I had two texts at the time: one frequently used transcription of the original edited by Frederick Klaeber, the other a popular verse translation by renowned Irish poet Seamus Heaney. The former contains a glossary from which my fellow students and I were to find the paths to our respective translations. The glosses provided strove to educate, and as a recent manuscript of the newest edition has said, “intended no just to give Modern English equivalents but to gloss the components of words and to indicate etymological connections. In compounded words, [for example], very often an effort is made first to gloss the elements literally or to point to a modern reflex, and only after to suggest a more precise semantic equivalent.” (“Glossary” Klaeber). The latter, Heaney’s, is a beautiful rendition in Hiberno-English and provided an example of a well-formed translation. In many ways it was refreshing; no one had before begun to quietly and powerfully just the word “So” (1) at first line, or had put sentences like “That was one good king” (11), more clearly. Yet it contained a translation of Grendel, the first enemy that the Beowulf fights, which I have  come to learn is not altogether supportable.

Cotton Vitellius A.xv is not made of stone, of course. From what we have learned from Albert Lord and company in The Singer of Tales, improvisational changes may be expected in long oral poems, and those changes are not seen as a deviation from the poem in the way a literate culture likely would. Translators are not to be scolded out of hand for deviant changes, but they are usually asked to address them. I assume the Beowulf-poet is better than I am. I am not the scop; I am his apprentice. If I can find ways to make my own sense of the difficult parts, then I believe I have contributed to the text. Pedagogy, I suppose, was preferred to aesthetics.

Heaney is more willing to elide moments where I would think a creative solution to the direct problem would be a better answer. A moment in Heaney deviates from the text after the mention of “dryhtsele dynede” at line 767. He calls the din (dynede) a “hall-session.” A translator’s note in the Norton critical edition explains: “In Hiberno-English the word ‘session’ (seissiún in Irish) can mean a gathering where musicians and singer perform for their own enjoyment” (Heaney, Norton 21). The effect is ironic, even comic; the parts that make up Heorot become beautifully personified a fighters clash, making the building seem to come alive.

Still, while Beowulf packs plenty of irony (e.g. foreshadow of Heorot burning under betrayal), the text at this passage does not too clearly support it. The passage has four major parts: mention of the noise in the hall, a communal subject (i.e. all the Danes), an expression of mutual hate, and a troublesome word ealuscerwen. A musical interpretation of the first major part is fine, but Heaney rolls over these elements. His version little resembles the original.

He skips ealuscerwen entirely. No one assuredly knows what the word means. It appears nowhere else in recorded literature, and although hapax legomena are common in Beowulf, few vex linguists quite as much as this one. Some things are fairly certain. According to Alfred Bammesberger, it is very likely formed from a compound of ealu and scerwen. Citing Bruce Mitchell, he lists as many as four different theoretical meanings, but immediately rejects the two which take scerwen in the negative, or as “deprivation.” Klaeber tentatively offers “the dispensing of ale (bitter drink),” but Bammesberger rejects that too. Klaeber’s gloss assumes that ealu means ‘ale,’ and “since ‘ale’ is better, ealuscerwen could have been perceived as ‘dispensing of bitterness,’ and then perhaps ‘terror’ might have resulted” (Bammesberger 471). Bammesberger thinks that approach is too complex. He would have it translated as ‘a dispensation of good luck.’

In Klaeber’s defense, “dispensing of ale” may play on the antagonymous meanings of “dispense,” which here can mean that ale was rid of or received. Though Bammesberger thinks his reading of ealu as ‘ale’ may be faulty, Klaeber the ambiguity that might be necessary to encompass the conflicting interpretations. A willingness to embrace an ambiguous translation over elision or even logic seems to me a more interesting choice, and the point at which I cannot agree with Heaney or Bammesberger.

If we can imagine living in the moment, tasting terror may be more probable than Bammesberger believes. Extra-ordinary stress produces a number of physiological responses in the body, including acid-reflux. A re-imagining can turn what would otherwise be a strange idiomatic metaphor into a fair description of the taste of fear: a bitter or acidic fluid burning the back of the throat, the taste of ale.

