25 February 2009
There’s a lot of action in this one. Grendel comes into the mead-hall and devours one of Beowulf’s men. He then reaches for Beowulf, who sits up in his bed and grabs the monster by the arm. The two struggle, almost destroying the hall in the process. Grendel, realizing he is overmatched, tries to escape, but Beowulf grips him tighter. The fit ends in mid-fight.
The fit opens with Grendel approaching Heorot (lines 710-13):
Ðā cōm of mōre under misthleoþum
Grendel gongan; Godes yrre bær;
mynte se mānscaða manna cynnes
sumne besyrwan in sele þām hean.(Then from the moor under cover of mists
Grendel came stalking; he bore God’s anger;
the guilty ravager intended one of mankind
to ensnare in that high hall.)
Then a bit later on we get one of the most famous passages from English literature (lines 721b-727):
Duru sōna onarn,
fyrbendum fæst, syþðan hē hire folmum (æt)hran;
onbræ¯d þā bealohy¯dig, ðā (hē ġe)bolgen wæs,
reċedes mūþan. Raþe æfter þon
on fāgne flōr fēond treddode,
ēode yrremōd; him of ēagum stōd,
liġġe ġelīcost lēoht unfæġer.( The door gave way at once,
fast in its fired bands, as soon as his hands touched it;
intending harm, he swung open, he was enraged,
the mouth of the building. After that, quickly
across the decorated floor the fiend trod,
he went angrily; from his eyes shone,
most like flame, an unfair light.)
Note: there are some issues with my translation here, besides the stilted syntax which I use to try and preserve the word order so you can more easily recognize the meaning of individual words. In line 726, I translate the adjective yrremōd, anger, as an adverb; I guess I could have said with anger, but yrremōd isn’t in the dative case, so there would still be a problem. In the same line I translate stōd, stood, as shone; I could have said stood forth. In 727, I retained the unfair for unfæġer, even though it doesn’t mean the same in modern English as it did back then, but you should get the meaning from the context.
For a more poetic, but less accurate, translation there is Seamus Heaney’s:
The iron-braced door
turned on its hinge when his hands touched it.
Then his rage boiled over, he ripped open
the mouth of the building, maddening for blood,
pacing the length of the patterned floor
with his loathsome tread, while a baleful light
flame more than light, flared from his eyes.
It’s also worth noting that the Beowulf poet marks that the door bursts open when Grendel touches it with his hands. There’s a lot going on with hands, and body parts in general here, but especially hands.
The description of Grendel devouring Beowulf’s man is particularly gory (lines 740-745a):
ac hē ġefēng hraðe forman siðe
slæ¯pendne rinċ, slāt unwearnum,
bāt bānlocan, blōd ēdrum dranc,
synsnæ¯dum swealh; sōna hæfde
unlyfiġendes eal ġefeormod,
fēt ond folma.(But he quickly seized at the first pass
a sleeping warrior, he slit him open eagerly,
bit his joints, drank his blood in streams,
swallowed huge morsels; he had at once
of the unliving man all devoured,
feet and hands.)
When it comes to murder and mayhem, it doesn’t get better than this, plus more with the hands. And there is that great word for joints, bānlocan, literally bone-locks.
Another problematic word in this fit is in line 769, ealuscerwen. From the perspective of the Danes hearing the commotion from outside the hall, the fight is described with this word. Literally, it means a dispensing of ale, but is routinely translated as terror. Some commentators translate it as bitter drink, instead of ale. Others think it’s just an ironic comparison of the fight to a wild party in the mead-hall, particularly since the fits preceding the fight detailed the ale-drinking at the feast. I tend to agree with this last.
There’s much more description of the fight, but I’ll save that for the next fit, which continues the battle.
