The Complete Old English Poems Page 8

  One can see this complicated intertextual process at work, for example, in the opening lines of the first poem in The Consolation of Philosophy. The lines give voice to the suffering lament of Boethius from his prison cell. In the Latin text he cries out, “Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi, / flebilis, heu, maestos cogor inire modos. / Ecce mihi lacerae dictant scribenda Camenae / et ueris elegi fletibu ora rigant” (Godden and Irvine, II, 258), which Greene translates: “I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures [and] wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears” (3). The OE prose version of these opening lines reads: “Đa lioð þe ic wrecca geo lustbærlice song, ic sceal nu heofiende singan and mid [swiðe] ungeradum wordum gesettan þeah ic geo hwilum gecoplice funde; ac ic nu wepende and gisciende [oft] geradra worda misfo,” which Godden and Irvine translate: “The songs which I, an exile, formerly sung with joy, I must now sing in tears, and set them with very discordant words, though I composed fitting ones at times before; but I must now, weeping and sobbing, often fail to find fitting words” (text, I, 244; translation, II, 5). The OE poetic version of the passage is as follows:

  Hwæt, ic lioða fela lustlice geo

  sanc on sælum; nu seal siofigende,

  wope gewæged, wreccea giomor

  singan sarcwidas. (Godden and Irvine, I, 386)

  This can be translated (with alternative readings in parentheses) as follows:

  Behold (listen, well, lo)! I, many songs (stories, poems) have long ago (formerly, once, earlier) joyfully (pleasantly, gladly, willingly, delightedly)

  Sung (chanted, recited, spoken) in joy (happiness, pleasure; on an occasion; in a time or season); but now I must, sighing (lamenting, crying),

  Afflicted (troubled, anguished, frustrated) by weeping (crying, lamenting, shrieking), a sad (troubled, miserable, dejected, suffering) wretch (exile, outcast, fugitive),

  Sing (chant, recite, speak) sorrow (suffering, pain, grief, wound)-words (speech, saying, discourse, opinion, judgment).

  My modern poetic version of the opening lines of the lament is as follows:

  Listen! Once I embraced life, singing

  Songs of joy. Now my tunes are twisted—

  My mournful melodies are winding woe.

  Weary with weeping, I cannot conceive

  How my fate has turned or celebrate my life

  With the sustaining songs I used to sing.

  Sometimes my talking is tongue-tied,

  My once-wise words, wrenched and wried.

  All the versions of the opening Boethian lines share an elegiac tone and contrast the speaker’s former joy of composing songs with his present difficulty of doing so because of his tearful suffering. The Latin speaker’s Muses are wounded but still able to urge him on in writing “melancholy measures” and “elegiac verses.” The speaker’s plaintive cry might have struck a resonant chord with a translator familiar with the OE elegies, such as The Wanderer and The Wife’s Lament. The OE prose translation of the Latin verse highlights the contrast between the fitting words of the speaker’s former times and the discordant words of his present existence. It eliminates the wounded Muses and thus emphasizes the loneliness and isolation of the speaker. It also removes from the source the tears bathing the speaker, which may have offered some hope of cleansing or healing to come. The “real tears” in the OE prose stand in contrast to the apparent unreality of the speaker’s present fate and call into question the accuracy of his perceptions of himself and his world. The carefully constructed rhetoric of the prose argument represents at least an attempt at reasoned self-control, even if the effort seems only partly to be working.

  In the OE poetic translation or reformulation from the OE prose, the excruciating sense of loss, the anguish of exile, the pain of imprisonment, the woe of uncontrollable weeping, and the paradox of having to sing through suffering take center stage. The sense of exile is highlighted, and the suffering seems more deeply experienced. The quality of the speaker’s poetic singing (helped certainly by the poet’s skill) gives rise to a kind of melancholy beauty which has at least the implicit hope of a poetic amelioration of the speaker’s troubles. The speaker’s opening plea to an imagined audience, Hwæt or “Listen,” though formulaic, gives vent to an exile’s plaintive cry for a sympathetic audience, a camaraderie of listeners. His recollection of joyful songs in the past is both a cherished memory and a painful reminder of his loss makes his present condition all the harder to bear. He must, however, shape some song or poem, however painful, in order to articulate his sorrow and have a chance at understanding and overcoming his misfortune. Like the speaker of The Wanderer, his bind is that he must use his mind to cure his mind, and he will need the help of some greater power, in this case Philosophy, to help bring about understanding and consolation. In the Old English version of the Consolation, the dialogue between Philosophy and Boethius is transformed into one between Wisdom and the mind of Boethius to help facilitate this process.

