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ARTS AND LETTERS

OF BEOWULF
A COMMENTARY, AND A FEW MORE LEAVES
OF TOLKIENS TREE
MARC HUDSON
The original Beowulf manuscript is part of a curious assemblage: the Nowell
Codexsome 110 leaves of ink on vellum copied and compiled in the eleventh century. This codex later came into the possession of the seventeenthcentury antiquarian, Robert Cotton, and almost perished in the fire at the
Ashburnam House in 1731. Bound in the Nowell Codex with Beowulf were
three Old English works of prose and another of poetry, the poetic fragment Judith. Anglo Saxon scholars agree that these works share a common elementthey are all wonder tales and give report of marvelous creatures, anthropophagi, dragons, giants, and a sword-wielding woman. It is
not unlikely that our great Old English epic found its way to future readers
through both the vagaries of chance and the appetite of monks for fabulous
narratives.
The tome currently under review, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, has a cover bearing J. R. R. Tolkien in notably larger font than the
gilt lettering of Beowulf. Below those famous names are the coils of a rather
droll and decorative dragon drawn by the translator himself. This book is
also a curious assemblage. Its principal treasure, one might assume, would
be Tolkiens translation of the wonder tale of Beowulf itself, but it also contains two other wonder tales: products of Tolkiens imaginative collaboration
with Beowulf: Sellic Spell and The Lay of Beowulf. The bulk of the volume, however, is comprised not of these greater and lesser wonder tales but
of the scholarly commentary, over two hundred pages of it, written by Tolkien and selected from a much larger body of work by the books editor and
the authors son, Christopher Tolkien. The younger Tolkien has provided his
own share of commentary and scholarly apparatus about his fathers translations, commentary, and creative work.
As a translator of Beowulf and a longtime student of the poem and its
translations, I was excited to learn of the publication of Tolkiens translation. Perhaps this would be the Arkenstone of all translations of the poem,

J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell,

edited by Christopher Tolkien. Mariner Books, 2015. $15.95 pb.

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the great version that some believed they had encountered with the 1999
publication of Seamus Heaneys version. J. R. R. Tolkien, the Oxford professor of Anglo Saxon and master storyteller, had the imagination, the poetic
mastery, and the linguistic and literary scholarship to achieve an exemplary
translation. Even though I was aware that he had written his translation in
prose, which tempered my excitement, I was still eager to get my hands on
the book. My expectation had also been whetted by my admiration for the
alliterative verses of Tolkiens verse play, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
Beorhthelms Son (1953), a sort of coda to the famous Anglo Saxon poem
The Battle of Maldon. In this work Tolkien handles his four-beat alliterative line well and writes in an almost contemporary idiom, inflected by the
occasional archaic word. My expectation was that his prose translation would
have some of the rhythmic energy and idiomatic sprezzatura of that work.
I was to be disappointed. In truth, Tolkiens translation is a faithful and
scholarly reading of the poem. It has dignity, if not grace, and passages of
some beauty. Tolkien writes his translation in a diction of high register, mindful of his notion that, If you wish to translate, not rewrite 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. So the dignity of
the poem demands a similar decorum of its translators. In that same introduction to a prose translation of Beowulf in which the above passage occurs,
Tolkien also wrote that the proper use of a prose translation is to provide
an aide to study. It is a companion to honest labour. At the outset Tolkien
concedes that the presentation of a translation into plain prose of what is
in fact a poem, a work of skilled and close wrought meter, needs justification. This utilitarian theory of translation is not unlike Vladimir Nabokovs,
whose translation of Eugene Onegin is a flattish field of servile metaphrase
surrounded by forbidding battlements of footnotes. I understand this position. It stems from Tolkiens deep knowledge of and veneration for the old
poem. But, reading his translation, I was sometimes seized by a deep melancholy and even fantasized about what might have been, had Tolkien met
up with Ezra Pound over a few pints of ale and was then fired by a zeal to
write a full, inspired translation of Beowulf. What a treasure we might then
have had!
More light is cast on the nature of Tolkiens translation by Christopher
Tolkien, who writes in his introduction that his father apparently began by
attempting to write a fully alliterative version, but he soon abandoned it,
determined to make a translation as close as he could to the exact meaning
in detail of the Old English poem, far closer than could ever be attained
by translation into alliterative verse. I would also speculate that Tolkien
wished to provide a most careful reading of the poem, especially of those
myriad passages whose meanings are contested.

