The ‘Boss of Horrors’: The Parodic in Beowulf Translation

M. N. Taylor / “The Parodic in Beowulf Translation” / 2 November 2001, Atlanta, GA / #19 // 1

The ‘Boss of Horrors’: The Parodic in Beowulf Translation

Mark N. Taylor, Berry College

This paper forms part of a larger study concerned with translating medieval literature,

particularly Old and Early Middle English alliterativepoetry. In previous papers delivered

earlier this year, I emphasized the importance of the aural/semantic nexus of meanings in

Beowulf both in OE and in translation, and I also explored the mode of operation of

Layamon’s Brut, suggesting how it might govern a translation of that interesting early

ME text. In fact, my project serves as an apologia to a new way of translating medieval

poetry in general and Layamon specifically. Because of the germane relationship between

these two poems, I have analyzed about three dozen verse translations of Beowulf, as well

as numerous prose versions in the course of this project. Thence I attempted to roughly

establish the parameters of a taxonomy of kinds of translation, classed by their relation to

the original, on one hand, and their relation to expectations in the target language

(ModE), on the other. All fall into one of three groups:

1) Literalist, which posits unequivocal one-to-one correspondence between original

and translation, primarily in terms of semantics. The prose versions focus exclusively on

semantics and verbal elements (vocabularly, syntax, and tone), and these are often used

as cribs (Kemble 1837, Thorpe 1855, Hall 1901, Gordon 1923, Wright 1957, Donaldson

1966, Bradley 1982), and one serves as a verbatim prose gloss (Porter 1975). Verse

translations can attempt a literal reproduction of formal and verbal elements as well,

although these are usually intentionally compromised by need for clarity in the target

language (Garnett 1882, Gummere 1909, Chickering 1977, Liuzza 2000). The formal

literalist attempts a verse form wholly within the understood restaints of the AS


alliterative measure, with the willingness to compromise some semantic precision (Huppé

1987, Lehmann 1988, Rebsamen 1991, Trask 1997). No translation has ever attempted a

precise reproduction of formal elements at a considerable expense of semantic meaning.

HO4

2) Figurativist, which posits equivocal correspondence between original and

translation by substituting verbal and formal elements of the original with elements

current in the target language, but without resorting to the traditional conventions of that

language’s poetic tradition (Raffel 1963, Crossley-Holland 1968, Greenfield 1982,

Osborn 1984).

3) Analogist, which substitutes the presentation of the original form for a more

familiar form preexisting within the poetic tradition of the target language (Conybeare

1826, Wackerbarth 1849, Lumsden 1881, Leonard 1923, Wyld 1929, Waterhouse 1949).

Interestingly, in each class, the basis governing the relationship between original and

translation is the same as that which makes for parody: exaggeration of certain saliant

elements (vocabulary, meter, tone, narrative or thematic movement). In fact this

relationship is the same basis as metaphor—the need to understand one thing by stating it

in terms of another—but with this difference: in each class, there is no effective control

over the misemphasis of certain elements which we term parodic. Yet it is the parodic

elements—incongruencies of formal, verbal and thematic elements—that have called for

the greatest critical censure in Beowulf translations.

To be sure, few translations rise above (or sink from) the mere parodic to become full

parodies in their own right. The Analogist versions are most susceptible. HO1 The

clearest example is Wackerbarth’s 1849 translation into a ballad meter, which Edwin


Morgan called a kind of double parody, first of Beowulf and then of the ballad genre

(xiv). Some of the literalist versions come close to being outright parodies. HO2 I am

thinking of William Morris’s 1895 effort, arguably the worst translation of Beowulf ever

published, closely followed by Charles Scott Moncrieff’s 1921 foray. In these cases, an

anachronistic verbalism, the heavily but unauthenticly archaistic Wardour Street English,

exaggerates without reproducing the archaic flavor of the original. Morris’ Beowulf could

profitably read as a parody of Victorian medievalism.

Although figurativists share with analogists the tendancy (or intent) to produce

translations that are poems in their own right, they are most succesful at avoiding parodic

elements. But figurativist translations have other difficulties—not the least of which is

prosiness, the common fault of contemporary verse. HO2 (Raffel) Anyway, after twenty

years, their brief flowering apears to be drawing to a close.

