Beowulf's Afterlives

Genre/Type Descriptor(s): Translation from Old English
Anthology
Poem or Poetry

Language(s): English

Translator: Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
Compiling Editor: Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Contained in: "Poem of Beowulf," a chapter in The Poets and Poetry of Europe, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Location Details: Volume 1, pages 8-9
City: Philadelphia
Publisher: Carey and Hart
Date: 1845

Relationships: Collocates with -> An Old Man's Sorrow, Kemble, John M. (1845)

Collocates with -> Beowulf the Shyld, Taylor, William (1845)

Collocates with -> [Prose summary of Beowulf], Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1845)

Collocates with -> The Sailing of Beowulf, Taylor, William (1845)

Collocates with -> Good Night, Kemble, John M. (1845)

(Upstream) Extracts from and recontextualizes -> [Beowulf summary and translation sample], Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1838)

(Downstream) Reproduced in new context as -> Beowulf's Expedition to Heort, Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1886)

(Downstream) Excerpt(s) used in -> Beowulf, Liuzza, R. M. (1999 (copyright 2000))

(Downstream) Excerpt(s) used in -> Beowulf, Guerber, H. A. (1896)

Identifying Numbers

[Fry 1261]; [GR 535]; [MO2 1838]. But see Notes on Prior Documentation, below.

Descriptive Notes

Longfellow's Poetry and Poets of Europe is xix + 779 pp., in 2 vols. paginated continuously. The chapter "Poem of Beowulf," the first set of literary extracts in the book, occupies pp. 8-10 and consists of 5 individually titled passages in verse translation, given in this order: "Beowulf the Shyld" and "The Sailing of Beowulf," both from William Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry: Interspersed with Various Translations (1828); "Beowulf's Expedition to Heort," by Longfellow; and "An Old Man's Sorrow" and "Good Night," both from John M. Kemble's 1837 translation. The 5 extracts respectively translate ll. 53-82, 18-40a, 189-257, 2455-62a, and 1789b-803a.

"Beowulf's Expedition to Heort" (a rendering of ll. 189-257, from pp. 104-6 of Longfellow's 1838 review article) begins:

Thus then, much care-worn,
The son of Healfden
Sorrowed evermore,
Nor might the prudent hero
His woes avert.
The war was too hard,
Too loath and longsome,
That on the people came,
Dire wrath and grim,
Of night-woes the worst.
This from home heard
Higelac's Thane,
Good among the Goths,
Grendel's deeds. (8-9)

And ends:

["]Now would I fain
Your origin know,
Ere ye forth
As false spies
Into the Land of the Danes
Farther fare.
Now, ye dwellers afar-off!
Ye sailors of the sea!
Listen to my
One-fold thought.
Quickest is best
To make known
Whence your coming may be." (9)

Notes on Prior Documentation

Fry, MO1, and MO2 misattribute to Longfellow 4 verse translations from Beowulf: 2 by William Taylor (1828) and 2 by John M. Kemble (1837). Longfellow's Table of Contents in The Poets and Poetry of Europe indicates the correct attribution for each. Longfellow's only translation from Beowulf is lines 189-257, as described above.

Fry, MO1, and GR represent the whole portion of Longfellow's anthology The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845) that contains his sole verse translation as a reprint of an 1838 review article. However, this 1845 work uses a greatly reduced verson of the 1838 article as an introductory chapter, giving it the new title "Anglo-Saxon Language and Poetry" (vol. 1, pp. 1-7). This is followed by a series of titled anthology sections containing translated material mostly by others, including the 5 passages from Beowulf in a section entitled "Poem of Beowulf" (vol. 1, pp. 8-10).

Authentication

BAM.

Last Updated: 04/01/2022