Squatter--oink away to your heart's content! It is a delight to see that this thread is not dead. I went looking for it last night and couldn't find it in the first 2 pages of topics. I wanted this one in particular because it seemed an antidote to the latest news. I felt in need of enjoining a fellowship in quest of sanity.
So, here's a question--what would Tolkien think about Heany's (sp?) recent translation of
Beowulf? Perhaps this was covered in the previous contributions, but I am in urgent need of sleep and unwilling to take time to re-read (just spent 3 hours installing hard/software for broadband).
I did receive one of the books I ordered, but right now cannot find it nor do I recall its title.
Squatter quoted Tolkien:
Quote:
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You may prefer the brand new, the lively and the snappy. But whatever may be the case with other poets of past ages (with Homer, for instance) the author of Beowulf did not share this preference. If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made.
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I wish I could articulate the effect that reading his essays has upon me. The humor, the plain hobbit sense, the sublime discernment ...
That quote also, in my neophyte type opinion, is another way of saying we should take care not to presume upon our assumptions--"We're better 'cause we be modern and cool", or because we ascribe to some new flavor of the month school of critical thought. Perhaps it is because the hour is late, and I am suffering the consequences of overstimulation, but I would stretch the context of that quote to include Tolkien's disdain for the presumption that we know better than the original creators--as he illustrated in the Elves and Men courting with the doom of trying to create like Eru.
Okay, having jumped off that cliff, I am going to bed a wee bit contenteder [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] than when I started.
And sometimes, a "wee" is as good as a mile.
Peace.