Sung-Il Lee: New Translation of Beowulf

Beowulf

(Image from Wikipedia)

I haven't dealt with Beowulf for some time now, but only a few days ago, a reader inquired about what had happened with an unpublished Beowulf translation that I'd praised a few years ago after hearing a brief passage read out at a Medievalist conference here in Seoul. Here's what the reader was referring to:

What! Have we not heard of the glory
Of the Spear-Danes' kings in olden days --
How the princes performed deeds of valor?
Not a few times Scyld Scefing seized
The seats of banquet from many a tribe,
Mighty opponents, and terrified the earls.
Since the time when he was found a deserted infant,
He grew up in tender care, soared to the sky,
And prospered with unparalleled honor, till
All neighboring nations over the sea came
To obey and pay tribute to him: a good king he was!

As noted on that same blog post, these opening lines of Beowulf were the translation work of Professor Sung-Il Lee, of Yonsei University. I had been waiting to hear more about this, specifically, its publication, but so much time had passed that I'd given up, for Professor Lee had retired and was rumored to have become a recluse, as I told the reader who contacted me.

If he did become reclusive, that seclusion must have been for a good cause, for I learned only yesterday that Mellen Press has published Professor Lee's translation:

Beowulf and Four Related Old English Poems:
A Verse Translation with Explanatory Notes

Lee, Sung-Il

Description

These modern verse translations manage to retain the verse rhythm of the originals. This volume includes explanatory notes and new interpretations of the original text.

Reviews

". . . a very good translation, fluent and generally idiomatic, and accurate in spirit to its original without being awkwardly literal."

-Prof. Derek Pearsall, Harvard University

"This is how the chain of bards who put [Beowulf] together might have chanted the poem had they spoken the way we do now. This is a masterful version and as close to an ideal translation as we can get."

-Gregory Rabassa, (Poet and Translator)

From the Foreword:

"If we still offered seminars on The Art of Translation, this would be a good centerpiece."

­-Prof. Robert D. Stevick, University of Washington

I now see why Professor Lee took his time -- he was translating four other Old English poems! From the evidence of these blurbs, I'd infer that the hundred dollar price is worth shelling out for the volume. Congratulations to Professor Lee.

I hope that the reader who contacted me with the query will check back soon and see the good news . . .

Staffordshire Hoard: Gold Strip with Old Testament Verse

The Staffordshire website offers a hoard of images, including the two fine ones below showing the entire gold strip with its semiliterate inscription taken from Numbers 10:35, "surge d[omi]ne [et] disepentur inimici tui et fugent qui oderunt te a facie tua," which translates as "Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face."



In a previous entry, I noted that the Old Testament offers two parallels:

Numbers 10:35 "surge Domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua"

Psalm 67:2 "Exsurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici eius et fugiant qui oderunt eum a facie eius"

Comparison with the inscription, however, clearly shows that Numbers 10:35 is the source:

"surge d[omi]ne [et] disepentur inimici tui et fugent qui oderunt te a facie tua"

Note the use of "tui" and "tua" in both the inscription and in Numbers 10:35, whereas Psalm 67:2 has "eius" (and note as well the use of "Domine" versus "Deus").

Brandon Hawk has some interesting things to say about this inscription -- though he gets one thing wrong. He approvingly cites the usually impeccable Michael Drout, who says that the inscription is "probably taken directly from Psalm 67:2, where it is also used." Drout, however, offers no reasons or evidence in his blog entry, so I don't know why he thinks this unless he took the inscription's "dNE" as "Deus" rather than as an abbreviation for "Domine," but the use of "tui/tua" argues against Psalm 67:2. At any rate, here are Hawk's interesting remarks:

A search of the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici database reveals that only one text (or set of texts, as will be revealed) known in Anglo-Saxon England also quotes this passage from Numbers 10:35/Psalm 67:2: Felix's Vita S. Guthlaci. This Vita was written in c.730-49, and, according to E. Gordon Whatley, the text was present in Anglo-Saxon England in at least eight extant manuscripts, one of these (a fragment) from the late eighth or early ninth century (Biggs et al.). The corresponding use does appear in the Old English prose Life (which corresponds closely to Felix's Latin version), but not in Vercelli Homily XXIII or Guthlac A or B.