The imagined translation has two effects. First, a kind of synesthesia is introduced. The reader will become connected to the experience of witnessing fight though taste. Sounds make up so much of description of the fight that a taste, rarely used in Beowulf, renews the weight of what is at stake and what is remembered. I imagine the Danes and the reader sharing in some post-traumatic stress disorder. Second, though the relief that Bammesberger recommends, ambiguity remains. The people are only reacting, not judging.

The values of good story-telling have likely changed over the years. It is uncertain whether methods then resemble methods today. Most would now agree that good narration keeps up suspense, and might begrudge earlier foretelling of Beowulf’s success and Grendel’s failure. They would say it “ruins the story.” Yet many of us will still attend a tale we have heard before, so long as the path to the outcome holds our imagination. Hence, I have bent my translation away from a judgemental reading with the belief that narrative is better sustained.

Bammesberger argues rightly that ‘there occurred a dispensation of good luck’ does not conflict with the moment; a fair turn can easily turn back sour, instantly—good luck does not mean a win. Sadly, those words lack beauty. In poetic language, logic is not the point. What is felt comes from associations we have that make no sense.

Heaney continues a long tradition of turning Grendel into a monster. Grendel, “the captain of evil” (Heaney 749), “the dread of the land” (761), is given talons, kinship with demons, and comes “greedily loping” (711). What Grendel leaves behind of himself warrants a grotesque picture. His disembodied arm is clawed, and his severed head takes four men to carry from his mother’s den, something about the weight of a full human corpse. We are told that he descends from Cain, in hybrid Germanic and Christian tradition the sire of all strange creatures like gnomes, elves, giants, and ettins. Grendel may resemble his family. Besides agreeing that giants are big, though, no one certainly knows what these things looked like in Anglo-Saxon imaginations, and relating him to Cain, who was a man, distantly suggests anthropomorphic features. Beyond that, as has been mentioned before, we know nothing of what he looked like.

Words that describe him during his last trip to Heorot remain vague (Amodio). Andy Orchard has pointed out that aglæca, which those before have noted applied to both heroes and monsters (including Beowulf and Grendel), best translates with the words offered by Elliot Dobbie: ‘the awe-inspiring one,’ or ‘the formidable one’ (Orchard 33). Beowulf, while violent, does not resemble a monster, so for the sake of consistency an aglæca, friend or foe, cannot be one.

Nonetheless for Heaney the words “Licsar gebad / atol æglæca” (Klaeber 815-16) become “The monster’s whole / body was in pain” (Heaney 814-15). With two aglæcan wrestling, the sentence should confuse the reader a little. Grendel’s pain is implied, but no more. As Amodio has noted, the ambiguous substantive imbues the fog of war. No one, not even those in the fight, would know in the chaos and the night what precisely was happening. Strained, the senses process what is necessary for survival, and memory becomes uncertain. The text will give us “fingras burston” (Klaeber 760) ‘fingers burst’ without telling whose fingers. A translators who offers answers too quickly makes a helpful but unnecessary and indecorous interpretation.

A tale of deep horror depends its flirtation with uncertainty. As far as Grendel’s last attack, the first chance at a glimpse of Grendel, the perspective nearly keeps us from seeing anything at all. Something wicked this way comes, but it does not offer much more than strange and shadowy movement, and a taste of Grendel’s desire. Michael Lapidge believes that obfuscation serves the narrative, taking Beowulf outside the heroic and into horror. “It is because the monster lies beyond our comprehension, because we cannot visualize him at all, that its approach is one of the most terrifying moments in English literature” (Lapidge 383).

The entries on this blog attempt document each written step of the translation of the Grendel’s last attack on Heorot so that readers could better understand the path by which a fragment of a millennia-old manuscript becomes a Modern English poem. Each change is recorded and every major draft is posted. Everyone can see the many steps of the metamorphosis that such a project goes under, like watching tadpole turn to frog. Any future translators with internet access will be able to follow or reply to the manor in which the final product was produce, rather than having to interpret its manor from underneath the polish. In some sense, the final version represents the whole project imperfectly.

