Category: North Seas

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Translating the Wanderer

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A map of the world, showing the various cold, temperate, and hot zones; Macrobius, Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis; Germany, 10th cent.; Oxford, Bodleian Library, D’Orville MS 77, f. 100r

The latest in the Chequered Board‘s ongoing series of poetic translations is one of the most famous, and most haunting, poems in Old English literature.

The Wanderer, contained in the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501), is one of a group of nine Old English poems known as the elegies, poems characterized by “a contrasting pattern of loss and consolation, ostensibly based on a specific personal experience or observation, and expressing an attitude towards that experience.”1 In The Wanderer, a litany of loss which extends throughout nearly the entirety of the poem comes to an abrupt halt in its final lines. These concluding moments assure the reader that it shall go well for those who seek consolation with the “father in heaven,” returning to the opening lines of the poem in which we are confronted with a lone traveler seeking to find some kind of favor or honor with his maker. The poem seems to give us resolution, though not one to be enjoyed in the present.

Early in college, long before I had remotely considered the idea of becoming an Anglo-Saxonist, I gave my heart to a very different poem, T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I loved the poem’s frustration with futility, its questions left unanswered, and its dips into existential crisis. The poem impressed me with its lament for the mundaneness of life and concern with ever-passing time: “I shall grow old… I grow old… / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled” (ll. 120-121). The speaker of The Love Song is keenly aware of his status and absurdity – “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker” (l. 84), “Almost, at times, the Fool” (l. 118) – and also of the difficulty of conveying meaning in the modern world – “That is not it at all, / That is not what I meant, at all” (ll. 109-110). The poem leaves us in the dreamscape of mermaids singing on the sea, “and we drown” (l. 131). It is not a happy poem.

Strangely, The Wanderer, written perhaps a thousand years before Eliot penned his Love Song, strikes some of these same chords. The poem begins with the image of a lone traveler with calloused hands, wandering over the seas and on land with a burdened mind. While Prufrock fears the future, the speaker of The Wanderer grieves for a past in which he enjoyed the company of kinsmen and the secure status of servitude to a lord. Images of a golden past, along with the faces of friends, “float” away from the speaker, and he reflects upon the death of all things of this world, offering a rather ordered catalogue of unfortunate events produced by a failing world. To say the least, it is not a happy poem. But it is extremely powerful poetry responding to the same concerns with which modern poets wrestle. Its world of mead-halls and thanes and warrior-glory is inexplicably also our world of suffering and futility and stagnation.

My main goal in offering this translation is to do some measure of justice to the beauty and depth of the original. I have stayed as close to the original language as possible, hopefully creating a work which sounds poetic to the modern ear while retaining some of its strangeness. C.S. Lewis famously wrote of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring: “here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart.”2 Whether or not one believes these words are true of The Lord of the Rings, I hope you will agree that they are true of The Wanderer. The world of The Wanderer may be grey and rimmed with frost, but it is also a world of exquisite beauty, a world where the grief of the human soul is laid bare – the soul fully exposed in all of its wretchedness, yet not wholly defeated.

Maj-Britt Frenze
PhD Student
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

1 S.B. Greenfield, “Old English Elegies,” in Continuations and Beginning: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. Eric Gerald Stanely (London: Nelson, 1996), 143.
2 C.S. Lewis, in Time and Tide, August 14, 1954, and October 22, 1955. Reprinted in Lesley Walmsley, ed., C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces (London: HarperCollins, 2000).

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Resurrecting the Phoenix

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Phoenix; bestiary, England, 2nd quarter of the 13th century; BL Harley MS 4751, f. 45r

Few mythological creatures have remained as present in Western cultural imagination as the fabulous and fiery phoenix. Phoenix mythology quickly became a poetic muse for classical authors from Ovid (Metamorphoses 15) to Lactantius (De ave phoenice). This mythographic and poetic tradition is later adapted in the Old English Phoenix, a poem found in the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501). For my contribution to The Chequered Board’s ongoing series on Anglo-Saxon poetry in translation, I selected to translate a section from the Exeter Book Phoenix poem (lines 1-49), which I have titled “Æþelast Lond,” and which describes the heavenly home of the mythological phoenix.

My translation of the Exeter Book Phoenix is—first and foremost—a “creative” adaption of the Old English original. As a translation, “Æþelast Lond” is an interpretive rendition of the Exeter Book poem and should not be taken as a literal translation of the Old English, but rather as an experiment with artistic translation as a means of interpreting Anglo-Saxon verse. Throughout the piece I try to remember the certain poetics specific to the Exeter Phoenix, in addition to the literary traditions of phoenix mythology and the mysterious paradise in which the phoenix bird lives.

Hæbbe ic gefrugnen  þætte is feor heonan
eastdælum on  æþelast londa,
firum gefræge.  Nis se foldan sceat
ofer middangeard  mongum gefere
folcagendra,  ac he afyrred is
þurh meotudes meaht  manfremmendum.
Wlitig is se wong eall,  wynnum geblissad
mid þam fægrestum  foldan stencum.

