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  #1  
Unread 07-27-2001, 07:19 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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We've had very little accentual verse on this board, and for some time I've wanted post some of our Beowulf. So here's the opening, translated by Alan Sullivan:

So! The Spear Danes in days of old
were led by a lord famed for his forays.
We heard of that prince’s power and prowess.
Often Scyld Scefing ambushed enemies,
took their mead-benches, mastered their troops,
though first he was found forlorn and alone.
His early sorrows were swiftly consoled:
he grew under heaven, grew to a greatness
renowned among men of neighboring lands,
his rule recognized over the whale-road,
Danegeld granted him. That was a good king!
~
Afterward God gave him an heir,
a lad in the hall to lighten all hearts.
The Lord had seen how long and sorely
Denmark had languished for lack of a leader.
Beow was blessed with boldness and honor;
throughout the North his name became known.
A soldierly son should strive in his youth
to do great deeds, give generous gifts
and defend his father. Then in old age,
when strife besets him, his comrades will stand
and his folk follow. Through fair dealing
a prince shall prosper in any kingdom.
~
Still hale on the day ordained for his journey,
Scyld went to dwell with the World’s Warder.
His liegemen bore his bier to the beach:
so he had willed while wielding his words
as lord of the land, beloved by all.
With frost on its fittings, a lordly longboat
rode in the harbor, ring-bowed and ready.
They propped their prince, the gold-giver,
in the hollow hull heaped with treasures,
the famous man at the foot of the mast.
No ship ever sailed more splendidly stocked
with war-weapons, arms and armor.
About his breast the booty was strewn,
keepsakes soon to be claimed by the sea.
So he was sent as a child chosen
to drift on the deep. Now the Danes granted
treasures no less than those they had taken,
and last they hoisted high overhead
a golden banner as they gave the great one
back to the Baltic with heavy hearts
and mournful minds. No man can say,
though clever in council or strong under sky,
who might have landed that shipload of loot.
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  #2  
Unread 07-27-2001, 07:15 PM
robert mezey robert mezey is offline
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That's marvelous stuff, better than Heaney's
version---sturdier, more musical verse. Yes,
some discussion of accentual meters would be
useful and fun. More tomorrow.
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  #3  
Unread 07-28-2001, 07:16 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Alan has written a scholarly afterward to accompany the Longman textbook. Here are the notes on alliteration and meter.

Like rhyme, alliteration affords both mnemonic aid and aural pleasure. The alliterative rule of Old English, when followed strictly, requires that both stresses in half-line “a” alliterate with the first stress in half-line “b.” As he began to work with the text, Tim eased the rule a bit. He did place three stressed alliterations in the majority of his lines, but he placed them in any of the four possible configurations (xxxy, xxyx, xyxx, yxxx), and sometimes he accepted alliteration on a secondary accent. Where there were only two alliterations, he usually bound them to others in a preceding or succeeding line. Often he used two pairs of alliterative words on the stress points of a line, arranged in one permutation or another: xxyy, xyyx, xyxy. In such cases he might also incorporate one or more x and/or y alliterations in adjoining lines. Our objective was to weave a web of sound, not to follow a mechanical rule. And the Beowulf poet himself indulged in such variations, though less frequently. At times we would even assonate in place of alliteration, as in line 2273, describing the dragon: “Naked and hateful / in a raiment of flame.”
Alliteration also serves a metrical function by highlighting and reinforcing the strongest stresses. There is a great deal of secondary stress in both the original poem and our translation. Without alliteration, the beat of each half line would be harder to discern. Since Old English was as rich in alliterating consonants as Italian is in rhyming vowels, the practice of alliteration came easily and naturally in its context. Modern English, with its vast vocabulary, still affords ample scope for the practice.

