our hero, is no more; and those who have survived him, whether his thanes, or the listeners of the heroic saga, must mourn the passing of the warrior-king into the realm of the remote past and oblivion.
Þa ymbe hlæw riodan hildedeore,
æþelinga bearn, ealra twelfe, 3170
woldon care cwiðan, [ond] kyning mænan,
wordgyd wrecan ond ymb wer sprecan;
eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorc
duguðum demdon,— swa hit gedefe bið,
þæt mon his winedryhten wordum herge, 3175
ferhðum frēoge, þonne he forð scile
of lichaman læded weorðan.
Swa begnornodon Geata leode
hlafordes hryre, heorðgeneatas;
cwædon þæt he wære wyruldcyninga 3180
manna mildust ond monðwærust,
leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (ll. 3169−82)
When a student of literature encounters lines like these, he or she should feel that the notes one could ever hope to hear at the end of a work have finally hit the eardrums. Here we find the convergence of what we have wished to hear and what we hear—the complete fusion of what the text has been brewing in our hearts and what we finally have attained after reading so many lines! It is a moment of catharsis; and the lines of Beowulf are finally loosening their grip on our heartstrings:
Then the battle-brave ones rode round the mound—
Inheritors of noble blood, twelve all told— 3170
Uttering words of grief over loss of their lord
In a mournful dirge to commemorate their king.
They lauded his manliness, and spoke highly of
His brave deeds—as it befits a man
To praise his dear lord in words, 3175
While longing springs in his heart, when he
Is finally freed from the confinement of flesh.
So the people of Geatland mourned the death
Of their lord, recalling the warmth of his hearth.
They said that, of all earthly kings, he was 3180
The gentlest of men, the most warm-hearted,
Kindest to his people, and most eager for fame.
When I was reading the very last passage of Beowulf, the above was roughly what I heard in my mind’s ear. I would not call it a translation; the above is only an echo of what dug into my heart while I was reading the concluding lines of the epic. Though falling short of the emotional elevation attained by the lines in the original text, the above was the outcome of my desperate attempt to revive in a modern tongue the most magnificent passage literature has ever produced.
Poetry means condensation of verbal expressions of human thoughts and emotions; and it demands not only succinctness but also accuracy in hitting the right notes that capture all the feelings that have to be expressed. When the Beowulf-poet wrote that the Geatish warriors had built a monument holding the ashes of their lord on a promontory, so that the sailors could see it from afar, it was an indirect way of expressing the poet’s wish that his work would be read and remembered by his posterity for a long time. Here is the convergence of what the actual lines of a poem say and what the creator of the work really wanted to say. As the last lines of the epic fade away with the last twang of the minstrel’s harp, both our hero of the epic Beowulf and the poet who composed the more-than-three-thousand lines recede into the past—along with the fading out of the minstrel’s voice. The last couplet contains a series of superlatives:
manna mildust ond monðwærust,
leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (ll. 3181−82)
The emphatic use of the superlatives notwithstanding, the repeatedly heard sound [st] somehow leaves the lingering note of wistfulness over the poem that has reached its end. The epic opened with the powerful and fully inflated ejaculation, “Hwæt!” Now the very last lines create the feeling that the air is being released from an inflated ball. With the four adjectives in the superlative, carrying with them the tired minstrel’s hoarse voice, the poet himself steps back into the past, as does the hero of the epic.
Translation means reliving the moments when the poet was composing the lines. It is not a later-age person’s attempt to record what he or she has understood while reading the original lines for the readers. As a translator’s pen glides on a blank sheet, it should be a moment that resurrects the agony that the poet embraced, while groping for the right words, line after line.
Beowulf
In Parallel Texts
Hwæt! We Gar-dena in gear-dagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah, 5
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest weartð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde, 10
gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!
Đæm eafera wæs æfter cenned
geong in geardum, þone God sende
folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat,
þe* hie ær drugon aldorlease 15
lange hwile; him þæs Liffrea,
wuldres Wealdend, worold-are forgeaf;
Beowulf* wæs breme —blæd wide sprang—
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.
Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean, 20
fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme,
þæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen
wilgesiþas, þonne wig cume,
leode gelæsten; lofdædum sceal
in mægþa gehwære man geþeon. 25
Him ða Scyld gewat to gescæphwile
felahror
