Gobsmacked I sit. Thiefguest would I be
of this well-wrought wordthing - too precious for taking.
This is, for me, a perfect distillation of scholarship and poetic skill. The extra layer of hinted human metaphor makes my happy grin broader, because it is no more and no less than the original gives me. "This" I told myself as I read it "is Translation".
But then I have the Exeter Book (in Kevin Crossley-Holland's less scholarly version) at my elbow, alongside Catullus and Helen Waddell. This does point out (to me) the difference between reading a translation from a language with which one is familiar and one whose original language is "foreign". RPFL is a thing apart, like TEFL.
Therefore I am going to have to apply two slightly differing sets of criteria for my judgements; in some cases that of the translation will be overshadowed by appreciation of the poem. But this one scores bigtime on both sides of the caesura.
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