arts and letters 159

This is not to say that Tolkiens theory of translation resulted in a work that
is entirely without literary merit. Christopher Tolkien believes that his father
designedly wrote quite largely in rhythms founded in common and compact prose-patterns of ordinary language. He believes this is sufficiently
pervasive to give a marked and characteristic tone to the whole work. For
instance, a strongly rhythmic cadence can be heard in lines 2533: There
at the haven stood with ringed prow, ice hung, eager to be gone, the princes
bark; they laid then their beloved king, giver of rings, in the bosom of the
ship, in glory by the mast. There were many precious things and treasures
brought from regions far away; nor have I heard tell that men ever in more
seemly wise arrayed a boat with weapons of war and harness of battle; on his
lap lay treasures heaped that now must go with him far into the dominion of
the sea. The movement of these sentences is grave and ceremonial as befits
the last rites for a great king.
Yet, more frequently, the prose rhythms are ungainly, not at all resembling
the common and compact prose-patterns in ordinary language. Here, for
instance, is Tolkiens translation of the passage early on in which the poet is
recounting the Scyldings response to Grendels depredations, lines 107114
in Tolkiens translation: Nor was it longer space than but one night ere he
wrought again cruel murders more, and grieved not for them, his deeds
of enmity and wrongtoo deep was he therein. Thereafter not far to seek
was the man who elsewhere more remote sought him his couch and a bed
among the lesser chambers, since now was manifested and declared thus
truly to him with token plain the hatred of that hall-keeper; thereafter he
who escaped the foe kept him more distant and more safe. This verbose
awkwardness is only explained by Tolkiens obvious desire to preserve the
word order and syntax of the original. This ethic of fidelity painfully hobbles
the translation.
Tolkiens habitual use of an antiquated diction is another stumbling block.
To be fair, at the time this translation was written, c. 1926, archaic poetic
diction still had some currency. Even Pound, that great modernist, uses it
to good effect in his translation of The Seafarer. In Pounds version of Old
English poetry, however, the archaic diction is fastened in place by the beautiful fetters of the strong stress rhythm: Bitter breast-cares have I abided,/
Known on my keel many a cares hold. Tolkiens translation pays little attention to music and cadence, as the passage above demonstrates.
One might infer that Tolkiens long sojourn among medieval northern
languages made him incapable of hearing contemporary speech rhythms.
Yet even a casual perusal of his scholarly writing reveals that he is quite
capable of writing vigorous modern prose. So we may conjecture that Tolkien admired Beowulf too much and cared too keenly about his reading of
individual passages to veer very far from a strict, word-by-word translation
of the poem. Tolkiens translation is a principled effort: its limitations, even
its aforesaid failures, were possibly intended.

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Another way to explain Tolkiens underwhelming translation comes from

his own story, Leaf by Niggle. In this allegory Niggle, a potato farmer,
devotes more and more of his time to painting a leaf and eventually a tree
that is the wondrous archetype of all trees. As Thomas Shippey sensibly
unpacks the allegory, those potatoes refer to the Oxford dons professional
duties, especially the research and writing he preferred to shirk. The tree, of
course, might be seen as the great trilogy that consumed Tolkiens energies
through the forties and into the early fifties. Following this line of thought,
Tolkien may have approached the writing of a full literary translation of
Beowulf with all the zeal Niggle brought to tilling his potato fields. Maybe
he preferred painting the mighty Yggdrasil of Middle Earth.
Tolkiens commentary on Beowulf is, to this reviewer, the greater treasure
of this volume. Christopher Tolkien in his introduction to the commentary
gives the reader some background on how it came to be written: The lectures from which the commentary in this book is largely derived were in
their written form headed Lectures for the general school, Text, 11650.
That is, the lectures were initially written for an audience of Oxford undergraduates who were taking the general course in English literature and who
would be examined on, roughly, the first half of Beowulf as part of their
comprehensive written exams for the b.a. degree.
The earlier parts of the commentary contain more polished writing,
either because Tolkien intended them for publication, or, as his son tends
to believe, Tolkien intended to clarify and put in order a ramshackle anthology of lecture notes. Tolkien wrote much less about the later passages of
the poemfrom the celebration in Heorot, following the defeat of Grendels mother, to the end of the poem. The later commentary is derived
from another set of lectures, addressed to the philologists, clearly written
as lengthy discussions of major problems in the interpretation of the text of
Beowulf. That some of the commentary was written as part of the ongoing
academic conversation among his fellow philologists should not deter any
reader with a nodding interest in Beowulf. Tolkiens biographer, Humphrey
Carpenter, writes that though the scholarship of Tolkiens fellow philologists was almost unredeemed in its dullness, Tolkiens was not. Carpenter
concludes Tolkien almost founded a new school of philology, presumably
because his scholarship was written with verve and passion.
Reading the two hundred pages of this commentary took me back more
than thirty-five years to my first encounter with the poem in its original
language in a seminar taught by Robert Stevick at the University of Washington. Professor Stevick brought with him to class no notes, but simply
his dog-eared Klaeber edition of Beowulf and his deep erudition. He did
not begin class with a loud Hwaet! as Tolkien is reputed to have done.
He would begin quietly with some question relevant to the swatch of the
poem, perhaps a hundred lines or so, that we had prepared for that class.
Then he would read a portion of the passage in Old English and we would

