Listening to Seamus Heaney's Translation of Beowulf

          I listened to Seamus Heaney’s reading of his own translation of Beowulf when  I had not yet read the translation, so the experience was good for emphasizing the oral/aural aspects of the poem and of the translation. There are some Irishisms in it: “That was one good king” is the way Heaney translates “þæt wæs god cyning” and I have no idea what Heaney’s half line “to bed in the bothies” means.

In listening, the elegiac tone is evident from the beginning, and we are very conscious that the poem starts with Scyld being sent off in a burial boat; “nobody knows for certain who salvaged that load,” says the poet, and compares this sending-off with Scyld’s being a foundling as a baby.  And it is sad too, when we get down through Beow and Healfdene and finally Hrothgar, who wants to build this great hall just to make people happy, to realize that his wish is doomed.  He wants to furnish the best place in the world for people to eat and drink and for the king to dispense gifts, “not the common land or people’s lives,” but rings and cups and standards and swords—and the wish is wholly good, to make people warm and happy and drunk and replete with gifts—but it can’t be: there is a force that will prevent this purely good impulse from coming to be or remaining, whether it is the resentful outcast Grendel or the family rivalry that the poet just hints will eventualy burn Heorot to the ground. 

Grendel is a kind of Malvolio type; he’s unhappy that people are having a good time. Where do these evil things come from?  This is one of the questions that Beowulf raises. “The monsters and evil things that contended with God” seems to be the answer, Cain’s brothers, the spawn of an evil act, brother against brother.  Grendel is an outcast because he opposes the desire of people to congregate, share, and be happy.

For several reasons I had been reluctant to assign Beowulf in our Senior Seminar, designed to fill in gaps in English majors’ reading. I had assigned it only once in the eight or ten times I’d taught the course. Heaney’s translation changed my mind. One of my reasons was a prejudice I inherited from the man who taught me the poem, Fred Rebsamen, who did the Rinehart prose translation Beowulf Is My Name. Rebsamen’s attitude was that the poem ought to be read in the original; failing that, a prose translation could be read faster and understood better than a verse translation that couldn’t really capture much of what makes Anglo-Saxon heroic verse work, anyway. Heaney conveys a lot of how the stress and the alliteration of the original work, but he never sacrifices sense to get a line that is “accurate” because he knows that accuracy to a standard that only exists in a different language isn’t possible.

When Beowulf decides to go help Hrothgar nobody tries to stop him. They encourage the doughty warrior to go and distinguish himself. When he arrives the sentry says “who are you?” Beowulf says he owes allegiance to Hygelac and that he is the son of Egtheow. The sentry is not surprised at the resolve of Beowulf and his men to help Horthgar. The impulse comes straight out of a value system that is understandable to him. Also interesting is the fact that he believes them, and he doesn’t have difficulty distinguishing between raiders, whom it is his duty as sentry to watch out for, and friends, even though they also are unknown armed men approaching his coastal watch. Apparently you can tell the good guys from the bad guys. Hrothgar, it turns out, knows Beowulf, knew him when he was much younger, knew his father Edgtheow, and from Hrothgar we find out that Beowulf has the reputation of having the strength of thirty men in his handgrasp.

There’s a kind of give and take in the warrior’s view of taking hold of one’s fate.  In the formal boast the warrior says I’m going to do this and do that, but he also says “Gæ½a wyrd swa hio scel”—fate goes always as it must.

Beowulf first decides he will not use a sword in fighting Grendel, and then we learn, when his followers take out swords, that swords are useless against Grendel.  The hero’s resolve is empowering. Odysseus resolves to go fight Circe, even though he’s been told she’s a sorceress. Once he resolves, Hermes appears to tell him how to do it and give divine aid. 

My students have to be taught about tone.  Left to themselves they make one distinction in tone, between seriousness and sarcasm.  They have to be instructed in gradations of tone.  This is something to attempt in the reading for the composition class.

The story that is told by the scop at the celebration of Beowulf’s triumph over Grendel is about Finn and Hengest—is there a connection with the Hengest in the Hamlet story? and is there a thematic connection with Beowulf’s story?

Heaney leaves out our introduction to Unferth, but he includes Unferth’s gift of a sword, Hrunting, to Beowulf. What does it mean that you can fight evil out in the open, on the benches of the mead-hall, but to encounter evil’s mother you have to dive into the airless deeps of the mere? And are we supposed to believe that Beowulf just stops breathing for the best part of a day?

In fact Beowulf has to use Grendel’s mother’s own sword against her, the sword he finds in her armory. He cuts off her head. They go back bearing Grendel’s head. They find Ascheri’s head; he cuts off Grendel’s mother’s head, but they come back with Grendel’s head. 

There’s no scop singing a story in Hrothgar’s hall after the defeat of Grendel’s mother;  the celebration we hear about is back in Geatland in Hygelac’s hall. We hear about Ungeld and about rivalries and feuds and we wonder about how these connect with Beowulf’s story. As Beowulf tells the story of his defeat of Grendel to Hygelac, we hear for the first time about Grendel’s dragonskin pouch or bag into which he stuffs the men he carries off.

Hrothgar’s prediction comes true: Hygelac’s heir is cut down in battle, and the kingdom goes to Beowulf. Beowulf rules well for fifty years, but you know there’s always a dragon in the dark, biding his time.

Beowulf vows to fight the dragon, telling his men that this is his fight. He fights and is losing. Meanwhile his captain, Wiglaf, makes a speech to his men that is much like Sarpedon’s exhortation to Glaucus in Book 12 of The Iliad. Beowulf’s sword Nӕgling snaps in this fight; Beowulf is too strong for iron swords and keeps breaking them. 

This poet talks about his authority in a way that Homer does not: I have heard, so it was told to me, and so on. Beowulf says he was not fortunate enough to have had a son and heir; we don’t know whether he has a queen or not—is Beowulf a bachelor king?

The treasure is won, bought and paid for with Beowulf’s death. Wiglaf and Beowulf together stab the dragon and  kill him, and we learn that Wiglaf is the last of the Wægmundings; apparently he’s not going to have any children either. Wiglaf talks about the recent hisory of the Geats and how the peaceful reign of Beowulf is coming to an end and there’s going to be strife; all the neighbors are going to come in.

I don’t know whether Heaney has deliberately downplayed the Christian references in the poem, but it looks as if those sections don’t really talk about eternal life, however much they talk about God or Christ. Even with the Christian overlay, the value system comes through in which it is glory that lasts. Glory is achieved by the hero and recorded by the poet, rewarded during one’s lifetime by gifts, but it is what lives after one rather than one’s spirit; that is the main value that is asserted by the poem.