Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

Tolkien's translation of Beowulf has been compared to Seamus Heaney's translation from 2000. Joan Acocella writes that since Tolkien was not a professional poet like Heaney, he had to make compromises in translating the original Old English epic. According to Acocella, Heaney's focus on rhyme and alliteration makes him occasionally lose details from the original that remain in Tolkien's prose version.[4] Tolkien's version stays closer to the details and rhythm of the original and extremely close to the original sense of the poem, which has been attributed to Tolkien's scholarly knowledge of Old English, whereas Heaney, on the other hand, succeeded in producing a translation better suited for the modern reader.[4][7]

The publication caused some controversy among scholars. Beowulf expert and University of Kentucky professor Kevin Kiernan, called it a "travesty", and criticism was also offered by Harvard professor Daniel Donoghue.[8] Writing for Business Insider, Kiernan notes that Tolkien disliked his own translation. According to Kiernan, any prose translation of Beowulf inevitably neglects the "poetic majesty" of the original.[9] University of Birmingham lecturer Philippa Semper instead called the translation "captivating" and "a great gift to anyone interested in Beowulf or Tolkien."[7]

Katy Waldman, reviewing the work for Slate, sets the translation in context, summarizing the poem and mentioning Tolkien's powerful argument for it as a work of art, his 1936 Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. She writes that it is less immediately pleasurable than Seamus Heaney's verse translation. She states that she understands how some may prefer Tolkien's version, with its "Arthurian grandeur". She notes that Tolkien can "do immediacy, praising his dragon: "Now it came blazing, gliding in looped curves, hastening to its fate",[10] reminding her of Smaug in The Hobbit. All the same, in her view, Tolkien's undoubted fidelity to the original sometimes cloud the action, losing the thread of the tale "in a kind of reverent hairsplitting". On the other hand, Waldman finds the commentary admirable, providing context and support: "Tolkien-as-guide is delightful, an irresistibly chatty schoolmaster in the Chaucerian mold", able to complain in precise academic detail about what he considered mistranslations, such as the popular kenning "whale-road" – he renders it "the sea where the whale rides", to avoid, among other traps, the echo of "railroad". She admires Tolkien's passion for Scyld Scefing, who became King Sheave in Tolkien's The Lost Road. Like the sole Beowulf manuscript, Tolkien's handwritten draft of the translation had badly deteriorated and faded, was almost lost. Waldman ends by "not begrudg[ing] Tolkien his pedantry in the face of the void. ... Hwæt!"[10]

The Tolkien scholar Michael D. C. Drout had begun the project of editing Tolkien's Beowulf, in both prose and poetry, for publication in two volumes, around 2000, but the project was cancelled by the Tolkien Estate, and eventually Christopher Tolkien brought out the present book instead.[11] Drout wrote in his review in Tolkien Studies that "The exclusion of [Tolkien's] alliterative poetic translation from the edition is more puzzling. [That] translation is a well-done piece of poetry, truer to the original in both form and content than any other poetic translation of Beowulf. ...general readers would very likely enjoy the poetic translation more than they will the prose."[12]

Ethan Gilsdorf comments in The New York Times that Tolkien had been skeptical about putting Beowulf into modern English, and had written in his 1940 essay On Translating Beowulf that turning the poem "into 'plain prose' could be an 'abuse'."[13] Gilsdorf continues, "But he did it anyway";"[13] Tolkien remarked that the result "was 'hardly to my liking'."[13] Jeremy Noel Tod, writing in The Daily Telegraph, noted that all the same, the translation illustrates how indebted The Lord of the Rings is to the Old English poem.[14]

Jerry Salyer, reviewing the book for The Catholic World Report, commented that "Tolkien believed northern paganism to be in certain respects more compatible with Christianity than is the Mediterranean variety, insofar as northern myths allude to a grand conflict whereby gods and men fight together against inhuman monsters",[16] and that "At the least, we can say that there is more reality to Old English folklore than in the perverse fantasies by which Americans now live."[16] Salyer positions the monster Grendel as "a representative of Cain, that first [biblical] killer",[16] specially enraged by the Christian singing in the Hrothgar's hall, Heorot. In Salyer's view, the modern West may be "twisted and bleak",[16] but if Tolkien is still publishing books long after his death, it cannot be all bad, and the "forgotten pagan legacy" remains important for Christianity.[16]

Michael J. Alexander notes that although Beowulf, with its eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, inspired Tolkien to create ents, elves, and orcs in his Middle-earth books, the translation may not be an easy read for his fans.[17]

Michael J. Alexander, author of a verse translation of Beowulf, reviewed Tolkien's version for The Guardian. He notes that The Lord of the Rings derives its orcs and its Riders of Rohan "directly from the poem", though the One Ring has a different source. He writes that he does not know what Tolkien's "fiction fans" will make of the book, as "some [parts of it] are drier than others". Since Alexander had, many years earlier, been shown a part of Tolkien's verse translation of about one fifth of Beowulf by Christopher Tolkien, he had expected the rendering to be in verse; he notes that both the Tolkien verse fragment, and Alexander's own version, imitated the form of the original, "stimulated by the example of Ezra Pound's version of [the Old English poem] 'The Seafarer'". In contrast, Tolkien's prose version "sticks as closely as possible to the meaning and clause-order of the original". In Alexander's view, it "has great accuracy and a sense of rhythm", casting its own spell despite its archaism and "striking inversions of word-order"; he notes that the original, too, was intentionally archaic. Alexander writes that only readers familiar with the original will see the "felicities" of Tolkien's rendering, and the commentary, too, may work best on knowledgeable readers.[17]