This is the Introduction to my new translation of the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poem, The Wanderer. My translation, and the original text, is available at Academia edu:
https://www.academia.edu/10434699/Thus_Spoke_the_Earth-Strider_A_New_Translation_of_the_Anglo-Saxon_poem_The_Wanderer_
Thus Spoke the Earth-Strider
Swa cwæð eardstapa
(The Wanderer, line 6a)
A New Translation of the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer, including the original Anglo-Saxon text. Introduction and Translation © 2015 by Edward Moore (patristics@gmail.com)
Introduction
Literary theorists have made it abundantly clear, over the years, that every translation is an interpretation, and therefore a new text. So not only have I given my version of The Wanderer a new title (taken from line 6a of the original) -- one that might possibly have been its "tag" back in the old days of oral composition and transmission -- I have rendered it in a verse form of my choosing; one that neither attempts to reproduce the original alliterative half-line (impossible for contemporary uninflected English) nor to imitate it in some sort of hybrid concoction that would likely be an assault on the ear. Instead, I have relied upon the old faithful loose iambic -- agreeing with Robert Frost that "in our language ... there are virtually but two [meters], strict iambic and loose iambic" ("The Figure a Poem Makes") -- arranged in stanzas of five lines with one concluding half-line (more or less). This is an unabashedly modern structure, unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world, but done for the sake of art. I believe (I hope!) that I have succeeded in achieving the only purpose of meter: to make one want to read the poem aloud (as all ancient poetry was).
I have attempted nothing like a literal translation, as I feel that our contemporary English is so far removed from the prehistoric parent of our language that such a version would have been either unreadable, or only of use (if any) to students. My goal was to produce a living poem -- that is, one containing "things that are important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful" (Marianne Moore, "Poetry"). I feel that the passionate, heart-rending message of the eardstapa is "useful" not only because it speaks to the condition of some human beings living right now, but also because some people need to be disabused of certain anti-personalistic superstitions that still persist, fantastically, fifteen years into the twenty-first century (a grim situation given the topics and the tenor dominating our national and international "scene").
I stress some people, for despite what are clearly a few later interpolations by a pious scribe or scribes, The Wanderer is not a Christian poem, nor even a "spiritual" one (whatever that means nowadays). It is not very uplifting (the final two lines, 114b-115b, are clearly an addition by one of those pious scribes); disregarding the interpolated final lines of the poem as we now have it, the original ending (lines 110a-b; tr. stanza XXII) states, with cold disgust: eal þis eorþan gesteal / idel weorþeð! ("All this earthly realm, every inch of it, / Is idle, a waste"). This might cause some people to recoil, or avoid reading the poem altogether. Indeed, the grim secular -- though not entirely pessimistic -- attitude of this poem is already clear from line 5b: "Wyrd bið ful aræd!" which means that "fate" (wyrd), or the inescapable structure of existence, has been set in place in advance. According to the mythology (which was the religion) of the ancient Germanic peoples, wyrd cannot be altered, not even by the gods. Yet the calm acceptance of the Stoic sage was not the response of the Anglo-Saxon eorl (man of the soldierly rank), who rather sought "Fame brought by Fate" -- that is, in the throes of glorious battle -- than a calm resignation to an impersonal force. Calm resignation, of course, would have been tantamount to suicide in the warrior culture in which our wanderer-narrator lived. Michael Alexander, in his Introduction to Beowulf: A Verse Translation (1973), has described the warrior culture of that era:
[A] lord in peace and war is the 'shepherd of his people', folces hyrde (Homer's poimeen laōn). He gives them shelter, food and drink in his hall; he is their 'ring-giver' and 'gold-friend' in peace and their 'shield' and 'helmet' in war. The warriors 'earn their mead' and their armour by their courage and loyalty in war. Ideally, there is complete solidarity between a king and his people (folc).
The speaker in the poem, through some catastrophe of war -- ubiquitous in the European age of migrations -- had lost his home and family and, most importantly, his lord or chieftain, without whom a man was at the mercy not only of wyrd but of men and beast, bad weather and hunger. The only rational response to this situation was to hold to the heroic code, and put up a fight worthy of song. Perhaps one cannot change one's fate, the Anglo-Saxon warrior would say, but one can choose how to meet it. "Every earl is called to act with courage" (eorl mid elne gefremman), not to sit disconsolate and idle, however deep his sorrow: he must never "show weakness in war; / He shall feel no fear, nor have a fay mind" (ne to wac wiga / ne to forht ne to fægen).
Prayer, of course, is virtually absent from the poem, except for a few stock references to "the Almighty" and the "our father in heaven." But clear-sighted reflection upon the grim reality of the world is the theme of this most human work. In fact, at one point, God is gently upbraided -- perhaps by a monkish scribe-interpolator who still had a bit of the old wolfish Saxon in him -- for the destruction he has brought upon a city:
And so He shattered this earthly garden,
Our city -- He, the Creator of men! --
Until sounds of life no longer echoed
And the old work of giants stood empty.
(stanza XVII [lines 85a-87b])
Naive sentiments, such as "everything happens for a reason" (often spoken by people who have no idea what is happening to them, or why, and lack the intellectual capacity to investigate), are not to be found in the sayings of the Earth-Strider. This is not to say, however, that he does not find a grim comfort in contemplating the catalogue of life's miseries; indeed, he discovers that by "fastening his desires in fetters" he is able to gaze calmly at the world -- though not without a lingering sorrow -- take stock of its countless hardships and downfalls, and to conclude that "All this earthly realm, every inch of it, / Is idle, a waste."
According to Michael Alexander, The Wanderer is an elegy "affected by Christian ideas of the transitoriness of this world and its imminent end; but ... the tone is more one of sorrowful lament that these heroic glories are now past, than of confidence in the heavenly remedy." This is true, to an extent; but I see this poem as a personal lament for the narrator's loss of his lord, not as a reflection on eschatology. The lament over past catastrophes does not indicate, to me, any concern over an "imminent end"; the type of misfortunes dwelt upon were common in an age of lawlessness and almost constant warfare. These is no sense of an ultimate plan -- no divine fingers at work on a universal tapestry of which we are all necessary threads -- and there is no theodicy. But instead of quietly retiring from the world, into a monastery or a hermitage, the eorl will, like a true artist, bestow his own meaning upon his life. He will hold fast to the heroic code of his ancestors:
The wise must be calm, and curb impulsive ways;
Ne'er speak in haste, nor show weakness in war;
He shall feel no fear, nor have a fay mind;
Greed he must banish. [...]
He has a good heart who holds fast to this faith ...
(stanzas XIII and XXIII [lines 65b-66a; 112a])