What is interesting about the passage in which this verse is used is that it is not merely a quotation; instead, Guthlac himself uses the Psalm to ward off evil spirits. According to the Old English prose version (Goodwin), Guthlac "þone sealm sang: Exurgat deus et dissipentur, et reliqua. Sona swa he þæt fyrmeste fers sang þæs sealmes, þa gewiton hi swa swa smic fram his ansyne" ("sang the psalm: Exurgat Deus et dissipentur, et reliqua. As soon as he had sung the first verse of the psalm, they departed like smoke from his presence") (Goodwin, 44, trans. 45). What we find, then, is an act of warding off evil, a use of the psalm to achieve victory over one's enemies. In this case, demons are the main enemies, but it is curious to think about the use of such a verse in the Old Testament as referring to humans all too hostile to the psalmist. Likewise, the use of the newly discovered gold strip with the biblical inscription also hearkens to a warrior's need to keep himself safe from his all-too-real opponents. More could be said, and perhaps in the future I will have more to add, but it may be enough to leave this examination without any more conclusion than to say that this verse evokes a supplication for bodily and spiritual aid from a warrior in need of the grace of God.

For his information about Felix's Vita S. Guthlaci, Hawk cites Whatley and seems to be using "Guthlacus," in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture Volume 1: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Acta Sanctorum, which is edited by Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill, Paul E. Szarmach, and E. Gordon Whatley (Kalamazoo, 2001), for he offers a note to that effect and references pages 244-247. For "the Old English prose version" of Saint Guthlac's life, Hawk cites the Cotton version presented in The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Life of St. Guthlac, hermit of Crowland, which is edited by Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (London: John Russell Smith, 1848).

Anyway, Hawk's musings on the Psalm 67:2 with respect to the inscription raise the possibility that the gold strip was intended as a sort of 'charm bracelet' used for warding off spiritual evil. Relevant in this context might be the words of Saint Paul in Ephesians 6:12, and let's cite the Latin from the Vulgate since the Anglo-Saxons were using Latin:

quia non est nobis conluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem sed adversus principes et potestates adversus mundi rectores tenebrarum harum contra spiritalia nequitiae in caelestibus

The New International Version gives this modern translation:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Of course, the 'charm bracelet' might be just as useful against physical evils as well. Incidentally, Richard Marsden, on page 73 of The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge University Press, 1995), presents Saint Guthlac as citing Numbers 10:35 (rather than Psalm 67:2) in a somewhat loose 'quote':

et fugient a facie tua qui te oderunt

Compare with Numbers 10:35 in the Vulgate:

et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua

Somewhat loose, as noted, but given the use of "tua" instead of "eius," this clearly comes from Numbers 10:35, not Psalm 67:2. In the passage noted by Hawk, however, Saint Guthlac is obviously using Pslam 67:2, for it states "Exurgat deus" rather than "surge Domine." Did Saint Guthlac splice the opening words of Psalm 67:2 to the following words of Numbers 10:35? I don't have the sources before me for checking, so I'll leave this to my readers . . . if there be any.

Incidentally, the evidence from Saint Guthlac's use of Latin for both Numbers 10:35 and Psalm 67:2 demonstrates that the Staffordshire gold strip with its Latin inscription could very well have come from an Anglo-Saxon context rather than being war booty taken from Christian Celts, a possibility that has also been suggested, but further analysis by experts will be necessary on this point.

Anglo-Saxon Hoard Found in Former Kingdom of Mercia

Anglo-Saxon Treasure

(Image from Yahoo.com)

Exciting news this morning awaited those of us interested in such Anglo-Saxon literature as Beowulf, for we read of an archaeological find with enormous implications for Anglo-Saxon studies. I read of it in Yahoo's article by Raphael G. Satter: "Largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure found in UK."

Roger Bland, the expert who directed the hoard's excavation, calls it a "fantastic find." The treasure was unearthed in the former Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Mercia and is dated to 675-725 AD, which puts it close in time to the composition of that epic poem Beowulf.

Relevant to this literary 'connection' would be the small strip of gold shown above, for it is inscribed with a martial quotation from a Latin version of the Old Testament:

"Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face."

Satter doesn't identify the precise source, nor does he provide the Latin, so I shall. It's Numbers 10:35 and says in Latin:

"surge Domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua"

If you compare this verse to the image, you will be able to make out some of the Latin words, albeit differing slightly in spelling, e.g., "dissipentur" is given as "disepentu(r)" and "fugiant" as "fugent."

