Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary | together with Sellic Spell

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work | very distinctive in its mode | completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections | but seems never to have considered its publication.This edition is twofold | for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself | in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made | to form also a commentary on the translation in this book.From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark | listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth | or looking up in amazement at Grendel’s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot.But the commentary in this book includes also much from those lectures in which | while always anchored in the text | he expressed his wider perceptions. He looks closely at the dragon that would slay Beowulf ‘snuffling in baffled rage and injured greed when he discovers the theft of the cup’; but he rebuts the notion that this is ‘a mere treasure story’ | ‘just another dragon tale’. He turns to the lines that tell of the burying of the golden things long ago | and observes that it is ‘the feeling for the treasure itself | this sad history’ that raises it to another level. ‘The whole thing is sombre | tragic | sinister | curiously real. The “treasure” is not just some lucky wealth that will enable the finder to have a good time | or marry the princess. It is laden with history | leading back into the dark heathen ages beyond the memory of song | but not beyond the reach of imagination.’Sellic Spell | a ‘marvellous tale’ | is a story written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf | in which there was no association with the ‘historical legends’ of the Northern kingdoms.