arts and letters 161

move from a consideration of grammar and diction to a contemplation of

the music and style of the poem through questions of theme and character,
until we were invited to glimpse the elusive quality of the poets vision of
his created world. Professor Stevick encouraged his students to ponder the
poem without an irritable reaching after fact and reason, to savor, I think,
its richness and mystery. Tolkiens commentary carries such a living voice,
the sense of a mystery carefully unfolded. Professor Tolkien had stronger
convictions about the interpretation of certain cruxes than did Professor
Stevick, but on the whole they both treated the poem with a similar learned
and admiring devotion.
As a student of the poem, but by no means a specialist (as perhaps I was
thirty years ago when I translated Beowulf and wrote commentary myself
on its translation), I suppose I have a reflexive veneration for Tolkiens commentary. He was the earliest scholar to argue that Beowulf was first of all
a masterwork of the human imagination, a very great poem, and should be
read as such. Even so, his dogmatism about the meaning of certain cruxes,
and his activist emendations of passages he considered the work of a meddling scribe put me off at times.
Every scholar of the poem has a strong opinion about its date of composition, and Tolkien is no exception. He argues that the version of the poem
we know as Beowulf was made about 750that is, two centuries after
the historical matter that the poem narrates. This was a time when those
pagan Scandinavian peoples, their kings and their kingdoms, were receding into legend, yet their warrior ethos remained comprehensible to the
poems contemporary audience. That curious mingling of the Christian and
the pagan perspectives in the poem that so perplexes many modern readers
may be explained by the syncretic nature of the eighth-century Anglo Saxon
mind. Tolkien writes, the dramatic time of Beowulf is the sixth century, with
a background of dimmer and older traditions of the fifth century (to which
Healfdene, Ongentheow, &c. belong) and that is near enough in agreement
with archaeological dating of ship-burials. Tolkien continues: The author
of Beowulf was not a heathen, but he wrote in a time when the pagan past
was still very near: so near that not only some facts were remembered, but
moods and motives also. His source was no doubt primarily oral and literary:
actual mention and description of these things in lays and stories. Tolkien
also believed that the poet, like himself, was a man of the West Marches.
He reasonably argues that the poem belongs to the time of the great outburst of missionary enterprise which fired all England, when the English
were busy with the conversion of Frisia and Germany, and the reorganization of disordered Gaul: to the days in fact of St. Wynfrith (or Boniface).
He cites as evidence, the poem most closely connected with Beowulf [is]
Andreas, a missionary romance.
Tolkiens dating of Beowulf to the mid-eighth century is by no means
the consensus opinion of contemporary scholars, for indeed there is no

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c onsensus. Howell Chickering in his afterword to the 2006 edition of his