That will give linguists something to puzzle over, but I'm more interested in possible implications of this warlike verse choice for my theory that in the poem Beowulf, the character "Beowulf is being presented as a pagan antetype of Christ in an epic Anglo-Saxon praeparatio evangelium" that models pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon culture as being under the old covenant described in the Old Testament.

I argue this latter point at length in my article "Praeparatio Evangelium: Beowulf as Antetype of Christ," published back in 2004 by The Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Association of Korea (Volume 12, Issue 2).

The literature scholar Brother Anthony has kindly placed my article online for those intrepid enough to venture in such realms.

UPDATE: Current Archaeology 236 (cf. Wikipedia) provides the entire Latin inscription, "surge d[omi]ne [et] disepentur inimici tui et fugent qui oderunt te a facie tua," and references both Numbers 10:35 (i.e., "surge Domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua") and Psalm 67:2 (i.e., "Exsurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici eius et fugiant qui oderunt eum a facie eius"), but the inscription is obviously much closer to the Numbers citation.

"What! Have we not heard of the glory..."

Kyung Hee University

Of the High Middle Ages

(Image from The Korea Times)

The big hand on the clock has just touched the hour mark, the little hand tells me that the hour is three, and the profound, outer darkness reminds me that this hour is late.

The great MEMESAK international conference has now been over for nine hours, although we participants -- having spent two days "fighting dragons and crossing swords" -- retired to the mead hall and, until only a couple of hours ago, jubilantly celebrated our victory over the forces of darkness that "from the moor under the misty slopes came."

What! Have ye not heard of the glory
Of we Medieval scholars, warriors of golden days --
How we wrought works of valor?

Sorry. I'm waxing Medieval. My excuse? This. I had the privilege of hearing passages from a new Beowulf translation, which opens with these lines:

What! Have we not heard of the glory
Of the Spear-Danes' kings in olden days --
How the princes performed deeds of valor?
Not a few times Scyld Scefing seized
The seats of banquet from many a tribe,
Mighty opponents, and terrified the earls.
Since the time when he was found a deserted infant,
He grew up in tender care, soared to the sky,
And prospered with unparalleled honor, till
All neighboring nations over the sea came
To obey and pay tribute to him: a good king he was!

These words flowed from the lips of Professor Sung-Il Lee, of Yonsei University, who has translated the entirety of that Old English epic. Over a cup of mead (or perhaps soju), I asked him how he had managed to outdo Seamus Heaney's translation:

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.
There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,
a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
as his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

So much for Mr. Heaney. In case you're wondering, the original Anglo-Saxon lines ran as follows:

Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum
þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon·
hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scéfing sceaþena þréatum
monegum maégþum meodosetla oftéah·
egsode Eorle syððan aérest wearð
féasceaft funden hé þæs frófre gebád·
wéox under wolcnum· weorðmyndum þáh
oð þæt him aéghwylc þára ymbsittendra
ofer hronráde hýran scolde,
gomban gyldan· þæt wæs gód cyning.

I've borrowed this original text from Benjamin Slade's great website Beowulf in Steorarume.

But you're still wondering how Professor Lee managed to render the Old English into excellent, modern lines of epic poetry that -- in my opinion -- far outdo Heaney's version. Over that cup of aforementioned sojumead, Lee explained that he had used the old dictionaries and critical texts of bygone scholars to ensure that he had clearly understood the original verse, and once he had done that for a few lines, he had "let the text possess" him and had proceeded to translate it. He had spent four-and-one-half months working from early morning till late at night without a break last fall and winter in this endeavor, and when he finished the last line at three in the morning in late February 2007, he opened for himself a bottle of soju, drank it all down, and literally "howled at the moon!"

That sounded a bit more like Grendel than Beowulf, but I toasted Professor Lee's admirable achievement, and he promised me a copy of the published text.

As for my own light-hearted presentation, which I had titled "Finding Myself Lost in Translation," people seemed to enjoy it, for they laughed a lot. I took that as a good sign, though they may simply have been laughing at me.

I should add -- last but not at all least -- that I finally met Mr. Gord Sellar, a man to whom I've been indebted ever since he came to my rescue online one fine day last year when an anonymous troll was plaguing these blog entries. Gord called the troll a "twit" and thereby helped rid Gypsy Scholar of an unwanted, gryndelig presence.

Gord can perhaps confirm whether the preposition "with" or "at" best describes how people were laughing during my presentation. Either way, thanks to Gord for his moral support during the conference and his immoral support during the postconference drinking...

