Hymn to Poseidon
(Ca. 6th century BC)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman My song begins for great Poseidon the Earthmover, endless shifter of the gaping deep; god of waters, Lord of Helicon, homed in the expanse of ancient Aegae. Earthshaker, you the gods endowed with double honor to be tamer of steeds and savior of ships. Hail, Poseidon sire of waveroads the blue-haired god who girds the earth. Blessed one, I pray your broad kind heart take care of us who cross your seas. The Original:
To Say A Prayer
By Abraham Sutzkever
Translated by A.Z. Foreman Click to hear me recite the original Yiddish I have the urge to say a prayer. I do not know to whom. He who once gave me comfort will not hear it, should it come. To whom, then, would I pray? I am its choked-up prey. Maybe I should entreat a star up there: "old distant friend, Come substitute for my lost speech. I am at my words' end." That good star deep in ether Won't hear my prayer either. But I have got to say a prayer. Someone very near, Somebody in my soul is tortured, and demands a prayer. So I jabber on and on Senselessly until dawn. - Vilna Ghetto, January 1942
The Original:
גלוסט זיך מיר צו טאָן אַ תּפֿילה
אבֿרהם סוצקעווער
גלוסט זיך מיר צו טאָן אַ תּפֿילה – ווייס איך ניט צו וועמען,
For Rokhl. Wherever you are these days, רחלע, this one is for you.
A poem for Jews who had escaped the Vilna ghetto and fled to the forests, in order to participate in bushwhacking guerrilla warfare against the Nazis. Sutzkever dated all his wartime poems. This one, importantly, is dated two days before Sutzkever and his wife would follow the men here hymned, escaping to the woods themselves, eventually joining a Jewish resistance unit commanded by Moshe Rudnitski.
Sprout up! Staunch heroes, adamantine lads, go take your ground. Sprout up! Sons of the future, make the world know what you are, For all the will of all a people, swallowed underground, Condenses — swelling lava in your breast beneath a scar. Now, if the sword has gone to rust in vagabond confusion, Then file off all the yesterdays, and sharpen its today. Never is it too late to show the people's retribution. Redeem the age-old sin with steel. There is a price to pay. Cities have all flown their true colors, turned to stone betrayers, And riveted your way to sizzling graves at every hand. But forests welcome you with singing leaves to safer lairs: "Come, come to us our darlings, and refine your fair demand." Our new anointed Jewish rangers, striders of the trees, Against the brink that lay in wait, your feet kick back with No. Such glory glints within you! Glory of the Maccabees As once it did in our land two millennia ago. There always will be those who bend to earth, who tire, who kneel. Pity the slave that rests his hope in mercy from a slave. Be men and Maccabees. Blast for rebellion, and in steel Let honor shine again with every melée of the brave.
— Vilna Ghetto, September 10th, 1943 The Original:
Notes on the Yiddish:
With Sutzkever, as with Robert Frost, if you do not read and listen closely, you will miss much. This poem is more than simply a bit of rousing verse. It can work perfectly well as such, but on closer listening things grow increasingly complex. I have with profit consulted Frieda W. Aaron's comments on this poem, though I find her reading and translation somewhat unsatisfactory. Vakst aróys, ir heldn — féste áyngeshparte yúngen Vakst aróys, ir tsúkunftzin, un zayt der velt bavúst! Gor der viln funem folk, in úntererd farshlúngen, Kléyet zikh - a lávediker shtrom in áyer brust.
(Sprout up, you heroes — strong unyeilding young men / sprout up, you future-sons, and be renowned to the world! / All the will of the people, swallowed underground, congeals itself — a lavalike surge in your breast)
Tsukunftzin seems to be "sons of the future" but zin can have another meaning of "consciousness, sense." Tsukunftzin could be taken as "sense of (a) future" i.e. "you who give a sense that we have a future despite this extermination." In other poems, Sutzkever highlights the identity of zin/zin "sons/sense" in interesting ways. Still, though, the fact that zin "sense" is singular makes this a stretch. It's worth noting that this poem was first published two years after the date of composition, with a hyphen between the two lexemes. i.e. צוקונפט-זין tsukunft-zin as if to call attention to the sense of the two elements. (The hyphen does not appear in later reprintings.)
It is easy to take, as Aaron does, the final two lines to mean "The entire will of the people has been swallowed under the earth / But a lava surge is coming together in your breast." But note that line three does not contain a main verb, or a conjunction. The whole line is in fact the subject of kleyenzikh which has a dash after it. i.e. "All the will of the people, having been swallowed underground, coalesces — a lavalike surge...." Moreover, the word untererd is "underground" not just in the geological sense, but the clandestine political one, as in "an underground movement." In Yiddish as in English, to "go underground" (geyen in der untererd) means to go clandestine, to start behaving in some covert way.
The final line is interesting. Kleyen zikh is a curious verb which I had to ask others about. It appears to be a synonym of kleben zikh "to take form, to coagulate, coalesce, to be sticky, to stick together" (i.e. like kley "glue.")
The word shtrom has two meanings Yiddish: "course, torrent, tide" and "scar." Oyb es hot farzhávert in der vóglenish dos ayzn Faylt fun em aróp di nekhtns un em shlayft atsínd. Kéynmol iz nit shpet dem folks nekóme tsu baváyzn: Óystsukoyfn mit gevér di dóyresdike zínd.
(If the iron has rusted in wandering / file off from it the yesterday, and sharpen its here and now. / Never is it too late to manifest the people's vengeance: / To redeem with weapons the generations-old sin.)
Frieda Aaron is right I think that the doyresdike zind "generations-old sin, long-lasting sin" is meant to suggest both "the sin of Jewish passivity and the sin of the endless chain of crimes visited upon the Jews." And that the latter is more central. Oyskoyfn "redeem, ransom" has a heavily agentive and aggressive tone to it, it seems to me, given Sutzkever's other uses of it. It is suggestive of overcoming. Of payback, of meeting the enemy blow for blow.
Gever means not only "weapon" but "endurance." S'hobn shtet farvándlt zikh in shtéynerne farréter, Tsúgeshmidt tsu zídndike gríber áyer gang. Hobn vélder aykh bagríst mit zíngendike bléter: -Kumt tsu undz, ir táyere, un láytert dem ferláng.
(The cities have transformed into stone betrayers, / welded to boiling graves your way. / Forests greeted you with singing leaves: / Come to us, dear ones, and polish the demand)
Aaron reads, and transcribes, zidndike (sizzling, boiling, seething, roiling) as if it were zindike (sinful.) Apart from making a hash of the meter, and not being what Sutzkever wrote (I've checked all three volumes of his in which this poem appears, and none of them have zindike), this causes her interpretation of this stanza to go somewhat off the rails. She relates the image thus to sins of hatred and persecution.
Persecution is to the point of course, but I take the zidndike griber as graves that are themselves murderous. The graves are composed not of earth and stone, but of human masses whose roiling hatred makes them lethal to the objects of that hate. These graves you need but step into, and they will boil you alive. Zidndik has the sense of "incited, excited" in reference to people. It is contrasted with the zingendike bleter (note the sound echo zidndik/zingendik) which offer succour and sanctuary. As gentile society has proven itself barbarous, civilizational norm is inverted. It is the wilderness that now offers haven from the savagery of the cities.