Amazing is the fact that, while Beowulf translations have multiplied with wild

fecundity in the past thirty years, none have considered any theory of poetics or of

translation advanced over the same time, such as the radical poetics of “language

writing,” or even the asyntactical paratactical language of the Imagists. There has really

been no new kind of translation since Burton Raffel’s 1963 figurativist effort. This is all

the more surprising as the fundamental warrants behind the literalist approach to

translation, as well as the privileging of semantics as the locus of meaning, no longer

have much currency in postmodern literary or translation theory. I find it ironic that,

while translators since 1949 have condemned the outmoded poetics of earlier translations,

they themselves have ignored modernist theories advanced by poets and theorists since

the turn of the twentieth century. They have refused to adopt a poetic language that freely


“violates traditional syntactical structures” (Yip 25), to say nothing of postmodern theory

that freely violates everything else. In this sense, even Raffel’s translation was already

old-fashioned when it first appeared in 1963. I recall a comment David Wright made into

the introduction to his 1957 prose translation: “Those who complain of the teasing

obscurity of Modern English verse might reflect how much knottier Old English poetry

was” (22).

To seek out the answer to why translation of medieval poetry is so conservative is to

explore the contrast between two disciplines, the scholary (conservative) and the creative

(avant-garde). Translations can and should bridge the two, yet often they stand on the

side of scholarship, merely pointing to the other side. Translations remain conservative

for two reasons. First, they tend to be put to scholarly uses: accompany the original, serve

as a crib, or stand in for the original in undergraduate anthologies. In such cases, the goal

is, as one translator puts it, “to strike an appropriate balance between accommodating a

modern reader and being faithful to the letter and spirit” of the original text (Bzdyl 21).

The attempt at balance often sets up the translator for a double failure. Second,

translations are criticized in ways that original poetry cannot be. Those who can read a

translation with a knowledge of the subject text have, in Hugh Kenner’s words, seen “the

poem before the poet writes it” (10). While there are joyous moments where we marvel at

the translator’s success, they are separated by longer periods where we condemn the

translation for failing to do what the original does—usually on the level of semantics or

tone or some subtlely implicit handling of theme.

These reasons inhibit the translator from experimenting in ways that permit difficult

expression or denigrate semantic priority. Thus for a century the lessons of the


Concretists and Imagists have been lost on medieval translators. For example, since most

people today receive Beowulf in a visual act of reading rather than an aural performance,

I wonder why no one has attempted a more striking visual presentation of the text to help

counter what we have lost in the move away from recitation. HO2 Imagine how an

Imagist, such as William Carlos Williams, might have translated Beowulf. HO3 Now

anyone might easily criticize my Imagistic translation as being overly figurative and

therefore unfaithful to the original passage. It is certainly not verbally literal, but I would

maintain that it is not that much more unfaithful than a translation into clear idiomatic

conversational English, such as Raffel’s, or where the OE paratactic syntax is reworked

with coordination and subordination. As Donald Bzdyl perceptively observes about his

own translation of Layamon, the introduction of subordination “alters the ‘feel’ of the

narrative and also misrepresents the poem by establishing explicit notional relationships

among passages where originally they were only implied” (25–26)—a mode alien to

medieval poetry. The language of Beowulf suggests an isolating perspective which

focuses on each element in itself as distinct, whole, and independent. Modern

translations, in contrast, impose a more analytical perspective which posits

interdependent links, which is more akin to invention than translation. Adopting the

lesson of the Imagists allows us to recuperate this medieval perspective. Here the visual

events are free to leap out directly from “the undifferentiated mode of existence” instead

of interposing analytical syntax between the reader and those events (Yip 11), or what

Owen Barfield calls, “the eighteenth-century mill of abstraction” (164).

Useful as this approach is, the danger remains that emphasizing this particular feature

could render the presentation parodic. Although a valuable object lesson, an Imagist


parody hardly serves the poem. Is there any escape from the threat? There is probably no

sure escape, even the original text mediated in transcription can be read as parody. HO3

Isn’t the Junius manuscript a parody of itself? Don’t its charred crumbling edges, dark

stains, and warping effacements resemble the stereotypical ancient treasure maps we

produced as children with lemon juice and fire?

