The Translations of Beowulf Part 1

The Translations of Beowulf.

by Chauncey Brewster Tinker.

PREFACE

The following pages are designed to give a historical and critical account of all that has been done in the way of translating _Beowulf_ from the earliest attempts of Sharon Turner in 1805 down to the present time. As a corollary to this, it presents a history of the text of the poem to the time of the publication of Grein's _Bibliothek der angelsachsischen Poesie_ in 1859; for until the publication of this work every editor of the poem was also its translator.

It is hoped that the essay may prove useful as a contribution to bibliography, and serve as a convenient reference book for those in search of information regarding the value of texts and translations of _Beowulf_.

The method of treating the various books is, in general, the same.

I have tried to give in each case an accurate bibliographical description of the volume, a notion of the value of the text used in making it, &c. But the emphasis given to these topics has necessarily varied from time to time. In discussing literal translations, for example, much attention has been paid to the value of the text, while little or nothing is said of the value of the rendering as literature.

On the other hand, in the case of a book which is literary in aim, the attention paid to the critical value of the book is comparatively small.

At certain periods in the history of the poem, the chief value of a translation is its utility as a part of the critical apparatus for the interpretation of the poem; at other periods, a translation lays claim to our attention chiefly as imparting the literary features of the original.

In speaking of the translations which we may call literary, I have naturally paid most attention to the English versions, and this for several reasons. In the first place, _Beowulf_ is an _English_ poem; secondly, the number, variety, and importance of the English translations warrant this emphasis; thirdly, the present writer is unable to discuss in detail the literary and metrical value of translations in foreign tongues. The account given of German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, French, and Italian versions is, therefore, of a more strictly bibliographical nature; but, whenever possible, some notion has been given of the general critical opinion with regard to them.

An asterisk is placed before the t.i.tles of books which the present writer has not seen.

My thanks are due to the officials of the Library of Yale University, who secured for me many of the volumes here described; to Professor Ewald Flugel of Leland Stanford Junior University, who kindly lent me certain transcripts made for him at the British Museum; and to Mr.

Edward Thorstenberg, Instructor in Swedish at Yale University, for help in reading the Danish and Swedish translations.

_July, 1902._

THE TRANSLATIONS OF BEOWULF

PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE BEOWULF Ma.n.u.sCRIPT

The unique ma.n.u.script of the _Beowulf_ is preserved in the Cottonian Library of the British Museum. It is contained in the folio designated Cotton Vitellius A. xv, where it occurs ninth in order, filling the folios numbered 129a to 198b, inclusive.

The first recorded notice of the MS. is to be found in Wanley's Catalog of Anglo-Saxon Ma.n.u.scripts (Oxford, 1705), Volume III of Hickes's _Thesaurus_. The poem is thus described:--

'Tractatus n.o.bilissimus Poetice scriptus. Praefationis hoc est initium.'

The first nineteen lines follow, transcribed with a few errors.

'Initium autem primi Capitis sic se habet.'

Lines 53-73, transcribed with a few errors.

'In hoc libro, qui Poeseos Anglo-Saxonicae egregium est exemplum, descripta videntur bella quae Beowulfus quidam Da.n.u.s, ex Regio Scyldingorum stirpe Ortus, gessit contra Sueciae Regulos.' Page 218, col. b, and 219, col. a.

No further notice was taken of the MS. until 1786, when Thorkelin[1]

made two transcripts of it.

In 1731 there occurred a disastrous fire which destroyed a number of the Cottonian MSS. The Beowulf MS. suffered at this time, its edges being scorched and its pages shriveled. As a result, the edges have chipped away, and some of the readings have been lost. It does not appear, however, that these losses are of so great importance as the remarks of some prominent Old English scholars might lead us to suspect. Their remarks give the impression that the injury which the MS. received in the fire accounts for practically all of the illegible lines. That this is not so may be seen by comparing the Wanley transcript with the Zupitza _Autotypes_. Writing in 1705, before the Cotton fire, Wanley found two illegible words at line 15--illegible because of fading and rubbing. Of exactly the same nature appear to be the injuries at lines 2220 ff., the celebrated pa.s.sage which is nearly, if not quite, unintelligible. It would therefore be a safe a.s.sumption that such injuries as these happened to the MS. before it became a part of the volume, Vitellius A. xv. The injuries due to scorching and burning are seldom of the first importance.

This point is worth noting. Each succeeding scholar who transcribed the MS., eager to recommend his work, dwelt upon the rapid deterioration of the parchment, and the reliability of his own readings as exact reproductions of what he himself had seen in the MS. before it reached its present ruinous state. The result of this was that the emendations of the editor were sometimes accepted by scholars and translators as the authoritative readings of the MS., when in reality they were nothing but gratuitous additions. This is especially true of Thorpe[2], and the false readings which he introduced were never got rid of until the Zupitza _Autotypes_ brought to light the sins of the various editors of the poem. These statements regarding text and MS. will be developed in the following sections of the paper[3].

[Footnote 1: See infra, p. 16.] [[Thorkelin]]

[Footnote 2: See infra, p. 49.] [[Thorpe]]

[Footnote 3: See infra on Thorkelin, p. 19; Conybeare, p. 29; Kemble, p. 34; Thorpe, p. 51; Arnold, p. 72.]

SHARON TURNER'S EXTRACTS

The History of the Manners, Landed Property, Government, Laws, Poetry, Literature, Religion, and Language of the Anglo-Saxons. By Sharon Turner, F.A.S. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1805.

Being Volume IV of the History of the Anglo-Saxons from their earliest appearance above the Elbe, etc. London, 1799-1805. 8vo, pp. 398-408.

Second Edition, corrected and enlarged. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1807. 2 vols., 4to. _Beowulf_ described, Vol. II, pp. 294-303.

Third Edition. London, 1820.

Fourth Edition. London, 1823.

Fifth Edition. (1827?)

Sixth Edition. London, 1836.

Seventh Edition. London, 1852.

Reprints: Paris, 1840; Philadelphia, 1841.

Translation of Extracts from the first two Parts.

_Points of Difference between the Various Editions._

A part of this may be stated in the words of the author:--

'The poem had remained untouched and unnoticed both here and abroad until I observed its curious contents, and in 1805 announced it to the public. I could then give it only a hasty perusal, and from the MS. having a leaf interposed near its commencement, which belonged to a subsequent part, and from the peculiar obscurity which sometimes attends the Saxon poetry, I did not at that time sufficiently comprehend it, and had not leisure to apply a closer attention. But in the year 1818 I took it up again, as I was preparing my third edition, and then made that more correct a.n.a.lysis which was inserted in that and the subsequent editions, and which is also exhibited in the present.'

--Sixth edition, p. 293, footnote.

The statement that the poem had remained untouched and unnoticed is not strictly true. The public had not yet received any detailed information regarding it; but Wanley[1] had mentioned the _Beowulf_ in his catalog, and Thorkelin had already made two transcripts of the poem, and was at work upon an edition. Turner, however, deserves full credit for first calling the attention of the English people to the importance of the poem.

In the third edition, of which the author speaks, many improvements were introduced into the digest of the story and some improvements into the text of the translations. Many of these were gleaned from the _editio princeps_ of Thorkelin[2]. The story is now told with a fair degree of accuracy, although many serious errors remain: e.g. the author did not distinguish the correct interpretation of the swimming-match, an extract of which is given below. The translations are about as faulty as ever, as may be seen by comparing the two extracts. In the first edition only the first part of the poem is treated; in the third, selections from the second part are added.