Loyb tsu aykh ir nay-gezálbte gvúredike géyer, Áyer fus hot ópgeshtupt dem lókerdinkn rand. S'hot in aykh a glants getón der rum fun Makabéyer, Vi mit yorn tsveytoyznt tsurík in eygn land.
(Praise be to you, you new-anointed, stalwart rovers / your leg has staved back the brink that lay in ambush. / In you the glory of the Maccabees has given forth lustre / As in our own land two thousand years ago.)
Aaron translates gvuredike geyer as "strong questers" which is an odd choice. Gvúredik "stalwart, heroic, intrepid" is nothing so generic and general as "strong." geyer seems more like wanderer, rover.
Lokerdik "lurking" but more specifically "lying in wait, poised to ambush."
opshtupn suggests pushing back, as well as staving off.
Shténdik zénen do tsu dr'erd gebóygene, un míde. Vey dem knekht in hófenung af rákhmim - ba a knekht. Vi di Makabéyer blozt funánder di miríde, Zol der kóved úfloykhtn in shvérdikn gefékht!
(There are always those bowed to the earth, tired. / Woe to the slave in hope of mercy from a slave. / As the Maccabees blow rebellion about, / Let glory shine forth in sword combat.)
The reader's first instinct may be to take blozt as if its subject were the Maccabees. It isn't. blozt is the imperative plural (i.e. blow!). The verb with the separable prefix funanderblozn means roughly " blow all round, blast far and wide."
Gefekht could refer to any sort of combat or skirmish, but the sense of dueling is there as well, of noble hand-to-hand battle. Particularly when connected with swords. There's an epic quality here. These partisans are presumably not actually fighting with swords but with projectile weapons. But here they are elevated to the level of mythic lore.
With my holy poem Clenched between my teeth From my wolfcave — my hole, my home — I go out and I roam From street to street: As a wolf with a wretched bone Clenched between his teeth alone. There is prey enough in the street to sate a wolven hate, and sweet is the humid blood that drips from flesh, but sweeter still is the dry dust settling down on jammed lips. Struggle on the street, The call of throats. Let me this once come out tonight, A deathtooth bite. That bite is me. But I don't come to gnaw. I hunch into my little self With head beneath my paw. Back to my hole I head And lump onto my bed, But I am awake, Untired from holding clenched Between my teeth alone This holy poem As the wolf his wretched bone. The Original:
H. Leivick (the pen name of Leivick Halpern) was born in 1888 in Chervyn, in the Russian Empire. In 1905 he joined the revolutionary Jewish Bund. The next year, he was arrested by Russian Imperial authorities for distributing revolutionary literature. He refused any legal assistance during his trial and instead delivered a thunderous speech denouncing the tsarism and autocracy. He was sentenced to four years of hard labor (in Minsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg) followed by permanent exile in Siberia, to which he was forcibly marched, on foot, in 1912, over the course of four months. He was finally smuggled out of Siberia with aid of Jewish revolutionaries in the US, and sailed to the America in the summer of 1913. He returned in 1925 to what was by then the Soviet Union, where he was welcomed as a great denouncer of tsarism, and his works printed widely. The feeling, however, was not at all mutual. He returned to the US, quite un-enthusiastic about the Soviet Union, about Soviet life, and about the future of Soviet Jews.
The poem here is the first in his book Lider Fun Gan Eydn: 1932-1936 "Lyrics from Eden: 1932-1936" (downloadable in Yiddish here) a collection of poems written during his four-year stay in a tuberculosis Sanatorium in Colorado a few years after his return from the Soviet Union.
The steppes of Siberia and of Colorado are fused and confused in the poet's mind. Part of him is still in the snow of Siberian exile, even as his body is in the flames of tubercular fever in Colorado. The poem calls to mind the ninth part of his long cycle אין שניי In Snow about his Siberian experience. In that poem, he comes to a gate and asks to be allowed in, to warm himself from the freezing cold, but is denied after people ask who he is and why he is on the road. Here, after having door on door shut to him, as a Russian Jew, as a political prisoner, then again as a Jew rejected while freezing his way through Siberia, he finds the gates and doors open to him in America — a country which he came to love probably more deeply and gratefully than any non-immigrant ever could. But what do these gates and doors in "The Land Colorado" lead to? Life or death? Unknown. As he survived the snow of Siberia, can he survive the tubercular fire here in Colorado? America is also where in the end he is to lay down his burden, his זאַק מיט געשריי, the sack of ache and screams he has born on his proverbial shoulders.
The first line also calls to mind the Nileh, the prayer recited on Yom Kippur, which reads פתח לנו שער בעת נעילת שער כי פנה יום psakh lonu shaar b'eys nilas shaar ki fono yoym "open to us the gates at the time of closing gates wherefore the day has turned." The referent is the gates of heaven, which are about to be closed, but the supplicant asks that they be open for just a bit longer to receive the final prayers. Here, however, he asks the gates themselves to open, not God (as in the prayer) or any corporeal resident (as in In Snow) to open them for him. The celestial is supplanted by, transformed into, the terrestrial.
There is also the matter of the שוועל shvel — the threshold. The liminal place where worlds meet. The poet does not know whether he will leave the sanatorium dead or alive. That shvel is — as we find out in later poems in the collection — a meeting-place of death and life, and of God and Man (or would be if God could ever meet with Man.) This becomes important in later poems in the book which deal with Spinoza and Spinoza's God.
That an avowed unreligious secularist who loathed the chains of tradition should allude to Jewish prayer and mysticism in this fashion, and even demonstrate a mystical yearning, is not in the least surprising. He would also have had every reason to expect his secular readers, many of them, to "get it."
Gates, open! Draw closer, Threshold! You'll tell. I come once again To my snug little cell. My body — fire, My head — snow; And on my shoulders A sack of woe. Goodbye. Goodbye. Hands. Eyes. That day. Farewell on the lips Burnt out — burned away. Farewell to whom? Fled whom? What past? The eternal questions... This time do not ask. In fire, in flames The steppeland spreads, And snow in the flames On the mountains' heads. Look: gate and door Are open to me!1 Hospital or prison? Or a monastery? I lay down at your feet My sack of woe, Land Colorado Of fire and snow!
1 - Language-play here. In Yiddish, בײַ אים איז אָפֿן טיר און טויער ba im iz ofn tir un toyer "door and gate are open to him" is a way of saying "he's doing well in life, he's made it."
Were mourning mortals right for immortals The godly Muses would mourn their Naevius. For once he was stowed in the Deathlord's storehouse Rome's tongue lost its Latin language.
The Original:
Naevius' epitaph in his own time might have looked something like this if inscribed somewhere in the orthography of the 3rd century BC
Here's a possible and highly speculative idea of how it might have been pronounced:
Here's how it occurred in Aulus Gellius with spelling regularized in accordance with modern editorial practice:
Inmortales mortales si foret fas flere,
flerent diuae Camenae Naeuium poetam.
itaque postquam est Orchi traditus thesauro,
obliti sunt Romani loquier lingua Latina.