Meter

The following are Timothy Murphy’s comments on the matter of meter: In 1969 I sat at the feet of John Pope, the scholar who had spent a lifetime puzzling out what Beowulf must have sounded like. We students sat on the carpet quaffing Norwegian mead from drinking horns as the old man beat on the arm of his chair and belted out the funeral scene. I’m sure I was as entranced as Auden was when he heard Tolkien recite the text at Oxford 45 years earlier. And I knew instinctively that there must be a way to smuggle some of that music across the dark bourne that divides Modern from Old English.
Beowulf’s meter, though stressed, is also a quantitative meter, and as such, it is a distant cousin to the meters of classical languages. In strongly quantitative meters like those of Latin or Greek, syllables differ markedly in duration, but they are spoken with relatively little variation in emphasis. Quantitative meters are therefore based on measures of time. By contrast, the meters of Modern English are qualitative. Our rhythms are shaped by variations in emphasis, which are more distinct in our language than most others. The syllables of our speech differ so markedly in stress that their duration loses rhythmic significance.
Our translation is written in alliterative, accentual tetrameter. It is well-suited for recitation in verse paragraphs of isochronous (equally-timed) lines. But just as we have adapted the scop’s rule for more flexible alliteration, we have also arranged our stressed and unstressed syllables in patterns rather different from those of Old English. We are not experts in Old English meter, and we would not attempt to duplicate or imitate all its attributes. Such an attempt would in any event surely prove infelicitous, given the evolution of grammar, inflection, et cetera since the Dark Ages. But we have tried to recapture the excitement of a poetry meant for performance, a poetry in which the half-lines march forward with definite duration, whether they are as simple as “hold now, Earth,” or as complex as “in the tumult of combers.”
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  #4  
Unread 07-28-2001, 01:07 PM
graywyvern graywyvern is offline
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pretty good adaptation of the meter, there (i
can't vouch for the translating). there's only
a few places where a third-foot anapest conjures
the ghost of doggerel & the other lines are strong
enough to carry it. except for the last line, where
it's a little too prominent..
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  #5  
Unread 07-29-2001, 11:34 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Actually gw, I can't get the Sphere to duplicate the typography properly. We quadruple space every line at the medial caesura (as do most versions of the Anglo-Saxon), so each tetrameter is really read as a pair of dimeters. I've got a lot of this memorized, and in the last couple of years, I'm performed it for many audiences. Nothing sounds doggerelly to my ear at least; but the beginning, which is far from the best part of the poem, may be too short a swatch for you to get the feel. Here is the funeral, translated by Tim:

There the king’s kinsmen built him a bier,
wide and well-made just as he willed it.
They hung it with helmets, shields and hauberks,
then laid in its midst their beloved lord,
renowned among men. Lamenting their loss,
his warriors woke the most woeful fire
to flare on the bluff. Fierce was the burning,
woven with weeping, and wood-smoke rose
black over the blaze, blown with a roar.
The fire-wind faltered and flames dwindled,
hot at their heart the broken bone-house.
Sunken in spirit at Beowulf’s slaying,
the Geats gathered grieving together.
Her hair waving, a woebegone woman
sang and resang her dirge of dread,
foretelling a future fraught with warfare,
kinfolk sundered, slaughter and slavery
even as Heaven swallowed the smoke.
~
High on the headland they heaped his grave-mound
which seafaring sailors would spy from afar.
Ten days they toiled on the scorched hilltop,
the cleverest men skillfully crafting
a long-home built for the bold in battle.
They walled with timbers the trove they had taken,
sealing in stone the circlets and gems,
wealth of the worm-hoard gotten with grief,
gold from the ground gone back to Earth
as worthless to men as when it was won.
Then sorrowing swordsmen circled the barrow,
twelve of his earls telling their tales,
the sons of nobles sadly saluting
deeds of the dead. So dutiful thanes
in liege to their lord mourn him with lays
praising his peerless prowess in battle
as it is fitting when life leaves the flesh.
Heavy-hearted his hearth-companions
grieved for Beowulf, great among kings,
mild in his mien, most gentle of men,
kindest to kinfolk yet keenest for fame.

