We Could Do This All Day…

More about a indifferent translation

Not convinced by the comparisons given before? Too few? I got you sorted. I have collected here 31 extent English translations of the example passage from Beowulf. These are presented in chronological order from newest to oldest (I’ll keep adding versions as I collect them). These are located in the Postface to this discussion. If it seems like a lot, it’s because it is a lot. Too many probably. In a recent roundtable discussion on the future of Beowulf translation at the 59^th International Congress of Medieval Studies (May 2024), panel organizer Dr. Christopher Abrams identified 54 extant Beowulf translations released since the year 1999 when Seamus Heaney’s version dropped.

Assembling a batch of versions like this is astounding, because it confirms what I have long intuited about what I term the “Beowulf-Industrial Translation Complex” — about its lack of ambition; about its conformity to received academic opinion; about its mobilization of a dull standard narrative voice; & about its practitioners’ general lack of feeling for poetic style and flair. More relevant to my review of Shippey’s new translation, this panoply of attempts leads me to make several conclusions.

Item — In the very best case, Shippey’s version of Beowulf is totally irrelevant as a contribution to the field. At worst, it’s retrograde, boring, but also interferes in the text in all the ways OE scholars like him or his editor would deplore in other renderings. The majority of its “innovations,” such line 6’s “Erulī” substituted for the manuscript’s “eorl,” are marshaled only in order to shore up the highly circumstantial case for an early date of composition — yet these are emendations that even the very conservative Klaeber 4^th edition editors reject as improbable. Because Shippey is a venerable figure in the field of early English studies, however, he’ll get a pass & probably more than a bit of tepid praise from some low-energy scholars. Also, I suspect that this version is not being released with the intention of making any kind of critical contribution, but just to sell a few books. It exists not to educate, but to reaffirm what the worst and/or laziest sort of amateur Beowulf fans already thinks they know.

Item — Shippey is an objectively ineffective translator, no matter how one considers translation, whether as an art or a craft, whether to teach or to delight, or whatever one believes is the role of a translation. This is based not only on this effort but also his 1975 Poems of Wisdom & Learning, long considered the go-to rendering of these intriguing yet often-misunderstood poems (when in reality it was the only one). My standards here are not that complicated or even necessarily that progressive: any translation requires both Invitation (that it is interesting enough to keep reading) & Insight (that it reveals some new interpretation or vision that justifies the effort). Energy or style is icing on the cake — something unfortunately too much to ask of the majority of Beowulf translators, including Shippey.

Item — The bar for these judgments is not high, given this survey of the field, by way of these extant translations. I’d say 90% of them are unambitious, uniform, & even stultifying at the level of diction, rhythm, & figurative language (this includes my 2017 version). The only ones showing any spark or inviting interpretation or energy at all are those by the “creative writers & professional translators” dismissed by Leonard Neidorf.¹ The scholarly versions, on the other hand, seem curated to the point of embalmment, fetishizing “accuracy” & “objectivity” in order to zealously maintain the prerogative of the academy to interpret this poem, indulging in more than a little gatekeeping.

From here on out, I will discuss the poetic & linguistic aspects of the brief passage I’ve selected as a sample & relate them to the challenges of translation. Translation is hard enough — translating Beowulf is even harder. Just because I offer that this translation or that one is less than effective, doesn’t mean I don’t have any respect for those who try. I sympathize with the futility of the task (as I’ve been stuck there too) — because what limits these efforts are a plethora of assumptions & paradigms regarding both the art of translation & the nature of the poem we call Beowulf. Mostly these old perspectives hold back new thought, some are outdated or inaccurate — & some simply betray a lack of imagination.

So gurl — let’s get it:

Here is the passage is Old English (ll. 115–25):²

Gewāt ðā nēosian,   syþðan niht becōm,
hēan hūses,   hū hit Hring-Dene
æfter bēor-þege   gebūn hæfdon.
Fand þā ðǣr inne   æþelinga gedriht
swefan æfter symble;   sorge ne cūðon,
won-sceaft wera.   Wiht unhǣlo,
grim ond grǣdig,   gearo sōna wæs,
rēoc ond rēþe,   ond on ræste genam
þrītig þegna,   þanon eft gewāt
hūðe hrēmig   tō hām faran,
mid þǣre wæl-fylle   wīca nēosan.