Here's a possibility for how that might have sounded:
A gigante or gigantón was an enormous stuffed effigy paraded through town streets on certain holidays during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. They were usually made out of flammable materials, and were often set on fire in celebration. This sonnet has been misunderstood by many — even trained hispanists — who didn't grasp that this poem's "giant" is in fact such a gigantón. Willis Barnstone, for example, completely misses this in his translation and so bungles a number of lines which don't make much sense unless one knows what a gigantón is.
Disillusionment with External Appearances, whence an Examination of Inner Truth
By Francisco de Quevedo
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
See how that paunchy wicker-giant struts Along the street, all pride and gravity? Well, he's got rags and kindling-brush for guts. A flunkey props him up for all to see, Whose soul he feeds upon to move as well. He waves his grandeur anywhere he wants, But any who examine his stiff shell Will sneer at all that frippery he flaunts. Such is the seeming splendor of the vile Tyrants who live by ludicrous illusion, An eminent, fantastic garbage pile. See how they blaze in purple as they girt Their hands with gems in colorful profusion. Inside, they are all nausea, worms, and dirt.
The Original:
Desengaño de la Exterior Aparencia, con el Examen Interior y Verdadero
¿Miras este Gigante corpulento
Que con soberbia y gravedad camina?
Pues por de dentro es trapos y fajina,
Y un ganapán le sirve de cimiento.
Con su alma vive y tiene movimiento,
Y adonde quiere su grandeza inclina,
Mas quien su aspecto rígido examina
Desprecia su figura y ornamento.
Tales son las grandezas aparentes
De la vana ilusión de los Tiranos,
Fantásticas escorias eminentes.
¿Veslos arder en púrpura, y sus manos
En diamantes y piedras diferentes?
Pues asco dentro son, tierra y gusanos.
Notas Léxicas:
Fajina: conjunto de ramitas, cortezas y otros despojos de las plantas, que se solía emplear para hacer rellenos de diversas clases; en este case, la materia de la que se compone el gigantón.
Escorias: en un sentido literal, las heces vidriosas que flotan a la superficie de los hornos de fundir metales; y en otro figurado, cualquier cosa vil, desechada y de ningún valor.
Second of three Tolkien passages requested by "Karpalima" who made a generous donation. Thank you for your support. Galadriel's song — as per the request — is translated into the meter of the original, so that it can be sung to all the various melodies to which the original has been set.
Click here for an audio recording of me reading this passage in 11th century West Saxon. (I decided not to implement smoothing of ea in velar environments, unlike my previous recording.)
Click here if you want to read this text in a more "authentic" insular minuscule. Galadriel Sings in Mercian: from Se Hringa Hlāford
By J.R.R. Tolkien
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Requested by "Karpalima"
"The Company was arranged in this way: Aragorn, Frodo, and Sam..."
Þus wæs se Gedryht gelōgod: Aragorn, Frōda and Sam in bāte, Boromeor, Myrig and Elsīþ in ōðerre. In þridda bāte wǣron Legolas and Gimli, þe nū eaxlgesteallan wǣron. In þissum endenīehstan bāte wǣron feorme and sēamas mǣst ongēan gelegd. Þā bātas wǣron gescofen and gestīerd mid scortgehæftedum rōðorspadum þǣra þe blæd brūdon brād in brimme.
Þā eall gearu wæs, Aragorn hīe ealle lǣdde on cunnungryne þǣre Seolforlāde ūp. Swift wæs sēo strēamfaru, and hīe slāwlīce, stæpmǣlum forþēodon. Sam sæt in scipbōge, sīdan on gehwæðere hand wiþfōnde, geornungcearig, framlōciende þǣm strande. Sunnelēoht on ēa āblīcende him ēagan āblende.
Þā hīe forþēodon begeondan þǣre Tungan grēne feld, þā trēow drōgon niðer þām ōfre. Hidres þidres flogettedon and flotigedon gyldenu lēaf on þǣm fripliendan strēame. Full beorht wæs sēo lyft. Stilnes þǣr wæs, būtan lāwercena hēagum feorsange.
In strēame wendon hīe æt sticolre gebyge, and þǣr sāwon micelne swan wlanclīce him tōlīðende. Þæt wæter friplode on gehwæðere hand þæs hwītan brēostes under his bogehtum hneccan. Scān his nebb swylce gefeormed gold, and his ēagan glintedon swylce gagātes in geolustānum geseted. His grēat hwīt fiðeru healf-ūphafen wǣron. Cwōm glēodrēam andlang þæs strēames þā hē nēalǣhte. Samnunga wiston þæt hē sum scip wæs, mid ælfcræfte gecorfen and geworht on fugles anlīcnesse and gelīcnesse. Twā hwītwerede ylfe hit stīerdon mid blaccum rōðorspadum.
Tōmiddes þǣm scipe sæt Celebeorn, and æthindan him stōd Galadriġel, hēah and hwīt. In hira hǣrum wæs goldblōstmena bēag. Hearpan hæfde on hande, and sang. Sārig and sweotol wæs hira stefne swēg on cōlre lyfte. Hwæt! Ic sang lēaf allgyldenu, ond gyldne lēafblēd grēow Ic windas sang, ond wind þēr cwōm þe innon bōgum blēow. Begeondan mōnanrond ond sōl þet fām on flōde flēow. Et Ilmærines stronde þēr fullgrēow þet gyldne trēow. Hwēr sprong Sinēfnes tungolfeld, þēr scān hit berht ond hēh Et Eldæmæres aldbyrig, elfcynnes walle nēh. Þēr grēowon longe gyldnu lēaf on ġēra bōge long þā ofer slītendum sǣm hēr felþ elftēar on eorðan wong Ō Lōrien! Cymþ winter þīn, bær lēafum īdel deg Fallaþ þā lēaf in ferhes strēam. Flōweþ sēo ēa āweg Ō Lōrien! On stronde þīn ic longe nū me wrēh ond þrēow þīn gyldne Ēlænōr in sēariendne bēh. Ō Lōrien! Þīn lēoþ ic sang! Æc hwet tōdeg eom ic? Mīn hlūtor hond on eorðan lond felþ ēce egelic. Æc gif ic scipu sunge nū, hwelc scip mē cume? Ǣ, Hwelc scip mē ǣfre ferede ofer þes wīde sǣ?
Notes:
Most of the proper names here are self-evident. Legolas and Gimli don't need anglicizing. Merry is simply turned into his cognate Myrig. The word Ever-eve can be translated morpheme-for-morpheme as Sinæfen (or rather Sinefen in Galadriel's Mercian dialect.) The names Galadriel and Lorien are given a purely diacritic glide <ġ> to indicated that the <i> and <e> are not part of the same syllable. But Pippin is Elsīþ. Supposedly his Westron name Razanur was the name of a famous traveler, with morphemes meaning "foreign" or "strange". Since Wīdsīþ is a famous fictional traveler to Anglo-Saxonists, I took that name and simply replaced Wīd- with the appropriate El- ("exo-"). The resulting name might mean "Alien Journeyer" or "Traveler Abroad".
I had to coin a few terms for things that simply do not exist in attested Old English, such as *friplian "to ripple".