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  #6  
Unread 07-29-2001, 01:06 PM
Golias Golias is offline
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Tim, if you copy a string of three, four or even more html non-breaking space tags into your clipboard and paste it where you want it in each line you may get what you want -- like this:

There the king’s kinsmenBANNED POST BANNED POSTbuilt him a bier,
wide and well-madeBANNED POSTBANNED POST just as he willed it.
They hung it with helmets,BANNED POST shields and hauberks,
then laid in its midst BANNED POSTBANNED POST their beloved lord,
renowned among men.BANNED POST Lamenting their loss,
his warriors wokeBANNED POST the most woeful fire
to flare on the bluff.BANNED POST Fierce was the burning,
woven with weeping,BANNED POST BANNED POSTand wood-smoke rose
black over the blaze,BANNED POST blown with a roar.

G.

PS: Placing spaces between the six characters of the tag to make it show up here, it's & n b s p ; but when you use it, run all the characters together, no spaces at all, even between repetitions of the tag.



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited July 29, 2001).]
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  #7  
Unread 07-29-2001, 05:28 PM
robert mezey robert mezey is offline
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Surprising, how much force the ancient poem
still has---a tribute to the skill of Tim's
and Alan's translation. The funeral passage
can still bring tears to the eyes. I would
disagree slightly with one comment: though it's
true that our meters are all qualitative, the
length of vowels, that is, quantity, still does
matter and does affect our rhythms, as Pound
insisted more than once. We can't really hear
quantitative meters in English (at least I
can't), but we certainly hear quantity, and it
is a crucial element in making good verse. (As
Tim knows in practice, if not in theory.)
Another point worth discussing: accentual meter
is easily confused with loose iambic, but they
are not, or usually not, the same thing. Loose
iambic makes use of the metrical expectations
of accentual-syllabic meter; and accentuals are
not supposed to allow themselves that liberty.
And I think that it's not difficult to hear the
difference between loose iambic and accentual.
Listen to some of Frost's masterly loose iambics,
e.g. A Roadside Stand or The Runaway,
and then listen to this, a lovely thing in pure
accentuals (by Robert Bridges):

LONDON SNOW

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
~~~~Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
~~~~Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
~~~~All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
~~~~And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled---marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
~~~~The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning sounds came thin and spare.
~~~~Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
~~~~Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
"O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!"
~~~~With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
~~~~When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
~~~~For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of somber men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
~~~~But even for them awhile, no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the
~~~~~~~~~~~charm they have broken.

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  #8  
Unread 07-30-2001, 08:24 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Fascinating, Robert. It always amazes me that Bridges is so nearly forgotten, until I consider that he lives only in my anthologies, and that I have no book of his, an oversight I always swear I shall attend to. Yes, it's flawless accentual verse. I might have attempted to do the same thing in a fourth the space, and failed. Have you any notion: to what degree did he influence Frost and Hardy, who in their "loose iambics" surpass him?
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  #9  
Unread 07-30-2001, 08:31 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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By the way, you're right. What I don't know in theory I hope I know in practice. I'm always a bit abashed when I encounter a true metrist like you or Steele, but the length of vowels I learned at my grandmother's knee, and the strength and breadth of strung together consonants--well, I'm Irish. But so for that matter is Heaney.
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  #10  
Unread 07-31-2001, 08:15 AM
SydAllan SydAllan is offline
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I have a web page at www.jagular.com/beowulf/ which shows various translations of 5 sections from the Beowulf poem: lines 194-224a, 791-819a, 1537-1569, 1584b-1590 and 2672b-2708a. I am wondering whether I could publish those lines from this translation on my page.

Would that be okay with Tim Murphy and Alan Sullivan? If it is, then where can I find those 5 sections of their translation?

Syd Allan
SydAllan@jagular.com
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