Beowulf

What can I say about Beowulf that has not already been said? This is the quintessential epic of Old English, with plenty of heroes, monsters, and religion thrown into the mix. Most college students will be assigned to read this long poem; how many will actually read it? I didn’t six and half years ago, when I was but a freshman at UMHB in the fall of 2009. But I can proudly say, that at the age of 25, I have completed what most college freshmen have not: the reading of Beowulf.

Notable Background Points

• Experts date the poem from the 8th century all the way to the 10th. J.R.R. Tolkein, one of the foremost scholars of Beowulf, was one who considered it composed in the first half of the 8th century. That makes this poem at least 1100 years old!
• There is only one remaining manuscript (dated late 10th century) of Beowulf. It was copied by two scribes as halfway through the handwriting notably changes. The manuscript currently resides at the British Library (I’ve been there!).
• The manuscript that remains was in the medieval collection of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631) and was damaged in 1731 in a fire. The fire singed the edges and destroyed some lines of the poem.
• Beowulf is believed to have been composed in the dialect of Middle England, but the current manuscript has it translated into the West-Saxon dialect of the southwest of England. Either way, the language is completely unintelligible to those of us who only understand Modern English.
• While the poem is English, the subject matter is not. Beowulf deals with lineage and exploits of England’s Germanic ancestors, specifically those of Scandinavia. The Danes (the tribe of King Hrothgar) and the Geats (the tribe of our hero, Beowulf) were located in southern Sweden.

The Story

You can separate the story of Beowulf into roughly three parts, 1)The siege of Heorot by Grendel and Beowulf’s vanquishing of the demon, 2)the revenge of Grendel’s mother and Beowulf’s vanquishing of that demon, and 3)the awakening of a fearsome dragon and Beowulf’s vanquishing of the dragon and subsequent death from his wounds. Of course, there are other parts to it, such as the prelude to the story, which details the rise of the Danish nation. There are also many death laments, such as the one immediately after Beowulf’s death, and also performances by a bard, such as the lay sung by Hrothgar’s hall-poet of  the story of the Finnsburg episode.

Throughout the poem, there are copious references to God, his judgment, fate, etc. The demon Grendel is said to be a descendant of Cain. The poet, in my opinion, was quite heavy-handed with all the Christian religious imagery. It seems to me that the poet was writing from his Christian perspective, inserting it into the lives of the Germanic heroes when they were likely still worshiping pagan deities. I can’t really fault him for that, however. We all see the world through tinted glasses. The poet’s world was a well-established Christian tradition.

A Word on Translation

Here are some lines from the beginning of the poem:

Hweat we garde-na  in gear dagum

theod cyninga  thrym ge-frunon

hu tha aethelinga  ellen fremedon

This can be translated thus:

Hearken unto this tale of the glory of the Spear-Danes, renowned for their splendid deeds in bygone days. (prose translation by Gerald J. Davis)

or like this:

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by

and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.

We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns. (verse translation by Seamus Heaney.

Already you can see, the translations will vary  widely. I chose to read Beowulf in the new prose translation by Gerald Davis. It was a smooth reading process, however I did find that the transitions between events to be disorientating. It jumped straight from one event to another without something to break up the narrative. In Seamus Heaney’s verse translation, the transitions are much more obvious through the use of sub-headings.

In Summary

As always, feel free to chime in if you have any insights to the text or cool knowledge to share. My goal here is not to present any type of authoritative analysis but to share bits of what I have learned as I continue on this experiment of reeducating myself. Feedback from you, my reader, is welcome!

Links for reading:

Project Gutenberg (Hall Translation) 

Seamus Heaney’s translation (this one is on GoogleDocs; someone took the time to type the entire poem into a Word document)

Davis Translation ($.99 Kindle, free with KindleUnlimited)

 

P.S.: I will be doing a better job of updating this blog. I allowed 10 months to go by between my first post and this one. I will be getting on a schedule in 2016. Posts will go up Saturdays at 3pm, every other week. Please follow via the WordPress site or via email to stay up-to-date on my reeducation!

Happy Reading!