I have heard that hence in faroff dales
Are Eastern fabled fields,
A fay realm known yet impossible and impassible
To human folk of earthen mold,
Guarded and disguised and determined,
Purged of evil and impurity.
A place of winsome wonder, blessed with edenic bliss
And the fairest fragrance of paradise.
(“Æþelast Lond,” ll. 1-8)

The Exeter Book Phoenix is itself a translation of Lactantius’ De ave phoenice—from Latin hexameter into Old English alliterative verse—which I have here translated into modern English free verse. Anglo-Saxon poetic and homiletic styles work in tandem throughout the Exeter Book poem, as Janie Steen and others have long noticed. It can be noted that the first line of my translation “I have heard that hence in faroff dales” (1), metrically echoes, even mimics, the Old English alliterative verse structure. While there is a somewhat contrived, mechanical quality to this line, I wanted to begin by paying metrical homage to the original poetics, before swiftly departing from any strict metrical parameters. However, despite that only this line attempts to slavishly resurrect Old English metrics, alliterative adornment remains a consistent stylistic feature throughout “Æþelast Lond”.

I attempt to resurrect the homiletic style of the Exeter Book Phoenix in my rather literal rendition of the ne…ne formulaic sections of this Old English “translation” (such as lines 15-19 and 22-25), which is in part an expansion on the nec…nec formula from Lactantius’ De ave phoenice. These formulae, Latin and Old English, are also popular in contemporaneous Old English and Anglo-Latin homilies. The cadence of this section in the original produces a masterful blend of Old English homiletic style and alliterative verse. For this reason, I felt this section deserved a more literal translation, with as much attention and adherence to metrics, style and diction as possible, in order to reproduce the rhythm and rhetorical effect produced by this simple, formulaic repetition.

Moreover, diction—for any poet or translator—is a point that merits some brief discussion. Again, I begin with a higher frequency of words etymologically derived from Old English, such as “hence” (1), “folk” (4), “mold” (4), “winsome” (7), etc. However, by the ninth line of the poem, my diction shifts toward the Latinate and ecclesiastical, and terms such as “celestial” (9), “creation” (11), revelation” 12), “angelic” (13), etc., in order to reflect the spiritual concerns and homiletic tone of the Exeter Book original poem.

The eastern wong or “plain” where the phoenix lives is heofon “heaven” in the Old English original, and thus in my translation, I focus my attention on the mystical space and mysterious home of the phoenix, central to this section of the poem. In the Exeter poem, two traditions of phoenix lore come together regarding where this mythical bird originates. The classical description of the phoenix as coming from the East (usually Egypt—at times India or Arabia) derives from Herodotus’ famous Greek account in his Histories, which lays the foundation for much of classical phoenix mythography. The Old English echoes this origin for the bird’s home: Hæbbe ic gefrugnen þætte is feor heonan/ eastdælum on  æþelast londa (1-2) “I have heard that there is the best of lands far hence in the eastern parts.” The other tradition, which becomes syncretized with the classical accounts, comes from the Abrahamic tradition, and describes the phoenix as a bird of paradise.

M. R. Niehoff has noted commentaries on the Midrash and Talmud, which describe the phoenix (chol) as refusing to eat the forbidden fruit and thereafter gaining everlasting life along with the chance to remain in paradise. The paradisal quality is present also in the Old English, as the phoenix’s home is a place not of this world: wlitig is se wong eall,  wynnum geblissad/ mid þam fægrestum  foldan stencum. “The plain is all shimmering, blessed with joys and with the fairest smells of the earth” (7-8). As Christianity developed during the late classical and early medieval periods, phoenix mythology became assimilated into Christianity, often recast in allegorical association with Christ and his resurrection. These allegories are often coupled with the Abrahamic interpretation of the phoenix as a bird of paradise, featured prominently in the Old English Phoenix.

“Æþelast Lond” highlights Old English homiletic and poetic styles, combines Abrahamic and classical traditions of phoenix mythography, and raises questions about semantical versus literal translation. It is my hope that, rather than simply offering another slavish translation of the Old English, “Æþelast Lond” encourages others to engage their creativity when reading and translating Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Stay tuned for additional forthcoming translations from the Exeter Book Phoenix, reborn as modern English poems!

Richard Fahey
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

Works Cited

Hill, John Spencer. “The Phoenix.” Religion and Literature 16.2 (1994): 61-66.

Niehoff, M. R. “The Phoenix in Rabbinic Literature” The Harvard Theological  Review 89.3 (1996).]: 245-265.

Petersen, Helle Falcher. “The Phoenix: The Art of Literary Recycling” NM 101 (2000): 375–386.

