We're urged to get back to the original, etc., and why not. The list
is supposed to have a focus around contemporary and innovative poetry,
and some of you cutting-edge folk might be getting pissed off by now,
but I think it's fairly selfevident that new poetries can and are
regularly informed by the poetries of the past (amongst other things).
So (to be Heaneyesque): c'mon Beowulf.
One of many great bits for me is this, for the way the sounds evolve
(and I'm sorry I can't do the fancy characters):
Tha waes sael ond mael
thaet to healle gang Healfdenes sunu
And without any pretence at translation, this is what the words seem
to mean to me (derived from Alexander's textual glossary):
Then was season and time
that to hall goes Healfdenes son
(Swanton's plain prose gives: "Then was occasion and time for the son
of Halfdene to go into the hall". OK)
The strength of rhythm in that original is self-evident: two thumps
per half-line, lovely stuff. And through it, on each of these thumps,
a developing sound-pattern: sael > mael > healle > Healf[dene]. Subtle
stuff? I rather think not - but well-made, tough and memorable. A
small object-lesson to prentice scops.
How might we translate it into a contemoprary poem, were that what
we'd said, in a rash moment, we'd do? Well, we should reject Swanton
as obviously prose, conveying the literal sense but not the physical
presence. That wasn't his job. If we were Zukofsky, we might go for
phonics, such as this:
That was seal and meal
that to hall gang Halfdanes son
(or even, and why not:
Thaw as sail and mail
that to heal gang half Dean's son)
We've kept some of the thumps and vowel-progression I admire so much,
tho obviously we've lost the season/occasion/time bit. But we can
accept "gang=goes" as not too outlandish (not too hard in this part of
the country, cf Griffith's North East Dialect) and it's clear how much
of the 2nd line we can still make to work.
Here's where I duck out, I'm afraid, and say I'm happy enough with
original and Alexander-driven literal wordglosses, sorry, someone
else'll have to pick up the prize on this occasion. Someone who can
keep something of that basic impulse, and make a meaning which is an
approximation at least of the original, or maybe, a remaking of the
original for our time.
But I don't think it's Heaney:
Then the due time arrived
for Halfdane's son to proceed to the hall.
To be frank, tho this is inoffensive and gentle enough on the ear, it
doesn't seem any advance on Swanton's prose to me. The rhythm is so
diluted as to be useless; there's little detectable sound structuring.
Even the literal meaning has been meddled with by words like "proceed"
- a word out of policemen's notebooks, I'd've thought, a dilution. If
something's being added here, to make a bright new meaning for our
time, I'm certainly missing it.
What all this is doing - for me, anyway - is sending me back to the
original poem, which is fun, and getting us talking a bit about it, so
good old Seamus for doing that, I guess. But no more puff, please.
RC
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