The main dialect of this Old English translation is "Standard" West Saxon. I decided, though, that Elves would speak in Mercian to give them a distinct coloring. Having the Elves speak Mercian has an interesting metalinguistic effect. The ælf is an obscure but rather unpleasant entity in attested Old English, able to cause nightmares and illness, quite unlike their modern and Tolkienien cognates. This may not have always been so, and various onomastic forms as well as adjectives like ælfscȳne may be vestiges of a state affairs when the ælf was regarded as a kind of supernatural person rather than a demon or a monster. In any case, my Middle Earthers speaking the West Saxon norm call an elf an "ælf", perhaps with its overtones of the frightening. But an elf speaking Mercian will refer to herself as an "elf", perhaps calling to mind the "softer" being that this word has denoted in English since the 20th century. It seems doubly fitting, given that it is the Mercian form of the word which was inherited into English as we know it. (Otherwise the word today would be *alf.) Thus, Galadriel sings in Mercian here, and even uses a rhyme that would not work in West Saxon.
The term eorðan wang (plain of earth) in Galadriel's song is deliberately chosen, as a call-back to the etymologically mysterious neorxnawang, an obscure word that translates the Christian concept of Paradise in the Old English Bible. If a "neorxna plain" is paradise, then the eorðanwang is the opposite. It seemed a good way to evoke the idea of Galadriel seemingly stuck in the wrong world.
Literal Back-Translation of Galadriel's Song
I sang of all-gold leaves, and golden leafage grew. I sang of wind, and wind came there that blew in the boughs. Beyond the moondisc and the sun, the foam flowed on the sea. At the strand of Ilmarin that golden tree grew to its full. Where the star-field of Ever-eve spread, there it shone bright and high near the ancient city in Eldamar, near the walls of Elvenkind. There for long the golden leaves have grown long on the bough of years, while over the sundering seas here the elf tear falls onto the plane of earth. Oh Lorien, thy winter comes, a bare leaf-bereft day. The leaves fall in the stream of life. The river flows away. Oh Lorien upon your strand I have long concealed myself, and twined your golden Elanor into a withering crown. Oh Lorien I have sung your song. But what am I today? My pure hand on the land of the earth falls eternally horrid. But if I sang of ships now, what ship would come to me, alas? What ship would ever bear me over a sea as wide as this?
Some anonymous soul decided to donate to this blog and request a translation of a specific page from the Lord of the Rings into Old English. So here you go, "Karpalima" whoever you are.
If you want to read this passage in an Anglo-Saxon minuscule font, click here.
Click here for an audio recording of me reading this passage in a reconstruction of 11th century West Saxon. (A few things, like unstressed vowel reduction, are inconsistently implemented, and you'll hear a few very late features like West Saxon velar smoothing.) A Page From Se Hringa Hlāford
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Requested by "Karpalima"
Ne gewearþ þām hringe nǣnig gesīenelic wending. Ymbe stycce ārās Gandælf, bedyde þone locan būtan þām ēagþyrle and drōg þā fensterhrægl geador. Se cōfa swearciode and swygode, þeah þe se clacca þāra scēara Samwīsan, nēara nū þām ēagþyrlum, wæs gīet smale gehīerdendlic in þām wyrtgearde. Ānre beorhthwīle stōd se drȳ behealdende þæt fȳr. Þā gebēah and mid fȳrtangan ūtdrōg þone hring on heorþ, and hraðe hine genam. Frōda fǣroðode.
"Hē is ealle cōl" cwæþ Gandælf. "Nim hine!" Frōda hine genam on his clingende folme; him geþūhte þiccra and hefigra þonne ǣfre ǣror.
"Heald hine ūp!" cwæþ Gandælf. "And lōca smēalīce!"
Þā hē swā dyde, nū seah smæle līnan, smælran þonne þā smælestan feðerlīnan, andlang þæs hringes ymbewritene innan and ūtan: fȳrlīnan þe him geþūhte gestrīcan flōwendes gewrites stafas. Scearpe
beorhte scinon hīe, ac ēac ungehende, swylce of sīdre dēopnesse.
"Ne can ic þā fȳrstafas rǣdan" cwæþ Frōda reordes bifiende.
"Nā" cwæþ Gandælf, "ac ic can. Þā stafas sindon Ælfisc, on ealdum wrītungcynne. Ac Mordorlandes is sēo sprǣc þe ic ne sceal hēr wrecan wihte. Þisne secgaþ hīe in Geþēodiscre Tungan, mǣst nēahlīce:
ānhring þe hīe ealle bringeþ and in ealdþȳstrum bindeþ
In Mordorlandum myrce drōfum
Notes:
The proper names, on this page at least, presented no problem. Frodo is a name borrowed from Old English in the first place, so I simply had to restore its original inflectional class. "Gandalf" is a loan from Norse Gandálfr (meaning something like "Elf of the Mage Staff"). I half-anglicized it into Gandælf. The gand part would be opaque in OE, but the ælf would be quite clear. The word "Mordor" in English evokes various dark things that contain the syllable mor-. Tolkien's intent was, I think, to have a toponym that could mean nothing at all while evoking terrible and ghastly things. In Old English, this effect can be had by keeping the word "Mordor" as it is. Morðor is the OE word for "Murder". But ð before about 750 was not consistently distinguished from d. "Mordor" from an OE perspective could be either an exotic name or an old spelling of the word for murder. So I took it over as is. Also like the word morðor, the scansion I have used for the Ring Verse requires it to be a strong a-stem noun with a parasiting vowel. I had to get creative coining a couple other things, and one is a joke for Germanic philologists. The Ring Verse is rendered into hypermetric lines, though the refrain uses a normal four-position line. If anyone's wondering, the literal translation of the OE version is: "Three rings for the Elf kings under the firmament-roofs. Seven for the Dwarves' lords who delve under the canopy of stone. Nine to transient men, battle-brave unto the halls of death. One to the dark lord who rules on the dark throne in the gloom-troubled Mordorlands. Onering that rules them all, onering that finds them all, one ring that brings them all and in ancient darkness binds (them), in the gloom-troubled Mordorlands."
Update: Changed "Þeodisc Tunge" to "Geþeodisc Tunge" after reconsideration of the semantics involved
Why did I end up doing this? It's a long story, involving a tattoo and a friend meeting someone in a bar. But half of the answer is "because it's fucking fun".
Both of these translations are in verse. The Old English is rendered into the usual verse-line you'd expect. The Old Norse is rendered into lines of Málaháttr. (I originally wanted to do it into a Skaldic meter, but then I realized what a mess I was getting into.) For some reason, it felt less jarring to render this into Old Norse than Old English. And not just because I couldn't find any way not to alliterate on the same morpheme in the first line. The mood of lines like this seems like it has more precedent to build on in Norse.
For the Old English, the scansion relies on an archaic metrical value of symbel as if it were *syml without vocalic parasiting.
"I shall not fear. Fear is the mind-killer...."
Old English
Iċ ne forhtiġe wiht.
Fyrhtu biþ mōdbana.
Fyrhtu biþ smældēaþ
þe mē on symbel dīedeþ
Swelte iċ unforht
āne sīðe
Old Norse
Ekki mun ek óttask.