Steen, Janie. Verse and Virtuosity: the adaptation of Latin rhetoric in Old English         poetry. University of Toronto Press Inc.: Toronto, ON, 2008.

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Poetic Translation and The Wife’s Lament

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Mourning in the Anglo-Saxon imagination: the death of Malalehel, mourned by his daughters; Genesis A, England, late 10th century; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius MS 11

The Wife’s Lament is a poem about a zombie. It is also a riddle about a sorrowful woman who has been separated from her husband and exiled into the wilderness. Or is it a song about a vengeful nun’s curse? This spellbinding piece of Anglo-Saxon verse from the Exeter Book does not allow us to settle upon any of the above scenarios, and neither does it allow us to rule any of them out. The poem is remarkable as a rare example of a first-person narrative in a female voice, and its enigmatic quality brings scholars and translators back to it perennially in order to appreciate the beauty and significance of the poem and shed more light on its mysteries. The ambiguity of the poem also makes it a joy to translate, as it opens a space for unfettered creativity. For my contribution to The Chequered Board’s ongoing series on Anglo-Saxon poetry in translation, I have taken on The Wife’s Lament as an exploratory exercise in order to experiment with creative translation as a way of interpreting Old English poetry.

In his introduction to The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, Greg Delanty notes that “We tend to think of Anglo-Saxon poetry as issuing from the uniform voice of the great poet Anonywulf, especially once the poems are translated by the learned Master Olde English” (xv). The uniformity of many Old English poems in translation is due to the collective goal of many translators in producing as accurate a translation as possible. While this style of rendering an ancient poem into modern English is essential for learners of Old English to grasp the sense of the original language, it does not leave much room for the creative or interpretive voice of the translator. In the hands of modern poets like Burton Raffel and Eavan Bolan, however, an Old English poem can take on a new life of its own. When Raffel sets the woman’s exile in “a convent / Of wooden nuns” (15-16) he draws a comparison between the claustrophobic feeling of the woman and practices of enclosure surrounding Anglo-Saxon nuns. Boland highlights the possibility that the poem’s conclusion is an aggressive speech act by translating the wife’s speech as an explicit curse: “Let him be cast from his land alone/ By an icy cliff in a cold storm” (64-65). These versions of The Wife’s Lament add welcome voices to the conversation surrounding the poem, and show that poetic translation that experiments beyond a literal interpretation of the poem can be a legitimate way to approach its complexities from a fresh and intellectually productive perspective.

In my own approach, I wanted to address Delanty’s complaint by using a form that diverged from the imitation of alliterative verse often found in translations of Anglo-Saxon poetry. I settled on the ballad stanza because its regular and repeated rhyme scheme allowed me to approximate some of the sonic effects of alliteration, while also referencing other aspects of the Wife’s Lament that makes it stand out from other Old English poems. An example of a few ballad stanzas from the translation is excerpted below, as well as a reading of the original Anglo-Saxon verse:

I sadly sing this song of mine,
Of my journey of misery.
I tell the tale as I grow old
True now as will ever be.

My exile-journey is full of woe
Since my lord went out to the deep,
My dawn-cares have been full of him
And all I have done is weep.               (1-8)

Though the late medieval and early modern ballad stanza seems like an anachronistic fit with an Anglo-Saxon poem, the musical verse form represents a centuries-old tradition of female narratives of sorrow, from “Bonny Barabara Allan” to Dorothy Parker’s “The Dark Girl’s Rhyme.” Instead of simply categorizing the Wife’s Lament with all other Anglo-Saxon poems or Old English elegies, the ballad encourages readers to consider the poem in a more thematic genre category.

I also wanted to do homage to Raffel’s brilliant translation by imagining this song as the tale of a woman who is forced into a religious community when her husband leaves on a long sea journey, and is not recalled upon his return. She feels exiled and alone because she has been separated from her kin, and the religious life seems foreign to her. The final section of the text constitutes advice for others in her situation to cope with the monastic way of life. Though the translation is still left open to a variety of scenarios, I have made allusions to Raffel’s “convent of wooden nuns” through the use of “cloister” (17) and the notion of spending one’s time in enclosure in contemplation of heaven (the “Joyous House” [53]) and Christ (“Love” [56]).

The resulting translation is by no means an accurate or aesthetically comparable rendering of the original piece, but I hope it can encourage others to flex their creativity when approaching the translation of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The corpus of Old English poetry is a rich and diverse group of poems, and we can only enhance our appreciation of these works by hearing them retold in a multiplicity of voices that highlight the zombies, nuns, wilderness, and curses in each of them.

Leanne MacDonald
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

Works Cited

Boland, Eavan. “The Wife’s Lament.” The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, ed. Greg Delanty and Michael Matto. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

Delanty, Greg and Michael Matto, The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

Raffel, Burton. “A Woman’s Message and the Husband’s Message.” Prairie Schooner 32.2 (1958): 125-127. Print.