“BRO!”
A new translation of Beowulf
As of 2020, there are already 688 translations of this Old English epic. Why another? Franz Kafka once said that “If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books… A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.” And sometimes a new translation can be this “axe”.
With that in mind, I bought the new Headley translation of Beowulf I recently discovered at Barnes & Noble. (Seamus Heaney’s 1999 translation had first broken the ice to this thousand-year-old poem for me almost 20 years ago). Now I began reading it again, by candlelight, to try and re-capture the ancient mead-hall in which it must have been written.
But just when I began to break the “frozen sea” and re-enter this brave new world, a plaintive cry from my beloved wife shattered my chant, calling me to bed at 1 AM. I climbed the stairs with the strange translation of the opening line brewing in my head:
“Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!”
In Anglo-Saxon, the attention-grabbing first word (“Hwaet!”) has been variously translated as “What!” “So!” and “Listen!” — -but never before as “Bro!” I rather like it. (As an oral art form, this medieval poem was chanted around a roaring fire with mugs of mead — so it needed an imperative to call all hearers to attention).
So, Bro! What are you chanting (or reading) this summer?