Nonetheless, I propose a fourth kind of translation: Modalist. I have drawn this from

a perceptive notion of Walter Benjamin: “Translation is a mode. To comprehend it as a

mode one must go back to the original, for that contains the law governing the

translation: its translatability.” Therefore, “a translation, instead of resembling the

meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original’s mode of

signification,” and this only becomes possible “when in the course of its survival a work

has reached the age of its fame” (???). I don’t know if Benjamin would agree with me,

but by mode I understand the way in which a text creates a certain experience or series of

experiences in its auditors when it is read or heard. For example, the mode of mystical

literature is not the attempt at a literal explication of a numinous experience (which is

ineffable), but rather to create in the auditor a somehow similar experience through the

reading act. (For example, when Julian of Norwich tells us her vision of the Passion was

“quick and lively and hideous and dreadful and sweet and lovely,” she is not explicating

but drawing out a visceral reaction from the reader by stymieing a rational response.) The

modalist translator, therefore, attempts to recreate in the target language not the semantic

meaning of the orginal but the experience of reading the original.

One may suspect in this a return to the old notion of recoverable author, his audience

and his intent, but that is not the case on two grounds. First, the translator can prioritize


the experience of any kind of reader, not only the primary auditors. Second, even if the

translator did prioritize either the author’s putative ideal reception or its actual reception,

this is an imaginative act on the translator’s part and in fact the most important

contribution. This puts the translator in the role of historian, more creative than scholarly,

to be sure, but scholarship cannot eschew imagination and most translators are scholars of

sorts anyways.

In a modalist translation, the replication of formal, verbal, and semantic elements of

the original text take on a lower priority, and since it is these elements that, when

exaggerated or misconstrued, give rise to parody, the modal translation is less open to

that failing than the other kinds of translation. Moreover, there is not only one kind of

modal translation, just as there is not only one kind of figurativist or analogist translation.

I have indicated two on the handout. HO4

The first example makes several nods towards the literalists, especially prosodically,

which is actually far more faithful generally to the AS alliterative measure than most

imitative translations. I’ve seen too many “loose-limbed” hemistichs among the imitative

translations, so I purposely restricted my use of Sievers’ Five Types to their fundamental

four-syllable structure in an effort to enrich the poetic language through compression,

which is not unlike the effect of OE poetry (cf. Raffel’s comments on the relative

difference between OE and ModE, 15). (Thus where most translators attempt to improve

the poetry by easing up on prosody, I do the opposite.) Semantically, the translation

attempts, like the original, to allow for more import than the simple adventure narrative.

The pressure between fidelity to form and content is resolved by adopting the difficult

obscurity of expression favored in certain contemporary poetry. For example, in line two,


the hemistich, “Shield walled fortly,” is no paragon of clarity. The OE Scyld wel gebearg,

literally rendered becomes, “the shield protected well.” In the translation the semantic

functions of verb and adverb are transposed: “Shield walled fortly,” because, first,

gebearg is a cognate of burg, fortification or strongholdand, second, OE wel comes out

more weakly as ModE “well” than the context demands. In line eight I resorted to the

neologism, “eerie-descence”, in response to the difficulty presented by gryrefahne. You

may not like it, but nobody else has solved that riddle in four syllables.

The second example I am less confident about because it imagines a different kind of

reading experience—although in certain respects it pleases me more. Here I have

purposely universalized the nature of the dragon’s monstrosity with the curious result that

by universalizing it, I have resticted the passage’s potential for suggesting mutiple

themes. Instead, in this passage the old king, Beowulf, is confronting and vainly trying to

ward off his own mortality. At first this appears to be a paraphrase, but on closer

inspection you will see that there is a fair amount of one-to-one verbal correspondence—

at least not much looser that Raffel’s translation of the same passage. HO2 Here scyld

becomes “hero shield,” perhaps the self-confident illusion of immortality that we all

experience. His incgelafe, “ancient weapon” becomes his own “weight of age”, the

blunted sword an extension of his self, which is hardly a foreign concept to a warrior.

Finally, in l. 12, beorges weard more than suggests death, or, “Guardian of the Grave.”

When its full nature is fully revealed to a man who has structured his whole life around

mortal combat, he experiences an overwhelming sense of displacement.

