Title Beowulf Series --- Author Unknown Translator J.R.R. Tolkien Cover Art J.R.R. Tolkien Publisher HarperCollins - 2014 First Printing Between the 8th and the early 11th centuries Category Mythology Warnings None Main Characters Beowulf, Grendel, the dragon Main Elements Giants, dragons

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication.

This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book.

From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel's terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot.

But the commentary in this book includes also much from those lectures in which, while always anchored in the text, he expressed his wider perceptions. He looks closely at the dragon that would slay Beowulf 'snuffling in baffled rage and injured greed when he discovers the theft of the cup'; but he rebuts the notion that this is 'a mere treasure story', 'just another dragon tale'. He turns to the lines that tell of the burying of the golden things long ago, and observes that it is 'the feeling for the treasure itself, this sad history' that raises it to another level. 'The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously real. The "treasure" is not just some lucky wealth that will enable the finder to have a good time, or marry the princess. It is laden with history, leading back into the dark heathen ages beyond the memory of song, but not beyond the reach of imagination.

'Sellic Spell, a 'marvellous tale', is a story written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the 'historical legends' of the Northern kingdoms.

I was doing a dual reading challenge, first, I was doing a year's worth of dragon themed books, but I was also part of a reading group and we had what was called a "BINGO" challenge where there are 25 squares each with a different category like "female author" or "pre-1918". To hit that pre-1918 square I decided to go old, very old, and read Beowulf. Of course I couldn't read it in it's original Old English form. Since I needed a translation, decided to go with someone I knew, none other than Tolkien himself.

Tolkien chose to translate the poem into prose, which I appreciated. Translating poetry is extremely hard, you usually need to sacrifice the original tone and meaning to get the rhythm and rhyme. Sacrificing the second two, while losing some of the beauty of the original, means that the translation could be more literal and closer to what the original writer meant. Or at least as close as one could come in translating something this old, as explained in the Commentary, but I'll get to that later.

The poem itself is relatively short, and I was a bit surprised at how much time was spent with the characters just sitting around the Hall drinking and, for all intents and purposes, reciting their CV's and why Beowulf thought he was the right guy to take on Grendel that was terrorizing Heorot, and then after the defeat of the the monster, drinking some more and having Hrothgar laying praise and gifts on the great warrior. The fight itself doesn't take very long. And the dragon? I was so close to the end of the poem I was begining to wonder if maybe I was wrong about there being a dragon at all, even though there's one on the cover. But he's there, if a little brief, and not only is the dragon slayed, but he also ends Beowulf's story too. It's worth a read if you like folklore, mythology, history, dragons, warriors and just want to get your English literature classics covered. Since I've been watching the Vikings TV series I was able to envision what everyone would look and sound like.

Now there were a few things that jumped out at me as being weird, like how much they spoke of the Christian God. My understanding was that this was essentially a Norse tale that takes place in Denmark. However it was written by a Christian poet in England in a time when Christianity was taking over but had not yet erased all memories and traditions of the pagan past. So you get this kind of funny mix of Christian and Norse culture. See, reading the commentary, which is many times longer than the poem itself, is illuminating and helps to explain those things. It can be a little boring, and I'll admit I'm no linguist so skimmed the bits where Tolkien discussed the merits of using word X instead of word Y to translate the Old English word. But when he went back to history to hold up his arguments, pointing out that given this bit of cultural tradition, or that historical event word Y is better than word X, it was quite interesting. He tried to sort out what was historical (Heorot is real) and the mythological (Beowulf is fictional). I thought I would skim the commentaries but in the end, I gave it my full attention. It wouldn't be the source I would have picked for learning about the time period, but within the context of picking the poem itself apart and following those threads, I learned a fair amount. A little disjointed but still interesting. Especially the fact that there are indeed parts of it that make no sense, probably errors introduced by those transcribing the document, either by mistake or intentionally making changes. At which point you have to question other things that have been transcribed and translated over the centuries, one obvious one is the Bible. People put so much stock in every single word of it, but you have to wonder, did some sleepy scribe make a mistake one day? Did someone translating a passage not understand the original language well enough and substituted a word that means something completely different from the original intent? Did someone with his own agenda slightly modify a paragraph here or there to make his own point? It might be the word of God but it was put on paper by human hands.

Then comes the Sellic Spell, which I thought would be some kind of magical incantation, but the term "sellic spell" essentially translates to a kind of fairy tale. Here Tolkien basically takes out the historical aspects of the tale and mixes in some more folkloric aspects and comes up a story about "Beewulf" who battles a monster called "Grinder" with the help of a couple of other warriors and their magical weapons. Kind of a fun rewrite into a pure fairy tale form.

It was admittedly not the most exciting read (and to be honest, Lord of the Rings has it's own slow sections if you think about it), but I'm glad I read it and now I feel like a gap in my fantasy (and English) literature has just been filled. I mean I'd heard the names Beowulf and Grendel before but never knew the real story. Maybe next time I do a dragon reading year I'll go pure Norse with the tale of Sigmund and the rest of the Volsung Saga.