Translators often show regard for the original text, though in different ways. Heaney may have gestured just so in the bilingual edition of his work. In it each left page carries an Anglo-Saxon transcription of Beowulf, and each right his translation. Looked at one way, a side-by-side format pays homage to his poem’s sire, something like a father-son portrait. It elevates it too. The original Beowulf, or anything else Anglo-Saxon, rarely finds its way to modern mass distribution, and had never before appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Yet the book reads equally well as a challenge. Famously now, Heaney made special care to make Beowulf into an Irish-English poem, and drew upon his own linguistic heritage to show where bits of Old English survive in contemporary Ireland. Considering the “hard grievances” between Ireland and England historically, it has been said that an Irishizing of British artifact has the flavor of a kind of post-colonial counter-conquest, bloodless but not lacking bite. Pitting one page by another opposes them, like Beowulf and Grendel, in a fight for supremacy. The translation mocks and destroys, possibly.

Translation is a change by its nature, and nature would teach us that change feeds from death and ending. An open source translation is my attempt to resemble a chrysalis more than a comparison. This is not to say that my way is more faithful and good, but with some certainty I can say that a project like this has not been tried quite in this way before, published to the world all through as it comes. In that way the blog is inseparable from the true picture of the project.

However, the Geat people trusted in a brave one’s might,
and God’s grace. He took off the metal mailcoat,
his helmet from his head, and gave his hursted sword,
made of the choicest iron, and battle-gear to a vassal to hold.

He said just then, that man of goodness,
Beowulf of the Geats, some boastful words
before he bedded down. “In prowess,
I do not consider myself any less battle-keen
than the Grendel himself. Therefore, I will not
have him put to sleep by the sword,
though I might deprive him of his life in that way.

He knows nothing of good things, that he strikes against me,
hews the shield’s edge, though strong in spite he may be.
Tonight the two of us shall forgo the blade,
if he seeks plain war over weapondry.
Afterward, God, in his wisdom, puts in the hand
the glory of whomever he wills,
and so to that man it is given properly, I should think.”

He bowed down, the battle-brave one.
A cheek-cushion took the man’s face,
and those nearby, those many seamen,
lied down quickly for a sheltered rest.

Not one of them thought he would ever look
upon the land he loved thereafter, the folk
or the freetown where he was raised,
for in that wine-hall, they’d heard, death by slaughter
had pillaged too many of the Danish tribe.

But the Lord wove for the Weeder’s tribesman
war-success, solace and support,
so through one’s craft they all overcame their fiend,
through his own might. The truth is well known
that mighty God wields mankind for the long life of the immortal soul.

It came then on the waning night
gliding, the shadow-walker.
The shooters slept, those who had to hold
that horn-gabled house, all but one —

ancestors knew that a sin-scather could not,
when fate desired it not, braid them into shadows—
but still he kept a wrathful watch,
in anger he waited on the ends of battle
his mind bulging.

Then came off the moor under night-fog
Grendel, going, bearing God’s ire,
a man-scather intent on snaring
some of the race of men in the high hall.

He waded under billowing-clouds and came
into line of sight with the gilded wine-hall of men,
stained with shining metalworks. It was not the first time
he’d sought the home of Hrothgar,
but never, not in his living days before, and not since,
would he find harder luck or hall-holders.

He came then to the building, the warrior journeyed,
deprived of joy. The fire-tempered firm door
swiftly gave out once his hands touched it.
It swung open to the malignant one,
and then he grew swollen, at the building’s mouth open.

Quickly after, on the shining floor,
the fiend treaded, moving angrily.
From his eyes arose, most like fire,
a light unbeautiful.

In the keep he saw many ranks,
a sleeping band of kinsmen gathered together,
a heap of soldier sons. Then his mind laughed.
He thought that before day came
he, the terrible, awesome one, would sever
each one’s life from his body,
as in him was arising a deep, eaters hunger.

Not yet was to come his fate: that no more
could he consume mankind overnight.
Higelac’s muscle could behold how the man-scather
under the sudden grip would act.

The awesome one meant no delay, but he grasped
quickly at first chance a sleeping man,
rent him irresistibly, bit bone joints,
drank blood streams, swallowed huge morsels.
Soon he had consumed all the unliving thing,
the feet and the hands.