The task of the translator is to confront the possibility of parodying the original—

producing a monstrosity—but heroicly rise up and defeat that possibility. The Modalist


approach promises to mitigate the problem of parody, if we are willing to relinquish

certain values, such as logical syntax, semantic clarity, and compromised impressionistic

forms. To lay these cherished values aside is as foolhardy as Beowulf removing his armor

to fight Grendel. But we all know what Beowulf did to Grendel.

[email protected] / “The ‘Boss of Horrors’: The Parodic in Beowulf Translation” / 2 Nov. 2001, Atlanta, GA / sess’n 19 // 1

The ‘Boss of Horrors’: The Parodic in Beowulf Translation

Mark N. Taylor, Berry College / 2 November, 2001

A. D. Wackerbarth, trans. Beowulf. London: William Pickering, 1849, pp. 44–45

CANTO XVII Then reft of many a cherish’t Friend Again the Warriours homeward wend, And Friesland seek, their natal Halls, Their City’s high embattled Walls. Hengest with Finn in Friendship true Abode the deadly Winter thro’, And to his Land Attention gave, Altho’ he might have dared the Wave. In boiling Fury rose the Main

And battled with the Wind, When Winter in an icy Chain

Its billows fierce did bind, Until the circling Year once more,

Rose o’er the Land in Light; So yet doth He who ruleth o’er

The Weather glory bright. When Winter now was passed away And Earth had don’d her Mantle gay, Forth on his Way the Wand’rer speeds, His Spirit set on vengefull Deeds, No Dangers of the Sea he heeds, But War he seeks and fell Despite For memory of the Eóten Might. Nor did he thus avoid a Blow That lays all earthly creatures low, The dark Hunláfing’s lawless Hand Thrust thro’ his Heart the warlike Brand: That thus the Eótens keenly knew What Warriours Finn around him drew, And bale of the remorseless Sword, Which down upon his Dwelling pour’d. Gúthláf and Osláf o’er the Sea In Sorrow mourn’d the Treachery,

And part avenged their Woes. Nor could the crafty Chief withal His Breast countroul to see his Hall

Beleagur’d by his Foes. The Prince amongst his Troops were slain, His wretched Queen was captive ta’en. The Prince’s Household, and whate’er Of Gold and Gems were founden there They quickly to their Vessels Bare,

And o’er the Ocean’s bed, Together with the lordly Fair,

Unto the Danes they led.

Earle, John, trans. The Deeds of Beowulf. An English epic of the eighth century done into modern prose. Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1892, pp. 24–25 XI. Grendel’s last meal. The battle begins. Mighty rage the kinsman of Hygelac curbed, considering how the assassin meant to proceed in the course of his ravenings. Nor was the marauder minded to delay it; but he seized promptly at his first move a sleeping warrior, tore him in a moment, crunched the bony frame, drank blood of veins, swallowed huge morsels; in a trice he had devoured the lifeless body, feet, hands, and all. He stepped up nearer forward; he was then taking with his hand the great-hearted warrior on bed. The fiend reached towards him with his fang;—he promptly seized with shrewd design and grappled his arm. Quickly did the boss of horrors discover that, that never in all the world, all the quarters of the earth, had he met a man more strange with bigger hand-grip; he in mood became alarmed in spirit; but never the quicker could he get away. His mind was to be going; he wanted to flee into the darkness; rejoin the devils’ pack; his entertainment there was not such as he before had met with in bygone days. Then did the brave kinsman of Hygelac remember his discourse of the evening; up he stood to full length, and grappled with him amain; his fingers cracked as they would burst. The monster was making off, the eorl followed him up. The oaf was minded, if so be he might, to fling himself loose, and away therefrom to flee into fen-hollows; he knew that the control of his fingers was in the grip of a terrible foe; that was a rash expedition which the devastator had made to Heorot!


Morris, William, trans. The Tale of Beowulf Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats. Hammersmith: Kelmscott, 1895: London: Longmans, 1898, 1,1–2,25 I. AND FIRST OF THE KINDRED OF HROTHGAR. What! We of the Spear-Danes of yore days, so was it That we learn’d of the fair fame of kings of the folks And the athelings a-faring in framing of valour. Oft then Scyld the Sheaf-son from the hosts of the scathers, From kindreds a many the mead-settles tore; It was then the earl fear’d them, sithence was he first Found bare and all-lacking; so solace he bided, Wax’d under the welkin in worship to thrive, Until it was so that the round-about sitters All over the whale-road must hearken his will And yield him the tribute. A good king was that.

