Arthuriana

Just a year after the publication of The Fall of Arthur, Christopher Tolkien now brings out his father’s translation of Beowulf, together with some short pieces. This first edition of a much awaited work is enlarged by a partial commentary on the poem taken from Tolkien’s lecture notes which he used when teaching in Oxford. Until now, Tolkien has been chiefly remembered among Beowulf scholars for his famous 1936 British Academy lecture, ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics.’ He published only one other piece on the poem, his ‘Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf,’ in Wrenn’s 1940 edition of Clark Hall’s translation (1911). Those remarks are essential reading in relation to the present volume; they explain the translator’s taste for rhythmical prose based on natural speech patterns, but also for a somewhat archaic diction and grammar (thou and thee, occasional use of verb endings in –eth, and inversion of word order as in ‘Then about the tomb rode warriors valiant’).

Tolkien was indeed qualified to comment on the theory and practice of translation, since he had completed his own prose version of Beowulf by April 1926 (2). But ‘completed’ was always a relative term for him, in both his scholarly and his fictional works, and he revised the text several times. Around 1940–42, he asked his son, then aged 15–17 (Christopher can’t recall exactly when it was), to help him by typing out a clean copy, part of which had already been typed by the author, the rest being handwritten. Christopher’s typescript is thus the base of the present edition, and Tolkien, as usual, wrote on it, making some fresh revisions.

Christopher’s Preface (8 pages) explains the nature and purpose of the volume. In the Introduction (11 pages), he examines the manuscripts, including his own typescript. He also provides Notes on the text (24 pages). The translation itself, in prose with numbered lines, takes up 93 pages. The numbering is internal, not related to the lines of the Old English poem (Tolkien used Klaeber’s edition, as noted on [End Page 151] p. xii), though for ease of reference these are referred to in the Commentary (marked *). A change in the line divisions in the American edition, from page 21 onwards, has led to a regrettable confusion in the Commentary, where the references to the translation are based on the British edition, which is four lines longer. While this is of no consequence when reading the translation, unfortunately the Commentary in both editions refers to the British line numbers; this is bound to confuse readers of the American edition.

Based on Tolkien’s lectures, the Commentary is very extensive, its 217 pages making up the largest section of the book; Christopher’s asides are placed in square brackets to avoid confusion. Despite its length, it is not meant to be complete; in fact it covers only two thirds of Beowulf, stopping at the ‘Lay of the Last Survivor.’ Nor does it by any means represent the full extent of Tolkien’s thoughts; Christopher has simply selected comments designed to explain and justify certain points of translation. Even Tolkien found some Old English verses difficult, subject to interpretation, and therefore open to various possible renderings. Many different authors have indeed felt drawn to publish their own versions of Beowulf—in English alone, there have been over 80 since 1805—though not everyone has been able to rely on the kind of intimate knowledge of the original that Tolkien had.

The last 60 pages of the book contain several fictional items by Tolkien, based on Beowulf. Chief among these is a short prose story called Sellic Spell (‘Wondrous Tale’; see line 2109 of the Old English poem), dating from the early 1940s. Two versions are given and compared, plus Tolkien’s partial translation of his own story into Old English...