Near he stepped further, and took then,
with hands determined, one of the resting warriors.
He reached toward the enemy with his hand.

Quickly he seized with hostile purposes
and sat up against the arm. The keeper of sins
soon found that he had not met—not on middle-earth,
nor any other plane of the world—in another being
a greater handgrip. Fear came
to his soul. He could not get away.

His spirit within was eager to away itself.
It wished to flee into some hiding place,
to seek a devil’s hospice. Never in its days
had it met with such an experience.

The good one, Higelach’s kinsman, remembered his bedtime speech.
He stood upright and laid hold on him tightly.
Fingers burst. The man-eater made to throw himself out,
and so the hero stepped along with him.

He thought, that legendry one, of safe-spots in reach
to where he could flee into a marsh-retreat.
He knew his fingers were clamped in hostile claws.
What a sorrowful journey that the harm-giver made to Heorot.

The splendid hall resounded, and an acrid taste
like foul ale spouted in the throat of every Dane,
all fortress-dwellers, each keen one and hero.
Ireful were both, furious guardians of the house.

The house over-echoed. There was much wonder
that the wine-hall withstood those battle-brave ones,
and that it fell not to the ground, that beautiful fold-building,
but it held fast, with iron bands inside,
so skillfully smithed. Many meed-benches,
gold adorned, fell from their braces,
as I have heard, where the grim ones fought.

Wisemen of the Shieldings had never expected that any man,
even the best, the backboned, the decorated,
by common means might break it, or wreck it with cunning,
unless a flame’s embrace swallowed it in the heat.

Then a sound ascended upward,
altogether new, that direly stood the North-Danes
with fear. Everyone within the walls heard weeping,
a terrible song to sing, the enemy of God
sang victoryless and bewailed, sore, as Hell’s captive.

He held him fast. He who was with might
the strongest of men on that day of this life.
The shelterer would not for anything
let that death bringer go alive,
nor did he consider his living days
otherwise useful to any of his tribesmen.

There Beowulf’s men unsheathed many an old survivor,
wishing to defend the life of the lord-king,
the famous chief, where they so could.

They knew not, those tough-minded warriors,
that when they came to struggle and when,
on every side, they thought to cut that sin-scather,
and tried to reach his very soul, that not anything made
from choicest iron on this earth, those war-blades,
not a one would touch him, but so he had repelled
all victory-weapons, each and every edge.

On that day of this life, his parting from life
was to become unhandy, and the foreign guest
was to journey deep into the hands of fiends.

Then he, who before did much disturbance
to men’s hearts, and many crimes—
in a feud with God he was—
found that his body-covering would not avail him,
but the hearty kinsman of Higelac him had by the hand.

Each was hateful to the other alive.
A body-sore that terrible, awesome one suffered,
for in his shoulder broke an angry wound.
Sinews sprang asunder, and his bone-locker burst.

To Beowulf was granted a yeild from the fray.
Grendel had to flee then, life-sick,
under into the moor-slope, to go
to that joyless home. He surely knew
he’d reached his life’s end, his days numbered.

Gladness befell all Danes after that slaughter-storm.
Cleansed, the far-comer, prudent and tough-minded,
he protected the hall of Hrothgar from rancor.
He rejoiced over his night-work, over the fame for his courage.

For the East Danes, the tribesman of the Geatish people
had lasted his boast, and likewise soothed all distress,
the anguished sorrow which they’d suffered before,
and for dire necessity had to swallow, an unsmall grief.

Where the battle-brave one had laid hand,
there was a clear-cut keepsake,
an arm and shoulder that was altogether
Grendel’s grip, under the vaulted roof.

Then in the morning, I have heard,
around the gift-hall were many a warrior,
folk-captains who’d traveled from far and near
and over wide-stretched ways to see
the wonder: the tracks of the loathéd one.

None of those gladiators thought sorely on his life-parting,
those who looked upon the gloryless track,
how he weary-hearted went away,
overcome with enmity, into the kelpie-mere,
fated and put to flight the life-track he bore.

There was a sea-surge of blood.
Terrible waves awhirl, all mingled,
and hot gore and battle-fluid welled.
It concealed the death-fated one when he,
devoid of delight, laid down his life in the marsh-haven,
laid down his heathen soul, where hell received him.