Finding Myself Lost in Translation...

Pennywinkle

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm in the middle of writing another paper, rushing to finish it before the semester's onset some two weeks from now. Perhaps a few readers interested in archaic English words will find the following two paragraphs worth their time:

While I was still in high school, my grandmother once showed me an article in the Arkansas Gazette claiming that some hillbilly folks in the isolated Boston Mountain region of the Ozarks still spoke Elizabethan English. I imagined them speaking like characters in a Shakespearean play or even like the Lord himself in the King James Bible. That did not seem too improbable to me, for on Sundays, I heard unlettered hillbillies pray spontaneously in the sacred tongue of King James, and get it grammatically correct! I have come to doubt, however, that anybody in the Ozarks was speaking Elizabethan English and using "thee" and "thou" in their day-to-day lives. Probably, the Boston Mountain folks were simply using a somewhat more archaic Ozark dialect than the rest of us hillbillies. The Gazette was likely doing what many newspapers do with their reports of scholarly findings. They were getting it somewhat wrong. But they were right that much of the vocabulary was archaic, for the well-known folklorist Vance Randolph had been publishing on this phenomenon since the 1920s. In the article "Dialectical Survivals in the Ozarks: III. Archaic Vocabulary," published in the journal American Speech in 1930, Randolph and Patti Sankee noted a large number of words used by Ozark hillbillies in archaic senses. They tell us that:

Only the other day one of our neighbors remarked that he admired a flood which had ruined his crops -- meaning simply that it astonished or surprised him. (Randolph and Sankee, American Speech, Volume 5, Number 5, June 1930, p. 424)

Randolph and Sankee go on to note that tourists would smile at such expressions but that "Milton and his contemporaries used the word in exactly the same sense," and they cite Paradise Lost 2.678ff, the passage wherein Satan, confronted by his equal in power, Death, shows no fear but does show surprise: "Th' undaunted Fiend what this might be admir'd, / Admir'd, not fear'd." I never noticed this archaic sense of "admire" in my dealings with Ozark kith and kin, nor did I ever hear "bore" used in the sense of "to insult," and I had (oddly enough) forgotten hearing "disremember" for "to forget" until reminded by this article (Randolph and Sankee, 425), but I do recall hearing "argufy" for "argue" (Randolph and Sankee, 424) and "ruinate" for "ruin" (Randolph and Sankee, 428), and many a time, I have heard "puny" in the sense of "sickly" (Randolph and Sankee, 426-427), and I have also heard "pinnywinkle" but had no idea what it was until reading Randolph and Sankee's article, which informs me that it refers to a freshwater snail and that the word goes back to the Old English word "pine-winkle" (Randolph and Sankee, 427), this very old word having somehow survived attraction from the far more commonly used "periwinkle" to this very day. The Oxford English Dictionary tends to confirm this, noting that the dialect form "pennywinkle" perhaps stems from the Old English "pinewincle" (OED Compact Edition, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2136).

In fact, the OED does rather more than this, albeit rather obliquely. It uses the dialect form "pennywinkle" to infer the probable form of the original Old English word. Here is the OED entry for periwinkle:

Known in this form only from 16th c.; but OE had in the same sense a word variously read (in pl.) pinewinclan and winewinclan (owing to confusion of the letters p and p = w). The MSS. favor the latter, which may however be a scribal error, as pinewincle would explain the 16th c. literary, and mod. dial. forms. (OED Compact Edition, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2136)

Allow me to clarify this point. The standard form for this word meaning "fresh-water snail" is periwinkle. This has been the form since the 16th century, when the word with this meaning first appears in manuscripts. Of course the other word periwinkle, meaning the flower of the genus Vinca, goes back to about 1000 but has a different etymology and is irrelevant for our present investigation, aside from the possibility that the word for the flower influenced the spelling of the word for the snail (OED Compact Edition, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2136). Be that as it may, the word pennywinkle is extant in the Ozark dialect of English even today, and its continued existence in dialects of English is used to infer that pinewinclan was perhaps the original Old English form despite the somewhat stronger Old English manuscript evidence for winewinclan.

These two paragraphs are from the middle of a paper that I'm trying to keep short because it's intended for use as a presentation this fall at a Medieval and Early Modern English conference on translation, which also explains the obsession with archaic words.

Now, back to writing this paper...