  The OE poetic opening demands a somewhat extended translation in order to do justice to its complexity and tone. In my modern rendering, I have tried to make compelling the suffering voice by drawing upon the elegiac tradition of other Old English poems. The speaker remembers his once embraced life, which now seems isolated. His former songs of joy have turned into “twisted tunes” and “mournful melodies” that are “winding woe.” The combination of “mournful” and “winding” hints of funereal despair. The poet cannot understand how his fate has turned or twisted. His old songs can no longer sustain him; his “once-wise words” are “wrenched and wried” (twisted, warped). Nothing is straightforward anymore—not his memory, not his misery, not his poetry. Like the speaker of The Wanderer, he cannot conceive how or why his once celebrated world has turned into one of sorrow and suffering, misery and unmeaning. He has somehow lost the world’s favor and his own clear thinking and celebrant singing. He is like a man losing his mind. His memory wanders; his talking is “tongue-tied.” He will have to find a new way with words to unravel his ruin, and (as becomes clear later), he will need the forms of Philosophy with its rational arguments and reasonable words to do this.

  Similar intertextual complexities appear in The Metrical Psalms of the Paris Psalter. These psalms are poetic translations of the last one hundred Latin psalms from a now-lost Latin psalter, probably an early Roman psalter. The OE poems often follow the Latin text but sometimes diverge from it for a variety of reasons, including variant readings from other texts or glosses, the translator’s misreading of the Latin, his decision to ignore difficult portions of the text, and his flights of poetic fancy to facilitate the alliteration or embellish the meaning of the Latin original. Most critics agree that this OE translator was at best a mediocre poet, often trying to produce a word-forword translation, sometimes misreading the source or skipping over it when it proved difficult or trying to explain it in obscure ways. This often yields difficult or even slightly baffling passages such as the extended description of the wicked man in Psalm 108 who loves cursing. The Latin passage, taken here from the Vulgate Bible with bracketed alternate readings from both the Paris Psalter (PP) and from the Vespasian Psalter (VP), which is “the best surviving version of the Roman psalter in England” (Toswell, 1994, 395, n. 6), is given below along with the Douay-Rheims translation. This is followed by the OE poetic lines with possible variant translations in parentheses and my own poetic translation of the lines.

  Et dilexit maledictionem, et veniet ei, et noluit benedictionem, et elongabitur [PP & VP: prolongabitur] ab eo. Et induit maledictionem [PP & VP: maledictione] sicut vestimentum [PP & VP: vestimento], et intravit sicut aqua in interiora eius et sicut oleum in ossibus eius. Fiat ei sicut vestimentum quo [VP: quod] operitur [PP & VP: operietur] et sicut zona qua semper praecingitur [PP: precingitur]. (The Vulgate Bible, 452; The Vespasian Psalter, 108; The Paris Psalter, folio 132a, online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8451636f/f2
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  And he loved cursing, and it shall come unto him, and he would not have blessing, and it shall be far from him. And he put on cursing like a garment, and it went in like water into his entrails and like oil in his bones. May it be unto him like a garment which covereth him and like a girdle with which he is girded continually. (The Vulgate Bible, 453)

  He wolde wergðu wyrcean georne,

  and hine seo ylce on eft gesette;

  nolde he bletsunge biddan ne tilian,

  forðon hio him wæs afyrred of ferhðcofan.

  He hine gegyrede mid grame wyrgðu,

  swa he hine wædum wræstum geteode,

  and sio his innað ywde swylce

  wan wætere gelic and wynele,

  se þe banes byrst beteð and hæleð.