By whom then thereafter a son was begotten, A youngling in garth, whom the great God sent thither To foster the folk; and their crime-need he felt The load that lay on them while lordless they lived, For a long while and long. He therefore, the Life-lord, The Wielder of glory world's worship he gave him: Brim Beowulf waxed, and wide the weal upsprang Of the offspring of Scyld in the parts of the Scede-lands. Such wise shall a youngling with wealth be a-working With goodly fee-gifts toward the friends of his father, That after in eld-days shall ever bide with him, Fair fellows well-willing when wendeth the wartide, Their lief lord a-serving. By praise-deeds it shall be That in each and all kindreds a man shall have thriving.

Raffel, Burton., trans. Beowulf. New York: New American Library , 1963, ll. 2568–86 … The monster came quickly toward him, Pouring out fire and smoke, hurrying To its fate. Flames beat at the iron Shield, and for a time it held, protected Beowulf as he’d planned; then it began to melt, And for the first time in his life that famous prince Fought with fate against him, with glory Denied him. He knew it, but he raised his sword And struck at the dragon’s scaly hide. The ancient blade broke, bit into The monster’s skin, drew blood, but cracked And failed him before it went deep enough, helped him Less than he needed. The dragon leaped With pain, thrashed and beat him, spouting Murderous flames, spreading them everywhere. And the Geats’ ring-giver did not boast of glorious Victories in other wars: his weapon Had failed him, deserted him, now when he needed it Most, that excellent sword.

Lines 1559–64, translated to visually emphasize apposition: Saw then among armor Geseah !a on searwum sigeeadig bil, victory-blessed blade ealdsweord eotenisc ecgum †yhtig, oldsword wigena weor!mynd, †æt wæpna cyst, of giants buton hit wæs mare !onne ænig mon o!er doughty-edged to beadulace ætberan meahte, warriors’ glory god 7 geatolic, giganta geweorc. best of weapons it was but bigger than any other man might carry to battle-play good and splendid giants-work.


Lines 1410–26, translated imagistically: Ofereode †a æ†elinga bearn Noble warriors climbing steap stanhli!o, stige nearwe, steep hills of stone enge anpa!as, uncu! gelad, close foot paths now seen now gone neowle næssas, nicorhusa fela. sheer headlands He feara sum beforan gengde snake caves wisra monna wong sceawian, o† †æt he færinga fyrgenbeamas A few knowing guides ofer harne stan hleonian funde, Forging ahead scouting finding wynleasne wudu. Wæter under stod, above dreorig 7 gedrefed. Denum eallum wæs, gnarled mountain pines winum Scyldinga, weorce on mode leaning over cliffs to ge†olianne, !egne monegum, rootfast in grey stone oncy! eorla gehwæm, sy!†an Æscheres joyless wood on †am holmclife hafelan metton. below Flod blode weol - folc to sægon - troubled water (hatan) heolfre. Horn stundum song, blood dripping fu(slic) [for!]leo!. on precipice Æschere’s head mere boiling scarlet hot gore piercing horn blasts over and over Lines 2219-32a: Diplomatic Edition as parody of e. e. cummings:

hond [gewri enne] since fa[:]h ne (... cont)- sy››an [bohte] [eah]›[e] [he] slæpende (b... in syre[d] [hæf]de eo[f]es cræfte æt si(... this ›iod [onfand] b[u]folc beorn[a] æthege crazily bolge[n] wæs. XXXII per Nealles [næs]ge weoldum wyrm horda c cræft sylfes willum se›e him sare (... hedtown(screams a sceod acfor rea nedlan e[of] nat & screams nedlan e[of] hæle›a bearna hete sweng(... )& fleoh [›eodnes] ea[rfe] 7›ær inne weal(... screams secg syn[by]sig sona [on] watide æt [gea:] A ›am gyst[e] [gry]re br[e]g[a] stod hwæ›re n(about to [fyren] sc[ea]pen [::::::::::::::::::::::] bring for

f179v t)hW [...roga][s] [hwæ re] [fyren] sceapen omb ...[::::::::::::]se fær begeat sinc fæt an [:oh::] ær wæsswylcra fela in›am eor› -(in u, all; y:

(E. E. Cummings. Complete Poems 1904–1962. ed. G. J. Firmage. NY: Liveright, 1991. p. 1011)


Lines 2247–2266 of Beowulf, “The Elegy of the Last Survivor”, translated in the homophonic manner of Louis and Celia Zukofsky’s Catullus (1969): Heald u nu, hruse, nu hæle› ne mostan, Hold thou now, rootsod, now heroes none might not, eorla æhte. Hwæt, hyt ær on ›e an earl’s ownings. What! it ere on thee gode begeaton. Gu›dea› fornam, good was begotten; goredeath for-nabbed feorhbeale frecne, fyrena gehwylcne, fearbale so feckless fury everyone leoda minra. ara ›e is [lif] ofgeaf; leaders mine own that all from this life off-gave; gesawon seledream. Nah hwa sweord wege ye saw once all a dream. N’er ’gain sword wearing, o››e fægrie fæted wæge, or the vatfired flagon giltworked, dryncfæt deore; dugu› ellor seoc. drinkvat dear is; doughties elsewhere choked. Sceal se hearda helm hyrstedgolde Shall the hardened helm hailrusted golden, fætum befeallen. Feormynd swefa›, fated befall them; fare in his heaven,

a ›e beadogriman bywan sceoldon. that the battlegrimace burnish could once. Ge swylce seo herepad, sio æt hilde gebad Yea also the harrypads which at hiltdraw await ofer borda gebræc bite irena, over boards all ’a’ broke biting irons gnaw, brosna› æfter beorne. Ne mæg byrnan hring broke down after bairns now. Nor may byrnyrings æfter wigfruman wide feran, after war-first-men widely fare forth, hæle›um be healfe. Næs hearpan wyn, heroes thrum by half far. Nor harping win gomen gleobeames, ne god hafoc goeth mirth gleebeam ease; nor good hawk now geond sæl swinge›, ne se swifta mearh yond sail swingeth; nor so swift a mare burhstede beate›. Bealocwealm hafa› burgstones beateth. Balequalm hath since fela feorhcynna for› onsended. fellèd fore-kindred, forth on-sent all!

(ed. Kiernan, modified) Sample modal translations of ll. 2570–85: Gewat ›a byrnende gebogen scri›a(n), Came then burning bulging slither to gescipe scyndan. Scyld wel gebearg fixed-form shot toward. Shield walled fortly (life) 7 lice læssan hwile life and likeness a lesser while mærum eodne, on(ne) his myne sohte, that lord renowned than need had he. ›ær he y fyrste fo(r)man dogore There finally he first time ever wealdan moste, swa him wyrd ne gescraf withershins wealed self where Wyrd scribed not hre› æt hilde. Hond u(p) abræd battleglory. Geat-lord’s hand struck Geata dryhten, gryrefahne slo(h) and upbraided eerie-descence; Incgelafe, æt sio ecg gewac awesome heirloom with edge weakened brun on bane, bat unswi›or edge bone-sillioned, bit less keen than

onne his ›iodcyning e(arfe) hæfde a nation’s-king had need of it bysigum gebæded. a wæs beorges weard battle burdened. Barrow-ward then æfter hea›uswenge on hreou(m) mode. by deadly-strokes driven raging Wearp wælfyre; wide sprungon slaughter-flame shot shining out on hildeleoman. Hre›sigora ne gealp battle-lightning. No boast-deeds mouthed goldwine Geata. the Geat’s gold-friend. The burning, bulging maze-in-motion slithered over moments towards its final shape, fixed forever. On meeting, the hero shield insulated mortality in limb less than desire needs. For the first time ever, on his very last day, he had to wield his self toward victory in battle against the adamant decree of Fate. The hoary Geat king raised his hand up, struck with the weight of age against the variegated terrors coiling about him, bitten to the bone in a life burdened with conflict, where trouble demands more of a folk hero who has lost his edge. Then the Guardian of the Grave, berserk with battle-clash, breathed death’s consumation; sudden illumination shot out, browning battle-lightning. What of the Geat king? He could say nothing in reply.

Note: All Old English passages of Beowulf taken from Kevin Kiernan’s Electronic Beowulf CD (British Library, 1999)

The ‘Boss of Horrors’: The Parodic in Beowulf Translation

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