Intended, his mouth watering in anticipation
Of a lavish feast.
One of the most chilling and startling passages in Beowulf appears when Hrothgar depicts the marshland where Grendel and his mother dwell. In retaliation for Beowulf’s physical victory in his first encounter with Grendel, the defeated monster’s mother makes an assault on Heorot, and Æschere becomes a victim of her vengeful attack of Hrothgar’s palace. Grief-stricken by the loss of his beloved thane, Hrothgar asks Beowulf to venture to visit the underwater dwelling of Grendel and his mother in order to eliminate the root of all the evil that has devastated his land.
Hie dygel lond
warigeað wulfheloþu, windige næssas,
frecne fengelad, ðær fyrgenstream
under næssa genipu niþer gewiteð, 1360
flod under foldan. Nis þæt feor heonon
milgemearces, þæt se mere standeð;
ofer þæm hongiað hrinde bearwas,
wudu wyrtum fæst wæter oferhelmað.
Þær mæg nihta gehwæm niðwundor seon, 1365
fyr on flode. Nō þæs frod leofað
gumena bearna, þæt þone grund wite.
Ðeah þe hæðstapa hundum geswenced,
heorot hornum trum holtwudu sece,
feorran geflymed, ær he feorh seleð, 1370
aldor on ofre, ær he in wille,
hafelan [hydan]; nis þæt heoru stow!
Þonon yðgeblond up astigeð
won to wolcnum, þonne wind styreþ
lað gewidru, oð þæt lyft drysmaþ, 1375
roderas reotað. (ll. 1357b−76a)
Hrothgar’s description of the moorland where Grendel and his mother dwell is a chilling narration that makes any reader of Beowulf shudder: the dreadful landscape that the lines invoke is unmatched by any passage that has ever been written to depict a nightmarish scene the human imagination is capable of envisioning. Here is my Modern English rendition of the above passage:
They inhabit a hidden land—
Wolf-infested slopes, windy headlands, and
A perilous fen-path, where the mountain-stream
Falls down in the mist from the headlands 1360
And flows beneath the earth. Not far from here,
A few miles away, stands the mere,
Over which droop trees covered with frost.
The wood darkens the water with entangled roots.
There every night a fearful wonder is seen— 1365
Fire flaring on the water. None alive among men,
No matter how wise, knows how deep it is.
Fleeing from far off, chased by hounds, a stag
May seek a holt-wood to hide his strong horns;
Yet he will rather give up his life, lingering 1370
On the bank, than plunge his head into the pool
To save his life; that is not a pleasant place!
From there surging waves rise up,
Darkening the clouds, while the wind swirls,
Threatening storms, till the air turns choking 1375
And the sky howls.
Any student of Old English poetry will face the exhilarating and painful moment of reading the last passage of Beowulf. The excruciatingly arduous journey is about to reach its end; and the memory of turning the leaves of the glossary provided by that literary giant, Fr. Klaeber, is about to recede into the past. It is a moment of tremendous relief—entailing a sense of wistfulness and regret over not having to cope with the lines—not for some time, at least. The Beowulf-poet must have felt the same way, as he was reaching the end of his epic, the composition of which must have exhausted him, both emotionally and physically. All this is reflected in the lines that conclude the epic. Beowulf, our hero, is no more; and those who have survived him, whether his thanes, or the listeners of the heroic saga, must mourn the passing of the warrior-king into the realm of the remote past and oblivion.
Þa ymbe hlæw riodan hildedeore,
æþelinga bearn, ealra twelfe, 3170
woldon care cwiðan, [ond] kyning mænan,
wordgyd wrecan ond ymb wer sprecan;
eahtodan eorlscipe ond his ellenweorc
duguðum demdon,— swa hit gedefe bið,
þæt mon his winedryhten wordum herge, 3175
ferhðum frēoge, þonne he forð scile
of lichaman læded weorðan.
Swa begnornodon Geata leode
hlafordes hryre, heorðgeneatas;
cwædon þæt he wære wyruldcyninga 3180
manna mildust ond monðwærust,
leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (ll. 3169−82)
When a student of literature encounters lines like these, he or she should feel that the notes one could ever hope to hear at the end of a work have finally hit the eardrums. Here we find the convergence of what we have wished to hear and what we hear—the complete fusion of what the text has been brewing in our hearts and what we finally have attained after reading so many lines! It is a moment of catharsis; and the lines of Beowulf are finally loosening their grip on our heartstrings:
Then the battle-brave ones rode round the mound—
Inheritors of noble blood, twelve all told— 3170
Uttering words of grief over loss of their lord
In a mournful dirge to commemorate their king.
They lauded his manliness, and spoke highly of
His brave deeds—as it befits a man
To praise his dear lord in words, 3175
While longing springs in his heart, when he
Is finally freed from the confinement of flesh.
So the people of Geatland mourned the death
Of their lord, recalling the warmth of his hearth.
They said that, of all earthly kings, he was 3180
The gentlest of men, the most warm-hearted,
Kindest to his people, and most eager for fame.
When I was reading the very last passage of Beowulf, the above was roughly what I heard in my mind’s ear. I would not call it a translation; the above is only an echo of what dug into my heart while I was reading the concluding lines of the epic. Though falling short of the emotional elevation attained by the lines in the original text, the above was the outcome of my desperate attempt to revive in a modern tongue the most magnificent passage literature has ever produced.
Poetry means condensation of verbal expressions of human thoughts and emotions; and it demands not only succinctness but also accuracy in hitting the right notes that capture all the feelings that have to be expressed. When the Beowulf-poet wrote that the Geatish warriors had built a monument holding the ashes of their lord on a promontory, so that the sailors could see it from afar, it was an indirect way of expressing the poet’s wish that his work would be read and remembered by his posterity for a long time. Here is the convergence of what