  Wese he hrægle gelic þe her hraðe ealdað,

  and gyrdelse, ðe hine man gelome gyrt. (ASPR VI, 93)

  He would (wanted to, desired to, was used to) eagerly (earnestly, zealously, gladly, completely) perform (do, make, produce, strive for) a curse (condemnation, evil, wickedness),

  And afterwards (thereupon, likewise, moreover), this would settle into (set upon, be appointed to, made for) him.

  And he would not ask for (beg for, pray for) or strive after (aspire to, endeavor to obtain, cultivate, cherish) blessing (benediction, favor, sanction);

  Therefore it was removed (withdrawn, estranged, expelled) from his spirit-chamber (mind-enclosure, soul-stronghold, breast, body).

  He clothed (dressed, attired, adorned) himself with a grim (angry, fierce, cruel, savage) curse (condemnation, evil, wickedness)

  So that he firmly (ably, strongly, delicately) put it (drew it, tugged it, induced it) on like excellent (delicate, firm, strong) clothing (apparel, garment, robe),

  And it likewise (in such manner, thereupon, moreover) revealed (showed, displayed, disclosed) his insides (innards, entrails, stomach, heart)

  Like dark (dusky, dim, shadowy, lurid) water and joy-oil (gladdening oil, exultation-oil)

  That repairs (cures, restores, remedies) and heals (saves, cures, restores) the bursting (damage, injury, harm) of bone.

  May he be like a garment (clothing, robe, vestment) that here (in this place, at this point) deteriorates (grows old, wears out, perishes) quickly (immediately, promptly, readily),

  And like a girdle (belt, band, sash) that is frequently (often, constantly, completely, fully) wrapped around (girdled about, surrounding) him.

  He loved cursing—so curses came upon him.

  He loathed blessings—they were banished from him,

  Withdrawn from his breast, his heart’s hoard.

  He clothed himself with savage curses

  As if they were like the finest clothes.

  They soaked grimly into his skin and flesh

  Like dark water and gathered in his gut,

  Opening his innards, slowly seeping

  Into bone and sinew like an oily joy,

  A pulpy healing for his bursting bones.

  May he always be clothed in the rags of malice

  And grow old suddenly, tattered and torn.

  May his curses be like a tight belt

  Wrapped around him both day and night.

  Both the Latin and OE versions of this passage emphasize the wickedness of the man who loves cursing so much that he metaphorically puts on a garment of curses that soaks into his own skin, oiling his innards, threatening his bones. By cursing others, he becomes a living curse himself. He exists without blessing at the edge of doom, which the narrator self-righteously wishes for him. The OE poet tries to translate this subtle passage with only mixed results. Diamond points out that the OE poet “translates maledictionem accurately [as] wergðu [curse] and translates dilexit rather freely [as] he wolde … wyrcean” [he would make]” (1963, 38; much of the following discussion is indebted to Diamond). In both Latin and OE versions, the curser eschews any blessing and so is left vulnerably unblessed. The OE poet adds the detail of the blessing being withdrawn (or estranged) from the wicked man’s breast or body, using the kenning ferhðcofan, “spirit-chamber,” to emphasize the importance of prizing and protecting the human soul. In the Latin text, the curses that the man puts on like a garment slide like water into his entrails and oil into his bones, presumably with deleterious effects. The OE poet emphasizes the potential danger here by calling the garment of curses grame, “grim,” and the waters wan, “darkly pale.” This would seem to set up the oily curser for a destructive ending. In the Latin passage the garb of curses enters the subject’s body (intravit), whereas in the OE translation, it seems merely to show or reveal (ywde) his innards, though Diamond suggests that OE ywde (manuscript ydwe) might be a mistake for eode, which might translate Latin intravit (1963, 39). The Vespasian Psalter glosses Latin intravit with OE ineode (108), which would support this conjecture. Toller argues that the form here should be iþan, “to lay waste” (597; for the various proposed emendations of the manuscript reading, see Krapp’s notes to verse 108.18.3 in ASPR, vol. 5, p. 221, and also O’Neill’s note to verse 18 in Old English Psalms, 687).