They knew not, those tough-minded warriors,
that when they came to struggle and when,
on every side, they thought to cut that sin-scather,
and tried to reach his very soul, that not anything made
from choicest iron on this earth, those war-blades,
not a one would touch him, but so he had forsworn
all victory-weapons, each and every edge.

On that day of this life, his parting from life
was to become unhandy, and the foreign guest
was to journey deep into the hands of fiends.

Then he, who before did much disturbance
to men’s hearts, and many crimes—
in a feud with God he was—
found that his body-covering would not avail him,
but the hearty kinsman of Higelac him had by the hand.

Each was hateful to the other alive.
A body-sore that terrible, awesome one suffered,
for in his shoulder broke an angry wound.
Sinews sprang asunder, and his bone-locker burst.

To Beowulf was granted a battle-balm.
Grendel had to flee then, life-sick,
under into the fen-slope, to go
to that joyless home. He surely knew
he’d reached his life’s end, his days numbered.

Gladness befell all Danes after that slaughter-storm.
Cleansed, the far-comer, prudent and tough-minded,
he protected the hall of Hrothgar from rancor.
He rejoiced over his night-work, over the fame for his courage.

For the East Danes, the tribesman of the Geatish people
had lasted his boast, and likewise soothed all distress,
the anguished sorrow which they’d suffered before,
and for dire necessity had to swallow, an unsmall grief.

Where the battle-brave one had laid hand,
there was a clear-cut keepsake,
an arm and shoulder that was altogether
Grendel’s grip, under the vaulted roof.

Then in the morning, I have heard,
around the gift-hall were many a warrior,
folk-captains who’d traveled from far and near
and over wide-stretched ways to see
the wonder: the tracks of the loathéd one.

None of those gladiators thought sorely on his life-parting,
those who looked upon the gloryless track,
how he weary-hearted went away,
overcome with enmity, into the kelpie-mere,
fated and put to flight the life-track he bore.

There was a sea-surge of blood.
Terrible waves awhirl, all mingled,
and hot gore and battle-fluid welled.
It concealed the death-fated one when he,
devoid of delight, laid down his life in the fen-haven,
laid down his heathen soul, where hell received him.

The house over-echoed. There was much wonder
that the wine-hall withstood those battle-brave ones,
and that it fell not to the ground, that beautiful fold-building,
but it held fast, with iron bands inside,
so skillfully smithed. There fell away from the hall
many meed-benches, as I have heard,
gold adorned, where the grim ones fought.

Wisemen of the Shieldings had never expected that any man,
even the best and the bone-decorated, by common means
might break it, or wreck it with cunning,
unless flame’s embrace swallowed it in the heat.

Then a sound ascended upward,
altogether new, that direly stood the North-Danes
with fear. Everyone there in the walls heard weeping,
a terrible song to sing, the enemy of God
sang victoryless, sore he bewailed, as Hell’s captive.

He held him fast. He who was with might
the strongest of men on that day of this life.
The shelterer would not for anything
let that death bringer go alive,
nor did he consider his living days
otherwise useful to any of his tribesmen.

The good one, Higelach’s kinsman, remembered his evening-speech.
He stood upright and laid hold on him tightly.
Fingers burst. The man-eater made to throw himself out,
and so the hero stepped along with him.

The famous one thought of where he could so reach by flight (a more remote place)
and away there to flee into a fen-retreat.
He knew his fingers were in control of the hostile one’s claws.
What a sorrowful journey that the harm-giver made to Heorot.

The awesome one meant no delay, but he grasped
quickly at first chance a sleeping man,
rent him irresistibly, bit bone joints,
drank blood streams, swallowed huge morsels.
Soon he had consumed all the unliving thing,
the feet and the hands.

Near he stepped further, and took then,
with hands determine, one of the resting warriors.
He reached toward the enemy with his hand.

Quickly he seized with hostile purposes
and sat up against the arm. The keeper of sins
soon found that he had not met, not on middle-earth,
nor any other plane of the world, in another being
a greater handgrip. He became afraid
in his soul. He could not get away.