Ótti er móðbani.
Ótti er smádauðinn
er optliga deyðir.
Óttalauss dey ek
einu sinni.
This poem refers to stock characters — real and fictional — from Germanic lore. Some of the figures are now obscure, and most are not known directly from Old English versions of the story.
I originally included some thoughts about the dating of this and other Old English poems dealing with Germanic lore, but it mushroomed into a big honking piece of tl;dr, so I moved all that to this page on my other blog.
I have modernized many of the names, giving them forms that would be plausible as Modern English versions of the name. The biggest exception is Wayland, whose Old English name would actually have been Weeland had it survived into the modern period.
Wayland (Old English Wēland, Old Norse Vǫlundr, Old High German Wiolant) was a smith renowned for his metal working ability. He was forced to work for Nithad (OE Niþhad, ON Níðuðr) who hamstrung him to stop his escape. Wayland avenged himself by killing the king's sons, raping his daughter Beadild (OE Beadohilde, ON Bǫðvildr). Mathild and Geat are opaque. They appear to be famous lovers that met a tragic end, like Romeo and Juliet, or Layla and Majnun. The ablest guess is that they correspond to Magnhild and Gaute of a Scandinavian ballad tale recorded in the 19th century, but even if so the story as it was known to the poet's English audience may well have differed greatly from the version known from Scandinavia a thousand years later. Thedric is Theodoric, the Ostrogothic emperor who ruled in Italy from 493 to 526. Armenric is Ermanaric the Goth, another famous tyrant, known to us from Beowulf and Widsith. (I confected the form Armenric by positing that the vowel of Eormanric underwent pre-rhotic lowering to /a/ in Late Middle English and, as in most native words, failed to raise again in the Early Modern period. Eormanric -> Armenric just like feorr, deorc->far, dark.)
In coming up with a phonology for my audio recording, the question "what did this poem sound like when it was first composed?" does not afford a very useful answer. My bet would be that it was composed in some Anglian dialect, some time in the 8th or early 9th century, but that would just be guessing apart from being uselessly broad. It is much easier to imagine what this poem sounded like when it was read by an early reader of the Exeter book, whose proposed dates for compilation run from roughly 950 to 990. However old or new this poem (or song?) may be, somebody was copying it out in the late 10th century into an MS which wound up in the hands of Leofric the Bishop of Exeter. What you hear in my audio recording is my best guess at what the poem might have sounded like when read aloud by Leofric, i.e. pretty much the same pronunciation I used for the West Saxon version of Bede's Death Song. I posit, following Minkova and Hogg, that reduction of inflectional vowels to /ǝ/ at this point was largely complete, with perhaps sporadic differentiation in careful spelling-based pronunciation. The monophthongization of the "short" diphthongs is a done deal as well. The sounds spelled eo and ēo in normalized orthography are now /ø/ and /øː ~ øɵ̯/. I also effect the so-called "Late West Saxon Smoothing" of <ea> in various environments.
Audio of me reciting the original text in (Very) Late West Saxon
Deor
By Anonymnous
Translated by A.Z. Foreman In Wormland, Wayland went through harrows, The strongminded smith suffered in exile. His soul-companions were sorrow and cold In wintry exile. He ached for escape When Nithad caught and crippled him, And strung him down with severed sinews, Binding a slave of the better man. That passed in time. This can too. To Beadild's mind her brothers' deaths Weren't as wounding as what she faced Herself when she came to clearly see That she was pregnant. That princess unmarried Could not know what would come of her, Tried not to recall the rape had happened. That passed in time. This can too. In a hundred songs we have heard the pang Of Mathild and Geat who grew a bottomless And baneful love that banished sleep. That passed in time. This can too. We all know how Thedrick for thirty winters Ruled the Mearings then reigned no more. That passed in time. This can too. We all have heard of Armenrick's Wolfsick mind. He was one cruel king Who ruled over the outland Goths. His state was set in strung-up hearts As strongmen sat in sorrow-shackles Awaiting the worst, wishing often For a foe to liberate the land of their king. That passed in time. This can too. A man sits mournful, his mind ripped from joy, His spirit in dark and deeming himself Foredoomed to endure ordeals forever. Then he may think how throughout the Midworld The Wise God goes and works around: Meting out grace, mercy and certain Success to some, suffering to many. Of myself I have this much to say: I was songmaker for a time to the tribe of Heden, Dear to my master. "Deor" was my name. For many seasons I sang in that hall To the heart of my king. But Herrend now Has reaped the riches and rights of land That guardian of men once granted me, Stolen my place with a poet's skill. That passed in time. This can too.
The Original:
Wēland him be wurman wræċes cunnade,
ānhȳdiġ eorl earfoða drēag,
hæfde him tō ġesīþþe sorge ond longaþ,
winterċealde wræċe; wēan oft onfond,
siþþan hine Nīþhād on nēde leġde,
swoncre seonobende on syllan monn.
Beowulf finds treasure in the hoard left by a man of a vanished nation, the last survivor of a people who lived in an even earlier age before the Migration Era in which the poem is set. The Beowulf poet alludes to a number of legendary episodes (often from stories that are now unknown apart from their oblique mention in this poem), and generally names the participants. Sometimes that's all he does. The audience would be expected to know, for example, who Hrothmund, Heorogar and Ecgtheow were (the former two names are completely unknown outside of Beowulf, and the latter only from Scandinavian legend). This larger narrative context gives especial point to the fact that the man figuring this digression here is completely anonymized. With no one left to carry on the tribe’s history, the whole heroic ideal of being made immortal through imperishable fame is meaningless. His name is dead, and so too should his story be. And yet, the story lives in this poem. We are hearing a story we ought not to be able to hear. Invited to consider how many tribes and nations have simply disappeared and left not so much as a name, our imagination allows us to remember what we cannot remember. The man himself has no use for the treasures of his nation now, and so decides to bury in a hoard. With no one left to talk to, he addresses himself to the earth as it receives his tribe's now-meaningless treasure. The episode prefigures the end of the poem, where the Geatfolk bury a hoard with their slain king. Lament of the Last Survivor
(Beowulf 2231-2266)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
That earth-house teemed with ancient treasures.
In days long gone a forgotten man,
brooding and prudent, buried dear riches,
the heaped legacy of a highborn race,
in this undervault. Vulturing death
had taken them all in times gone by,
and left only one who walked there still,
the last survivor of a fallen tribe,
a friend-grieving watchman, awaiting their fate,
hoping to relish these rare hallgifts
in his brief last days. The barrow was ready
built on the plain by breaking sea,
secured by hardcraft set on the headland.
That ring-keeper carried inside
all the gold-plated goods that he had
worth protecting. His words were these few: "Hold now, O earth what heroes cannot, the wealth of earls. Men of honor first delved it from you. Deathblow battle has wrung them down, ruinous carnage and mortal evil took every mortal man of my clan. They quit this life and its meadhall mirth. For me there are none to bear a sword or burnish the cup's meadgold. My glory of men has left. The hard helmet hasped in goldwork must lose its hoop. The helm-shiner sleeps who once burnished my battle-mask. The war-mantle that weathered brawls through the burst of shields and the bite of steel decays with the warrior. The whorled hauberk will wander no more on the warchief's shoulders beside his braves. No more brilliant harps' tune of timber, no trained falcon swooping the songhall, no swiftfoot horse pawing the courtgrounds. Plunder and slaughter oust whole peoples out of existence."
