BEOWULF.

By Lucien D. Pearson. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press,1965. 127 pp. $6.00 (paperback $1.65)

A translator's decision to attempt some sort of "literary" re-creation rather than a simple literal reproduction is not so absolute as it might seem, for poetic interpretation must still operate within a minimal faithfulness to the original. Mr. Pearson's translation is a notable compromise of these extremes. It offers an intelligent and tasteful union of accuracy and style, of adherence to the Beowulf and simple readability.

In his introduction to the Pearson translation, Rowland L. Collins outlines the translator's method:

[Mr. Pearson's] principal medium is a vigorous rhythmic prose in which he suggests the strong beats of the Old Englishpoetic line... Alliteration is maintained... whenever it seems to sit nicely withinthe modern sentences.

While Mr. Pearson's alliteration-stress patterns do not imitate the Old English alliterative line, they do suggest the phrasing of the original; and the prose passages consistently rise above mere literal translation. The "more lyrical" portions of the Beowulf have been rendered in blank verse, often of high quality and accuracy:

ThoughThe hart heath-roaming, strong in antlers,rakeThe wood far-harried by the hounds, heyieldsHis spirit on the shore and will notplungeTo save his head. That is no pleasantplace!Its waves lift dark against the cloudswhen windStirs evil storm, until the air turns sullenAnd the welkin weeps. (11.1368-76 in Klaeber text)

As Mr. Collins notes, "the meanings of Old English 'geswenced' and 'geflymed" are combined in 'harried'," here, and one finds Mr. Pearson frequently retaining inversions, recreating kenning epithets and taking great care to capture the innumerable subleties of the original, and to avoid the tedium of a Beowulf glossary arranged in narrative order.

Mr. Pearson's translation, however, is not without certain minor flaws. In terms of an ideal Modern English Beowulf, his alliteration is too arbitrary, his prose too prosaic and his poetry too infrequent to reproduce the original's sense of alliterative emphasis and rhythmic cadence. This amounts, finally, to what is termed the "flavor" or "feel" of the original, a shadowy value to which accuracy has been too often sacrificed; but it is this that the Pearson translation seems most obviously to lack. And the arrangement of prose lines in a "poetic" format of uneven right-hand margins seems uncomfortably like subliminal advertising: prose is not made more poetic by arrangement on the page.

Yet a translation, however excellent, is doomed to suffer the cavils of those who have encountered the original, largely owing to the disparity between any translation and its original; but this is unfair. Mr. Pearson's re-creation is scrupulously accurate and unpretentiously "literary," and it would seem to be the second best way to enjoy the Beowulf as well as a useful and admirable example of taste and scholarship.

Reviewer Bogel was one of two Englishmajors who earned his degree (Cum Laude)"With Highest Distinction in the MajorSubject." Winner of the Perkins LiteraturePrize and a number of graduate fellowships,he has accepted a University Fellowship atYale where he will begin his studies towarda Ph.D. this fall.