[Then Grendel departed to seek out, after the night had fallen,
that high house, how the Ring-Danes had occupied it
after their beer-taking—he discovered therein
a company of noblemen slumbering after their feast—
they knew no sorrow, no misery of mankind.
That wicked creature, grim and greedy,
was instantly ready, savage and severe,
and he snatched up thirty thanes from their rest.
From there he soon departed, exulting in his spoils,
venturing back to his home, seeking out his lair
glutted by slaughter.³

When I look over the Old English here, I note a few structural & rhetorical elements I would identify as desirable to maintain the “flavor” or experience of the original. “Gewāt ðā nēosian” [he departed/turned then to seek out] is echoed in ll. 123–5’s “gewāt / …. wīca nēosan” [he departed/turned to seek out (his) dwelling] begins & ends the episode, creating a “ring pattern” or thematic “envelope,” a bit of rhetorical structuring not uncommon in BW & an important part of its design. This invokes a contrast between homes sought, the Danish mead-hall (hēan hūses, 101) & the lair of Grendel (wīca, 125; also his “hām” [home, 124).

This “hēan hūses,” the genitive object of “nēosian,” leads off a chain of 7 a-verses where both stresses alliterate, something that’s not necessary & not necessarily typical in BW, but give the verse a gathering force & urgency. These alliterating pairs are usually rendered in a way to preserve the correspondence — “grim ond grǣdig” with “grim and greedy” or “þrītig þegna” with “thirty thanes”, but also “rēoc ond rēþe” with “savage and severe.” Many ways to go here. Yet this first phrase “hēan hūses” is fascinating. The usual interpretation is “lofty hall/house” taking “hēan” as a form of “hēah” or high, but that adjective here is apparently declined in its weak (or definite) form, usually only seen with a demonstrative pronoun or possessive adjective. This modifier is missing, though the adjective form could be genitive singular. The effect is to create a possibility for punning: the form of “hēah” sounds exactly like another adjective, “hēan,” which means its opposite, “wretched, abased, humbled.” A bit of delicious foreshadowing — the impressive symbol of Hrothgar’s power will be turned into the sign of his weakness & humiliation overnight. Over THAT night, specifically. This is the kind of dramatic & poetic irony that Elise Louviot claims is impossible in Beowulf, yet it’s a bit hard to deny it when it’s right there.⁴ This is also a poetic feature in Old English that’s tough to translate as elegantly or as powerfully.

Generally speaking, the diction of the versions presented below is very much uniform & unambitious. Yet in three places, translators must do more a bit more work to interpret the text & therefore inject more of their ideas about the poem & its world into their efforts. We often instinctually recoil from such an intervention, but it’s totally necessary & absolutely a part of every tiddle & iota of a translation. Every word requires many decisions & every decision forces or permits other decisions in the words surrounding the first — on & on, in a giant chain of interpretation. World without end.

These moments are:

116b–7) “…hū hit Hring-Dene / æfter bēor-þege   gebūn hæfdon” — I give this as “how the Ring-Danes had occupied it / after their beer-taking”

120b) “Wiht unhǣlo“ — “wicked creature” but see below.

125) “mid þǣre wæl-fylle” — I say, “glutted by slaughter” yet this is a prepositional phrase (which are inherently advervbial)

To conclude, I present just one of these moments that illustrate this need to interpret while creating a translation. Here translators seem to show the most starch or willingness to go their own way when making other otherwise drab and normative versions of this poem. I don’t think it’s necessary to look at all three of them in this detail because this has been going on way too long anyway, but I thought it helps illustrate my issues with Shippey translation & the attitude of its editor surrounding this version, but Beowulf translation in general. Here goes:

“Wiht unhǣlo” (l. 120): This is one of the places where Grendel is characterized & one of the places where the case for this creature being a demon or monster is supported. Yet this phrase is absolutely ambiguous. Wiht is a feminine gendered noun that is no more specific than some sort of created being, a creature, any animate thing. In the schemes of personification (aka prosopopoeia) frequently used in the Exeter Book Riddles, the speaker or focus of these poems is labelled a wiht (this is why this character is given feminine gendered adjectives & pronouns). This word descends to Present-Day English as “wight,” which came to mean more specifically a human, though now largely archaic or dialect. J. R. R. Tolkien revivified this word in the barrow-wight episode from The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), which the Dungeons & Dragons franchise promulgated as a variety of undead creature. These uses, implying some sort of supernatural being, are found as far back as the Old English period, but always accompanied by an adjective like “yfel” or “manfulle” or “werge” [evil, wicked, & accursed, respectively], & it should be noticed that the examples given by the OED are very late & in a specifically Christian context.

That brings me to unhǣlo, which is an undeclinable adjective that is often interpreted as “wicked, evil, unholy,” etc. However, it derives from the stem word “hǣl,” which means “sound, healthy, intact, whole.” “Hale” is a modern descendant, if a bit archaic, as is “whole” (developing an analogical |wh| along the way). It forms the abstract noun hǣlþu, which means “[good] health.” This same stem is found in “hǣlig” & “unhǣlig,” whose meaning may start in the idea of “luck” or “good fortuned” (like ēadig or sǣlig), but in post-conversion English becomes our “holy” or “unholy.”⁵ So, unhǣlo probably first meant “sick, unhealthy, diseased, or ill-starred.” So there’s nothing here that absolutely has to mean “wicked creature” or “evil spirit” or whatever. Grendel is a creature ill at ease, perhaps unlucky, perhaps sick at heart.

The semantic shift in these two words suggests some interesting possibilities. There is a long-standing argument as to the date the poem Beowulf was composed, as there is no direct evidence of this & no known author (even if the idea of single author is appropriate). Its only extant manuscript was assembled between 1000–1025 CE, which would place it among the latest long poem written in Old English. One must build a highly circumstantial case for any date, based on language, meter, & possible errors. The most vociferous side of the debate has been the early daters, who generally prefer a date of about 670–700 CE (which would make BW the earliest major poem). A favored tactic of the early daters is to argue for the primary meaning of very old words before a known semantic shift in the language. “Wiht unhǣlo” presents an intriguing to these assumptions. A date of ca. 670 CE is both pre-Christian (& pre-literate), so how can phrase like “wiht unhǣlo” mean “evil spirit” when those two terms only had that significance in the latter parts of the Old English period? How could Grendel be “unholy” if there is no God to be unholy against?

Mind you, I am not interested in any particular date, only in understanding what is in front of us (& pushing back against fanaticism [whether religious or philological]). The reason I point out the phenomenon of this phrase is not say this one’s right & that one’s wrong, only to note how anything this ambiguous requires interpretive intervention. Such intervention is necessary to translate anything, and it serves practitioners to be upfront & honest about this fact. Pretenses of an august scholarly objectivity are just as much interpretation as any other — they only have the cover of the presumed neutrality bestowed upon educated, higher-status, white cishet men. This pretense is much to blame for the boredom & conformity of these translation. Few want to seem an outlier, a non-conformist who might not be educated enough. Goddess help them if they questioned the sacrosanct work of Frederick Klaeber or Fred Robinson or any of the distant ancestors. That might be heresy…

But translation finds a way to question to the olden precepts. And that’s why she’s dangerous.

1. Beowulf, trans. Shippey, p 29.

2. Old English text is taken from Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th edition, edited by R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, & John D. Niles (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2008).

3. Translation by Ophelia Eryn Hostetter, Old English Poetry Project [link] (2017).

4. Elise Louviot, Direct Speech in Beowulf and other Old English Narrative Poems (London, D. S. Brewer, 2016), esp. the last chapter.

5. The Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, “unhǣlu,” n. (URL:

https://bosworthtoller.com/).