The Original:
þǣr wæs swylcra fela
in ðām eorðhūse ǣrġestrēona,
swā hȳ on ġēardagum gumena nāthwylc,
eormenlāfe æþelan cynnes,
þanchycgende þǣr gehȳdde,
dēore māðmas. Ealle hīe dēað fornam
ǣrran mǣlum, ond se ān ðā gēn
lēoda duguðe, se ðǣr lengest hwearf,
weard winegēomor, wēnde þæs ylcan,
þæt hē lȳtel fæc longġestrēona
brūcan mōste. Beorh eallġearo
wunode on wonge wæterȳðum neah,
nīwe be næsse, nearocræftum fæst.
Þǣr on innan bær eorlġestrēona
hringa hyrde hordwyrðne dǣl,
fǣttan goldes, fēa worda cwæð: Heald þū nū, hrūse, nū hæleþ ne mōston, eorla ǣhte. Hwæt! Hit ǣr on þē gōde beġeāton; gūðdēaþ fornam, feorhbealo frēcne fȳra ġehwylcne, lēoda mīnra, þāra þe þis līf ofġeaf, ġesāwon seledrēamas. Nāh hwā sweord weġe oþþe forþ bere fǣted wǣġe, drynċfæt dēore: duguþ ellor sceōc. Sċeal se hearda helm hyrstedgolde fǣtum befeallen: feormiend swefaþ, þā þe beadogrīman bȳwan sċeoldon, ġē swylċe sēo herepād, sīo æt hilde ġebād ofer borda ġebræc bite īrena, brosnaþ æfter beorne. Ne mæġ byrnan hring æfter wīġfruman wīde fēran, hæleðum be healfe; næs hearpan wyn, gomen glēobēames, nē gōd hafoc ġeond sæl swingeþ, nē se swifta mearh burhstede bēateþ. Bealocwealm hafaþ fela feorhcynna forþ onsended!
If I'm going to deal with Beowulf, I might as well just lay my cards on the table and come clean. Literary historians and historical linguists have taken to each other's metaphorical throats over whether Beowulf can or can't be dated securely as an early text. Surveying the battlefield from my vantage point in the cross-fire between two disciplines near to my heart and dear to my head, I cannot escape the conclusion that — on this point — the linguists are in the right. An early 8th century date seems about right.
Beowulf is an early poem out of a lost world. In a very important way, that was already true in turn-of-the-millennium Wessex. By the time the Nowell Codex was produced around 1000 AD, written Old English itself was probably a somewhat more "artificial" language than it had been in the pre-Alfredian period. The language of Old English verse in particular — and a poem like this especially — was rather removed from anybody's everyday speech. This poem, one of the oldest to have survived (and I think probably the oldest extant poetic text of any length), posed serious comprehension problems for the scribes copying it.
Imagine that our only source for the Canterbury Tales were a single manuscript copied out in 1600 by two scribes ignorant of the fact that final -e was once pronounced as its own syllable.
Assumptions about the undatability and geographic unplaceability of Beowulf — at least among literary historians — have basically allowed a great many scholars to read the text in a context of their choosing. The early date of the text, though, was never really questioned by actual linguists who have worked on it, and with good reason. Not only do many lines only scan properly if one substitutes Mercian forms, but the copyists either didn't care or didn't notice. Several able studies have shown that the scribes of our text were insensitive to the metrical principles that the actual poet/s operated with. Work on Late Old English meters suggests that the scribes would have understood poem's meter as a line of four conceptually equal accentual peaks, which is also how I translate it. Indeed, Beowulf's versification is unique in being sensitive to distinctions of vowel length in unstressed syllables. There is also exhaustively documented evidence that the scribes often had a hard time understanding what they were reading. They misread proper names that had not been common for two centuries, and sometimes found Anglian dialect forms baffling. All of this and more conspires to support one conclusion: the language of Beowulf is genuinely archaic, not the product of a late poet’s attempt to recreate an early style.
Everyone who deals with the Beowulf text must either decide which emender to trust, or use their own judgment as to which emendations to accept. I have done the latter, and for the opening passage here translated, two of my emendations are present in the Old English text as I give it. Neither of them finds much general favor these days in the literary side of Beowulf studies. One, though (a trivial deletion) is generally supported by linguists. The other, of greater consequence, is more circumstantial but also cooler.
My audio recording of the original text is not in the Late West Saxon of the surviving MS but —for a change of pace — in a hypothetical transposition into early Mercian.
Alright, now that I've fired the prerequisite shots, let's get down to brass tacks and have a translation. I said it is a poem out of a lost world. A lot of translators for the past century have done their part to make it more accessible to people in this one. Let me try. I'll start with the famous first lines.
The Rise of the Shield Sheafling
Opening of Beowulf (1-11)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
HEAR! We have heard of hero glory,
of Speardane Kings, the strength and deeds
of Clan Princes whose craft was courage.
How often Shield Sheafling shattered an enemy
horde in a swordcloud seizing meadhalls
of tribe after tribe, a terror to lords,
berserking the Earlings. In Ancient Denmark,
a sorry foundling, he soon flourished
to heights under heaven hale with warglory
till every neighbor and outland tribe
beyond the whale-run yielded power,
praise and gold. Good king in deed.
L5: Like Tom Shippey, I accept Wrenn's emendation of <eorl> to eorle rather than the standard eorlas. It's an emendation that is now out of general favor (note the skeptical note on p. 112 of the latest Klaeber edition). Though it does have its supporters, which appear to be growing in number. The connection with the Eruli about whom Jordanes report that they were expelled from Scandinavia by the Danes is compelling. Even if it didn't actually happen that way, legends telling of it were clearly known to Jordanes, and may have influenced lore about the Migration Era. I find the common restoration of <eorl(as)> unsatisfactory. It is hard to understand why a scribe would have written <eorl> if his exemplar had <eorlas>. Eorlas is a common form of a common word which would not be susceptible to enormous scribal troubles, whereas one can easily see how a scribe would have seen Eorle and thought it was simply an ungrammatical dative and "corrected" it to <eorl> instead. Slips even in common words do happen, despite the scribes' obvious care. But obscure proper names clearly gave the scribes great trouble at almost every turn, and I see no reason not to reconstruct one here, given that the manuscript form <eorl> is clearly corrupt and metrically faulty.
Also (and this is the important part) I just think it’s cool. It makes a cooler poetic line with a proper name as the culmination of a long clause. I pulled the form “Earling” in my translation pretty much out of my ass. It's a term that fits the orthographic, morphological and phonological patterns of inherited English vocabulary, it should work like an obscure proper name ought to. Basically I just did what felt right aesthetically. There is no need for medievalists need to treat these texts as museum pieces all the time. We are allowed to have fun. It is true that if one imagines these reconstructed Eorle as the Heruli (and assuming that these are the same Heruli as were later living around the Sea of Azov), then the beginning of this poem's back-story would have to be set in the early 3rd century AD, which doesn't really square with the timeline. Only five generations are described separating Scyld from Hroðulf, which hardly allows for enough of a gap between the era of Scyld and the early 6th century AD which (based on the mention of Hygelac's raid on the Frisians) would seem to be the time-frame in which our poem is set. But epic poetry does not have to be (and in fact almost never is) strictly faithful to actual chronology.