translation of Beowulf observes, Scholars still do not know by whom,
how, when, or where Beowulf was composed. The current range given by
respected scholars extends from the early eighth century to the early eleventh, that is, to the time when the Nowell Codex was probably compiled.
Almost all contemporary scholars would agree with Tolkien that the poem
was written by a single poet who draws heavily from earlier stories and lays,
but whose shaping of those materials is magisterial.
Almost at the outset, as Tolkien contemplates Scylds mysterious arrival
to the forlorn tribe who later would be known as the Scyldings, he invites
the reader to share his sense of the poets mythopoeic imagination: He was
blending the vague and fictitious warlike glory of the eponymous ancestor of
the conquering house with the more mysterious, far older and more poetical
myth of the mysterious arrival of the babe, the corn-god or the culture hero,
his descendant, at the beginning of a peoples history. This image of the
orphan Scylds arrival by sea so resonated with Tolkiens imagination that he
was inspired to write portions of a tale of King Sheave in both prose and
alliterative verse. Here is part of Tolkiens haunting response to the matter
of Scyld:
Gilt and carven
with wondrous work was the wood about him.
In golden vessel gleaming water
stood beside him; strung will silver
a harp of gold neath his hand rested;
his sleeping head was soft pillowed
on a sheaf of corn shimmering palely
as the fallow gold doth from far countries
west of Angol. Wonder filled them.
Christopher Tolkien includes this material as a footnote to his fathers
commentary. This mythical element in Beowulf enchanted Tolkien and was
responsible, at least in part, for the powerful grip the poem had on his imagination. Tolkien also wrote of Scylds ship-burial with a pervasive sense of
wonder: He came out of the Unknown beyond the Great Sea, and returned
into it: a miraculous intrusion into history, which nonetheless left real historical effects: a new Denmark, and the heirs of Scyld in Scedeland. For
Tolkien the aesthetic power of Beowulf lies in the radiant amalgam that the
poet made of Historial legend and Fairy Story. He muses on the effect
of this powerful blend most fully in his discussion of the first speeches at
Heorot upon Beowulfs arrival: Behind the stern young pride of Beowulf,
on the surface credible enough, lies the roughness of the uncouth fairy-tale
champion thrusting his way into the house. Behind the courtesies (tinged
with irony) of Hrothgar lies the incredulity of the master of the haunted

arts and letters 163

house; behind his lament for his vanished knights lurk still the warnings
given to frighten off the newcomer, with stories of how everyone who has
tried to deal with the monster has come to a bad end. In this amalgam Tolkien locates the esemplastic power of the poets imagination. Such illuminating passages are not rare in this commentaryand those of us who admire
Tolkiens own tales of Middle Earth understand better how that blending
underpins the power of their fantasy. What the younger scholar learned
from his contemplation of Beowulf, the older artist did not forget.
The large gift of Tolkiens commentary derives from his tremendous
eruditionhis knowledge of medieval Germanic literatures and languages,
as well as of the cultures that gave rise to themand from his mythopoeic
imagination. But there is still more to be gleaned from the commentary: his
careful reading of and theorizing about the poems many contested passages;
his short essays on problematic words such as wergild, helrunan, wyrd, fey,
and many others; his observations about the mood and tone of the poem
(which inspire some of his most beautiful contemplations); and his constant
reminders to the reader that the poem is dramaticthat is, the speeches
reflect the characters points of view and may not correspond to the poets.
Tolkiens exceptional depth of knowledge and his conviction that he shares
many strands of cultural dna with the poetboth being men of the West
Midlandsappears to grant him a certain jealous ownership of the poem
and makes him an activist reader. If the text does not agree with what he
is sure the poet would write at a particular juncture, he is quick to chastise
the text and mutter scribal error or intentional meddling. For instance,
Tolkien is certain that the poet did not actually write ne wiston hie Drihten
God, that is, they did not know of the existence of God, at all, when commenting on the backsliding of the Danes. As Tolkien puts it, The shock is
comparable to what we should feel if we suddenly hear Lear ridiculing the
Fourth Commandment or Cordelia praising Goneril and Regan. I do in
fact agree with Tolkien that it seems most unlikely that the poet would have
written such a line a mere hundred lines after Hrothgars scop sang so lyrically of how the Almighty wrought the earth, a vale of bright loveliness that
the waters encircle. It is Tolkiens dogmatic tone that I find problematic.
More troubling for me is Tolkiens absolute certitude that the Anglo Saxon
poet Cynewulf meddled with the text of what has been called Hrothgars
Sermon (ll. 17001784). That is an eccentric leap, at best.
On the whole, however, the commentary is often illuminatingboth for
the light it casts on the old poem and on the workings of Tolkiens own
imagination. It is essential reading for all serious students of the poem,
whether they are just entering into the anterooms of Anglo Saxon literature
or are emeriti professors seeking fresh insights into the poem and its daunting darknesses.
Beowulf was a touchstone text for Tolkienits myriad echoes found their
way into his tales of Middle Earth. It also inspired two other n
arratives