  Now the deeper translation difficulties begin. The OE poet launches into a small expansion as he ameliorates the internally oily garment of curses by calling the oil wynele, “joy-oil,” and claiming that this nasty potion that derives from a habit of cursing suddenly takes on the miraculous and redemptive power of healing, restoring the curser’s banes byrst, “bursting of bones.” Diamond rightly notes that “the choice of this word [wynele], which means gladdening oil, seems to contradict the sense of the psalm, in which oil in the bone is pointed to as a bad thing,” and he goes on to surmise that once the poet “had fixed upon wynele to translate oleum—a choice that seems to have been dictated almost entirely by the necessity of somehow making ele alliterate with wætere—the poet was carried away and elaborated on the implications of wyn in a totally mistaken way, but the whole passage is so cloudy and confused that it is perhaps best to give it up” (1963, 39).

  The passage ends in both Latin and OE versions with a curse leveled at the evil curser, which seems unintentionally ironic since the wages of cursing have just been drastically determined, at least in the Latin. Again the habit of cursing is likened to a garment that is now wished upon the curser himself. The garment will tighten menacingly around him like an overtight belt. He will not escape its grip. In the Latin version, this is obviously the same garment that seeps into the curser’s bones, destroying him. In the Old English version, this becomes a threadbare garment that grows old and disintegrates over time, presumably as does the wearer or curser. This might be a mistaken reading of Latin operitur, “covers,” as peritur, “perishes, wears out,” which the OE poet translates as ealdað, “grows old, deteriorates” (see the suggestion in the Dictionary of Old English under ealdan), or it might be a deliberate misreading in order to emphasize that as the cursing becomes habitual, it causes the slow destruction of the curser. Both the curser and the curses, or the “rags of malice,” as I have poetically put it, become tattered and worn, slowly disintegrating over time. As it stands in the OE passage, the garment of curses works in two ways. One seeps into the curser’s innards with what should be destructive consequences; the other turns threadbare and disintegrates over time. The danger here is both within and without. Because the OE reading of the garment metaphor makes a certain amount of sense, I have built both possible meanings into my own translation.

  Diamond suggests at some point that we may have to give up on the most difficult passages in a garbled translation. Unfortunately, a modern poet who is translating the OE poem doesn’t have the luxury of giving up in difficult places. In my translation I have tried to highlight certain grim paradoxes in the poem. The man who loves cursing brings curses on himself (an irony which is clearer in the Vulgate and also in the Hebrew original). The man who rejects a blessing finds his own blessing banished far from his ferhðcofan, “spirit-chamber,” which I translate poetically as “heart’s hold,” a
formulaic term I use elsewhere in the psalms to indicate both a secure place for the heart or soul in its purest state in this life and also that final security in the hold of heaven which is only possible through God’s blessing. The wicked man who clothes himself in savage curses in my translation finds this covering soaking into his skin, opening his innards, gathering in his gut, and seeping slowly into both bone and sinew. This is obviously an ominous oil—this habit of cursing could doom him. When the moment of truth arrives, I try to make sense of the appropriate devastation in the Latin source and the misadventure of the sudden OE redemptive healing. Unlike the OE translator, who often ignores the Latin passages he cannot make sense of, I am forced to give it a go. My resolution is to accept the OE poet’s surprise ending of the “joy-oil,” but to undermine it by flipping the phrase into “oily joy,” and then to describe the unexpected and unnatural bone restoration as “pulpy healing,” thus calling into question whether such a healing can honestly be brought about. My resolution gives a nod to both Latin text and OE translation. It leaves open the possibility that the OE poet was not merely caught in the trap of his own alliterative demands, but that he wanted somehow (even if magically) to save the subject, knowing at some level of his own heart’s hold that this was impossible. If the speaker is not actually making up the curses but repeating the curses that his enemies heap upon him (see below), he may be trying to ameliorate the curses aimed at him. Finally, in my translation, the curser has his burst bones only partially healed into a pulpy restoration. Without ceasing to wear the clothes of cursing, without reclaiming the banished blessing, he cannot hope for more.