L9: I have excised <þara> from L9, as it is suspicious on several grounds. Not least the fact that it is a wildly unmetrical line, and requires þāra to be construed as an unemphatic function word. Such a construction conforms to later usage, and probably seemed natural to the scribes, but it is at odds with the general practice of the poem which treats se as a demonstrative pronoun. Moreover, minor words of this kind are precisely the sort of words that late Wessex scribes are known (based on other evidence) to have freely interpolated into the texts they transmitted. The archetypal half-line was probably a standard D-type verse consisting of a single word ymbsittendra. The Klaeber edition even says outright that þāra "is likely enough a scribal insertion", but leaves it in because "the stylistic rule is flexible...and emendation on the basis of meter is now largely avoided". It's my position that Beowulf's most influential editors have been far too conservative in their emendations. The "Dating Debate" is father to a generalized chronological agnosticism, which prompts uncertainty about how much or how little garbling one may expect in the text.
Airs of Ancientry No.14 – Lament of the Empire's Conscript
By Lǐ Bái
Translated by A.Z. Foreman Click to hear me recite the original in a reconstructed Medieval Chang'anese pronunciation At the border post ablast with sand And grim with wind since god knows when Where leaves are felled on fall-tawned grass From my tower I eye enemy terrain, See weed-choked forts in wasteland abandoned, The marchland towns where not a wall remains, The whitebleached bones a thousand frosts have weathered The jumbled barrows that brushwood invades. Who was it brought this brute havoc? Vaunting Northmen moved with violent bane, So flamed with anger our emperor Bade army-drums beat for a war. His spring-gentle mind turned murderous weather, He sent out the troops and turmoiled the state With three hundred sixty thousand men Now it's sorrow and tears of sorrow like rain. It grieved us but no they make us go. Can we work our farms in these wild acres? Till you've seen the boys serving at the border, You don't grasp the pain of a borderland gate. Today Commander Li Mu is no more. Frontier boys are just jackal prey.
Death Song
Attributed to the Venerable Bede
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Before departing on the compelled journey Through death's narrows, none is so clever That he knows his own end and needn't think On what judgment he'll get for good or evil, Consider the soul's sentencing hereafter.
Audio of me reciting the text in Very Late West Saxon
Audio of me reciting the text in Old Northumbrian
I plan to write something up with further explanation of what you hear in these recordings, as part of my Voices of Earlier English series. Two points right now.
Point the first: yes, we do have evidence for that uvular R in Old Northumbrian. (In fact, the uvular R survived in Northumbrian English into the 20th century and is still not quite dead yet.)
Point the second: my reading of the West Saxon text aims at the sound of the language in the early 11th century, which is why you hear all that vowel reduction. One way of putting it would be that I tried to imagine how a pupil of Ælfric of Eynsham would have read this text. Another would be to cut the bullshit and admit that I chose this date in order to weasel out of having to commit myself to one or another position about the"short" digraphs ĕa ĕo in this dialect. The traditional explanation is typologically implausible, but has endured in the literature because all the alternative accounts raise problems of their own. The question, like the mystery of what name Achilles took when he hid among the women, has given a great many nerds something to do. I think I know what the answer is, but I'll save that for my VOEE post. Anyway, an 11th century date allows me to just take ĕa as having already merged with /æ/ in this dialect, and ĕo as having the late value of /œ/. Both of which are uncontroversial and don't cause problems.
The Original:
(West Sахon)
For þām nīedfere nǣniġ wyrþeþ
þances snotora, þonne him þearf sȳ
tō ġehycgenne ǣr his heonangange
hwæt his gāste gōdes oþþe yfeles
æfter dēaþe heonon dēmed weorþe.
(Northumbrian)
Fore þēm nēdfæræ nǣnig wiorðit
þoncsnotora þan him þarf sīe
tō ymbhycggannæ ǣr his hionongǣ,
hwæt his gāstæ gōdæs æþþa yflæs
æfter dēoþdægedœ̄mid wiorðæ
Expressing What Struck Me
By Du Fu
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
The blades of war are still not laid to rest Where are my sister where are my brothers today? I wipe away tears like blood upon my breast I comb my hair strands fill my face with grey Low is the land here vast, the wilderness Distant, the heavens laggard, the twilight river Sick and decrepit how can I last much longer? I'm sure I'll get no chance to see you ever
The Original:
(Medieval Chinese transcribed using a slight modification of David Branner's system)
A draft of this translation has been on my "unfinished" pile for over ten years. I now have managed to finish it. That draft was my first attempt at translating Classical Arabic verse, and at some point in the process I came up with a new verse-form that seemed fit for purpose, combining assonance with a four-beat alliterative meter (loosely based on Old English verse, though with many restrictions relaxed). I've never used that form since, and I don't know if I ever will.
The year is 954 A.D. Al-Ḥadath Al-Ḥamrā is a strategically important town on the Arab-Byzantine border, between Marˁaš and Malaṭiya, which depended for protection on a fortress built on nearby Mount Uḥaydib. After being captured and demilitarized in 950 by the Byzantines, it was retaken in October of 954 by Sayfu l-Dawla Abū Ḥasan Bin Ḥamdān, the Emir of Aleppo (whom I have seen fit to anglicize as Lord Ali the Realmsword) who set about refortifying it, only to be interrupted by the appearance of Byzantine forces under the command of Bardas Phocas. Before the end of the month, a decisive battle was fought around Mount Uhaydib. After a day of heavy fighting, Lord Realmsword with a small company of hardened men broke through the Byzantine line. Bardas' forces retreated, leaving members of his own family as prisoners. Lord Realmsword was then able to finish up the fortification of Al-Hadath, whereupon he had the pleasure of hearing his court poet Abū Ṭayyib Al-Mutanabbī recite the poem translated here in celebration of the occasion.
Audio of me reciting the text in Arabic
In Praise of Lord Realmsword on the Recapture of Al-Hadath
By Al-Mutanabbī
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
This translation is dedicated to Tahera Qutbuddin, in whose wonderful seminar I had the pleasure of reading this and other poems by Al-Mutanabbī and got some idea of how to translate him.
Men of statureset high standards as noble men reach noble aims. Resolutions measure the resolve of men who show what they're made of with what they make. Great feats are small in great men's eyes though small men call their smallness great.(1)
Behold our commanderAli bin Hamdan, and see in himour Sword of State.
He wills that his forcesshow the force of his will though the task puts lance-honedlegions to shame,
He expects of his menno more than himself but more than land-rulinglions can claim.
The long-lived vulturesof the vast drylands would pledge their livesto protect his blades. They'd meet no harmthough made with no talons since his sturdy armsof steel were made.
