Weary History

It's national novel writing month! I am not, at present, writing a novel, but I am going to try to post here every day this month. My goals are to finish out my account of my time in Oxford, check in on how I'm doing on my 2021 goals, rave excitedly about the novels of Dorothy Dunnett, and write posts about the characterisation of historians in the works of Lois McMaster Bujold.

 

To kick it all off, a contribution to my commonplace book of poems about late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Beowulf, the famous Old English epic poem about fate and violence, the latter embodied by its eponymous hero, is one of those things that most people know about the Middle Ages. There was a hero named Beowulf. He killed monsters and died fighting one.

 

What I like about this translation of the poem is it captures the tone of Old English: 'blunt-tongued' is the sensation of hearing or speaking that language. (And if you haven't hear Old English aloud, go here.) Even the translators' use of similar sounds 'repeated and repeated', 'weaves and unweaves its weary history', makes me think of my own dim memories that alliteration is a key component of Anglo-Saxon poetic metre.

Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf

 

At various times, I have asked myself what reasons

moved me to study, while my night came down,

without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.

Used up by the years, my memory

loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history. 

Then I tell myself: It must be that the soul
has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing
circle can take in all, can accomplish all. 

beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.

 ~ Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Alastair Reid. Reprinted in the Zoo of the New, ed. Nick Laird and Don Paterson (London, 2017), 279.

The poem even pivots halfway through to express hope for immortality, calling to mind the way that Beowulf--and perhaps his poet?--hoped that heroic deeds would bring everlasting fame, 'beyond this writing'. 

Further Reading

Vladimir Brljak, 'Borges against the Vikings: Early Writings on Old Germanic Literature and History, 1932—46', Old English Newsletter 47:1 (2021), available online here

 

And also the rest of the issue, which is focused on Borges' engagement with Old English and Old Norse literature.