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John Ronald Ruel Tolkien
ON TRANSLATING BEOWULF
No defence is usually offered for translating Beowulf. Yet the making, or at any rate the publishing, of a modern English rendering needs defence: especially the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close-wrought metre (to say no more). The process has its dangers. Too many people are willing to form, and even to print, opinions of this greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art after reading only such a translation, or indeed after reading only a bare 'argument', such as appears in the present book. On the strength of a nodding acquaintance of this sort (it may be supposed), one famous critic informed his public that Beowulf was 'only small beer'. Yet if beer at all, it is a drink dark and bitter: a solemn funeral-ale with the taste of death. But this is an age of potted criticism and pre-digested literary opinion; and in the making of these cheap substitutes for food translations unfortunately are too often used.
To use a prose translation for this purpose is, none the less, an abuse. Beowulf is not merely in verse, it is a great poem; and the plain fact that no attempt can be made to represent its metre, while little of its other specially poetic qualities can be caught in such a medium, should be enough to show that 'Clark Hall', revised or unrevised, is not offered as a means of judging the original, or as a substitute for reading the poem itself. The proper purpose of a prose translation is to provide an aid to study.
If you are not concerned with poetry, but with other matters, such as references to heroic names now nearly faded into oblivion, or the mention of ancient customs and beliefs, you may find in this competent translation all that you require for comparison with other sources. Or nearly all - for the use of 'Anglo-Saxon' evidence is never, of course, entirely safe without a knowledge of the language. No translation that aims at being readable in itself can, without elaborate a
Thus 'stalwart' in 198, 'broad' in 1621, 'huge' in 1663, 'mighty' in 2140 are renderings of the one word eacen; while the related eacencræftig, applied to the dragon's hoard, is in 2280 and 3051 rendered 'mighty'. These equivalents fit the contexts and the modern English sentences in which they stand, and are generally recognized as correct. But an enquirer into ancient beliefs, with the loss of eacen will lose the hint that in poetry this word preserved a special co
But you may be engaged in the more laudable labour of trying actually to read the original poem. In that case the use of this translation need not be disdained. It need not become a 'crib'. For a good translation is a good companion of honest labour, while a 'crib' is a (vain) substitute for the essential work with grammar and glossary, by which alone can be won genuine appreciation of a noble idiom and a lofty art.
Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) is not a very difficult language, though it is neglected by many of those concerned with the long period of our history during which it was spoken and written. But the idiom and diction of Old English verse is not easy. Its ma