Does that Red City still realize her color,(2) whether cloudbursts brought her the blood or the rain? Where first she drankof flashing stormclouds she drank of skullsthe day he came. While blade beat bladehe built and braced her where she shook from the forceof the Fates' brute waves.
She lay mad in the holdof an unholy spell that dead bodies brokeat break of day.
Though Fate displaced herto a foreign creed, the strike of your swordsrestored her Faith.
What nights yield to youis yours forever. What they steal from youthey soon must repay.
Plans you pass are verbsin the present now having moved to pastbefore men can negate them.
How could Greeks and Russmen(3)raze a stronghold raised with pikethrusts for pillars and base. No wronged man diednor wrongdoer lived when they called her to justice.The Judge was Fate. They moved on you haulingsuch a mass of steel their coursers seemed leglesscrossing the plain. When they flashed, their blades all blended in with steel headgear and garments aglint with day, An army crawlingfrom east and west clamoring till the earsof Orion(4) ached, A horde of tangled tongues and peoples with translators for every order relayed. Then that molten time melted fake mettle till only war's metal and men remained Every sword shattered that failed to shatter the bulwark of bloodwood and bucklers and mail Every man who turned gutless in fear of gutting fled from the ranks of fighters that day. Where standing meant deathyou stood your ground as if on the sleepingeyelids of bane. While wounded, fright-fouled warriors ran past you you fought with a smile and a shining face and went beyond bounds of bravery and reason till they said you knewthe Numen's ways. I know how hawks will hold birds down in a grip to gut their grounded game.(5) You squeezed the foe's wings on a squirming heart and dealt hard death to your downed prey and skivered their skulls when you still hadn't won then their vitals and throats as victory came. You detested lances and tossed them aside as the sword went spitting on the spear at close range. Let any who look for the light of conquest see it in the luster of lightweight blades. You strewed them hard over Uháydib like dirhams strewn over a woman on her wedding day. You and your horses trampled hilltop nests where fodder galore before them lay. The baby eaglets thought you'd brought their mothers back not the sturdy wingfoot steeds that raced till they slipped and you had them slide on their bellies across the earth like crawling snakes. Will the Domesticus(6) advance every day against you with coward neck fighting his advancing face? Does he not sense the lion's scent till he tastes it? Wildbeasts can sense a lion on the way. Our leader's brute sorties struck him hard when his son, his wife's brother and his son were slain. He scampered as his troops helped him escape the swords which were busy hacking their heads away. He got the message of Mashrafi(7) steel to his men, though told in the tongue of strangers. He was glad to surrender not in stupidity but after his losseseven life was a gain. You are no mere kingwho conquers his peer(8) but the thrust of one Godfelling three-god pagans, You have ennobled all of Adnan(9), Pride of the Outlands(10) and all creation. The praise is yours for my pearls of verse: I just string them. You set their shape. Your gifts(111) gallop with me through the grind of war so you bear no regrets and I no blame Riding a steed whose feet fly to battle as soon as it hears the howling fray. Oh Realmsword forever unsheathed and ready, held in no doubt nor held at bay. Joy to skull-strikers, to stout men's deeds, to them that love you and Islam: you are safe. And why wouldn't God still guard your edge to behead his foeswith you for a blade?
Notes:
1 — The opening verses of this poem are proverbial and famous in Arabic as any line from Hamlet is in English. I have given a somewhat free paraphrase. A literal translation would be :
"Resolutions come in proportion to the worth of the resolute, and noble deeds/traits come in proportion to the worth of the noble. The small (deeds/traits) are great in the eye of the small, and great things small in the eye of the great."
2 — Hali l-ḥadaṯu l-ḥamrā'u taˁrifu lawnahā? (Literally: "Does Red Al-Hadath know her color?")
"Red" was a term that could be used for non-Arabs, especially Persians, Greeks or "Franks" (Western Europeans) who were seen as being of lighter complexion. E.g. Atānī kullu aswada minhum wa'aḥmar "Every one of them, Arab and not, came to me". A saying attributed to Muhammad has it that buˁiṯtu ilā l-'aḥmari wa-l-aswad "I was sent to the red and the black" of which the most straightforward interpretation is "to all mankind, Arab and not." The term Al-Ḥamrā' as a collective adjective may also be used to refer generically to foreigners, or to emancipated slaves.
Al-Hadaṯ Al-Ḥamrā' "Red Hadath" is the traditional appellation of the city. The color is — I think — being played on at multiple levels. She (the city is morphosyntactically feminine) is in the most obvious sense "red" after being soaked with blood. But she was also a "red" (foreign, Greek) city when under Byzantine rule, which she no longer is. She is now "red" (emancipated from bondage) now that Lord Realmsword has relieved her of foreign control. Despite her traditional appellation, she may not even know that she is now red in one sense, and was red in the other, so completely has she now been redeemed to her proper place under Islamdom.
3 — "Russmen." The original text uses the word Rūs which in Modern Arabic simply means "Russians." Anglophone commenters on this poem have usually translated it thus, and Arabic commentaries often leave the word unglossed as though its meaning were transparent. But the Arabic word Rūs, at this time, actually referred to Norsemen (specifically the Byzantine Varangian guard is probably what is meant.) Since English "Rus" is far too scholarly, and "Vikings" would be a bit misleading, I have used the term Russmen as a compromise. (I considered calquing off of Old Norse Garðmaðr and rendering the phrase as "Greeks and Garthmen" or the like. But somehow it felt a bit silly to go to such an extreme.)
4 — The original actually refers to Gemini, a different constellation. But makes for a more transparent image of an anthropomorphized stellar figure.
5 — This verse, like some others in my translation, does not have an exact counterpart in the original. But it served in English to make the image clearer. Al-Mutanabbī's description evokes the way a hawk pounces on larger types of prey. The predator holds its prey to the ground, delivering blows to the skull to dispatch it fully before slashing into the throat.
6 — Domesticus (or, rather δομέστικος) was Bardas' Byzantine military title, loaned into Arabic as dumustuq, which is the word Al-Mutanabbī uses.
7 — In poetry, good swords are often said to be "Mashrafi" after an obscure place called Mashraf. Nobody quite knows why, though everybody likes to guess.
8 — Literally "You are monotheism defeating polytheism (širk)". That Christians have in some sense diluted the principle of monotheism by worshipping a trinity was — as it still is — a commonplace of anti-Christian Muslim polemic.
9 — Adnan: the Northern Arabs are supposedly descendants of ˁAdnān.
10 — "Outlands" is my rendering of ˁawāṣim. The word has often been misread as meaning "capitals" which is its sense in Modern Arabic. The term ˁawāṣim here refers to a part of the frontier zone between the Byzantine Empire and the Empire of the Caliphs. The forward strongholds of this zone were called ṯuġūr "mouths", while those further rearward were called the ˁawāṣim "guardianesses".
11 — Lord Realmsword had gifted the poet with some horses.
The Original:
عَلى قَدْرِ أهْلِ العَزْم تأتي العَزائِمُ وَتأتيعلَى قَدْرِ الكِرامِ المَكارمُ
وَتَعْظُمُ في عَينِ الصّغيرِ صغارُهاوَتَصْغُرُ في عَين العَظيمِ العَظائِمُ
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