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c ollected in this volume. The earlierappearing here in two distinct drafts

is The Lay of Beowulf, apparently written in the early thirties. Christopher
Tolkien remembers his father singing it to him when he was seven or eight
years old. The more finished draft, Beowulf and the Monsters, encapsulates Beowulfs contests with both Grendel and Grendels mother and, like
the first draft, foreshadows his hard death as an old warrior. Both are rather
awkward rhythmic contraptions, occasionally redeemed by memorable
imagery, and lurking in the homely borderlands of the literary ballad. In the
following strophe from the later draft Grendels mother is curiously granted
human speech. She curses Beowulf as she lies mortally wounded:
O! Ecgtheows son she then dying said
Forbear to hew my vanquished head
or hard and stony be thy deaths bed
and a red fate fall on Denmark!
Then hard and stony must be the bed
where at the last I lay me dead:
and Beowulf hewed the demons head
and haled it back to Denmark.
The second of these narratives, Sellic Spell, which dates to the early
forties, is a more accomplished work. In this prose narrative Tolkien makes
a strong creative effort to imagine the wonder tale, the myth which was
the matrix, as Tolkien conceived it, to which the Beowulf poet added the
historical matter of the poem. As Tolkien puts it in a brief note, Its principal object is to exhibit the difference of style, tone, and atmosphere if the
particular heroic or historical is cut out. He admits the work is very much
a creative speculation, and, I would add, a fascinating one.
What is cut from the tale are the many so-called digressionsthe matter of Finn and the Frisians, Ingeld and the Heathobards, the long wars
between the Geats and the Swedes, all mention of the scops and their
songs and legends, references to the Danes monotheism and Hrothgars
wisdom. By these elisions the tale conjures a much more primitive world
than Beowulf does. This hero of Sellic Spell is much closer to Beowulfs
bestial ancestor, Bears Son. He is found in a bears den and for many years
he remains a lumpish coal-biter. Far more than Beowulf he is an outcast,
having no blood kinship to his king. He is very much a fearful Other, as
the narrative makes clear: He had great liking for honey, and often sought
it in the woods, or plundered the hives of the farmers; and as he had no
name of his own, people called him Bee-wolf, and that was his name ever
after. He was held in small account. . . . But month by month and year by
year Beewolf grew, and as he grew he became stronger, until first the boys
and lads and at length even the men began to fear him. Beewolf has his
adventure with Breca, known in this tale as Breaker, and eventually hears of

arts and letters 165

a monster haunting a kings golden hall across the sea. He suddenly stands
up and says, I will go and find that King. He sets forth alone but is joined
by two companions, Handshoe and Ashwood. At the golden hall each of his
companions boldly assumes he can dispatch the monster known as Grinder.
Each, in his turn, falls asleep on his watch and provides Grinder with good
provender. Beewolf, however, stays awake and surprises Grinder. Here, as
in the old poem, much of the narrative is written from the point of view of
the monstrous intruder and conveys his growing fear at the strength of his
adversarys handgrip. The prose narrative has a terse energy and exact imagery: So hard did the ogre drag one way and Beewolf the other, that with
a great crack bone and sinews burst asunder at the shoulder, and Grinders
arm, claw, and all, was left in Beewolfs hands. Beewolf prevails in this
combat and also against Grinders mother. Unlike his bachelor descendant,
Beowulf, he marries his Kings daughter and lives happily ever after, wielding his great sword or crushing his enemies in his bear hug, as the spirit
moves him. And, happily, also, he meets no dragon at the end of his days.
This simple tale lacks the melancholy gravitas of Beowulf; indeed its tone
is more cheerful than not and clenches the deal with a delightful, playful
conclusion: And after the Kings day was done, Beewolf became king in his
stead, and lived long in glory. As long as he lived he loved honey dearly, and
the mead in his hall was ever the best.
Sellic Spell is an artful literary folktale told with brio. Its most interesting invention is the fuller development of Unferth, in this tale known as
Unfriend. After challenging Beewolf, taunting him, and, finally, betraying
him, he gets a satisfactory drubbing. Indeed Beewolf is presented more as a
laconic Grettir (the Old Norse cousin of Beowulf), given to ironic understatement. In this version Unfriend abandons Beewolf at the mere, where
he had promised to pull him up by a rope. Instead he loosens the knot of
the rope and departs. When the rope fails him, the exhausted Beewolf can
barely make it out of the mere. On his return to the golden hall he asks the
King, And where is my faithful friend? I thought I heard his voice when I
entered but I do not see him here to welcome me. I have a mind to teach
him the tying of knots.
It is a satisfying tale, in its laconic narrative and its frequent ironies,
resembling an Icelandic ttr. The prose in the tale is much more finished
and graceful than that of Tolkiens translation of Beowulf. Indeed had the
mature Tolkien, with a serious intent, undertaken his translation in the forties rather than in the twenties, I have no doubt that this volume of his
work would not be such a mixed bag. But that is an alternate reality, and
it is another, and lesser, harvest than the one we do haveThe Lord of the
Rings, that great tree, which sprang in many ways from Tolkiens encounter
with Beowulf.