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 |