unfamiliarity with American English, which causes him occasionally to slip into cliches ("now he won't be long for this world," l. 973, and the king "rode out in style," l. 1401).

Such grievances notwithstanding, this is a superb translation. The full power of Beowulf--its epic grandeur, stark contrasts, exploration of the human condition, and extraordinary union of contents with language and style--can only be appreciated in the Anglo-Saxon; but this translation will provide a new generation of readers with a balanced experience of the original's thematic challenge and poetic genius. Perhaps the best compliment one can pay this modern rendering is to turn the tribute to the Beowulf poet that Heaney places in his introduction back onto his own achievement as a translator: He has "felt his way through the inherited material--the fabulous elements and the traditional accounts--and by a combination of creative intuition and conscious structuring [has] arrived at a unity of effect and a balanced order." His translation may not be Beowulf, but it stakes its own claim to a "presence in the mind."

(*) Thorns and eths have been rendered as th due to publication limitations.

~~~~~~~~

By Thomas Napierkowski

 

Thomas Napierkowski, professor of English at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, teaches medieval English literature, with particular emphasis of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.


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Source: World & I, Sep2000, Vol. 15 Issue 9, p247, 5p.
Item Number: 3510896