Translating Early Medieval Poetry

by Tom Birkett

  Borges had given, in English, for one of the early pieces in it, Dreamtigers. That is, this title was what Borges chose for the second piece in his original Spanish text; the translators decided to bring this Anglicism, this kenning, into their translation as

  the title of the entire text. The title is reflected also in a later poem on the tiger, one of the symbolic foci of Borges’ writing. In publishing it is fairly normal, especial y for a collection of short pieces, for the title of one of them to be chosen for the title of the collection, and Dreamtigers in English makes for a nice hapax legomenon, a unique word that nonetheless carries semantic and symbolic weight. But, as any Anglo-Saxonist knows, there is an additional level of complexity here. A hacedor would be a very fine translation into Spanish of the Old English word for a poet, a scop, often translated as ‘the shaper, the maker’. Borges knew this. In other words, Borges knew

  as he was choosing the title for his collection in Spanish, El Hacedor, that it evoked a mode of poetic composition that was entirely non-hispanic, and that it implied

  a world far from that which seemed to be his. Moreover, and Borges must have

  enjoyed the contradiction immensely, a dreamtiger sounds like and looks distinctly like a kenning. A tiger in one’s dreams is a terrifying interloper, a stranger to be

  fought off. And yet Borges did not ever fight off these mirror images in his writings.

  He debated them, embraced them, walked with them. In this collection, famously,

  is the first iteration of ‘Borges y yo’ (Borges and I), the self-reflexive contemplation of Borges as persona by Borges as writer, and vice versa15 – a dreamtiger indeed.

  Borges no doubt delighted in the cross-translations, in the ambiguous meanings in

  the title of his Spanish text and its English translation, and especial y in the relationship of both to Old English poetry.

  Also in El Hacedor or Dreamtigers is a poem well known amongst Anglo-Saxonists, entitled Al iniciar el estudio de la gramática anglosajona (‘On beginning the 13 Jorge Luis Borges, El Hacedor (Buenos Aires, 1960). Translations throughout are mine unless otherwise indicated.

  14 Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers, trans. Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland,

  Introduction by Miguel Enguídanos (Austin, TX, 1964).

  15 Dreamtigers has the piece as ‘Borges and I’, p. 51, marking the end of Part I of the volume.

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  Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar’).16 The middle twelve lines of twenty-eight are

  quoted below; the poem is a kind of double sonnet. The poem’s inclusion in this

  collection, along with numerous other references to the matter of the North, serves

  to highlight Borges’ focus on this material. It seemed, for him, to serve as a kind

  of talisman leading to good work. If he was referring to these concerns with Old

  English and Old Norse, he was placing his ideas in a stronger and wider intellectual

  context. But complications intervene:

  Antes que vuelvan los racimos habré escuchado

  La voz del ruiseñor del enigma

  Y la elegía de los doce guerreros

  Que rodean el túmulo de su rey.

  Símbolos de otros símbolos, variaciones

  Del futuro inglés o alemán me parecen estas palabras

  Que alguna vez fueron imágenes

  Y que un hombre usó para celebrar el mar o una espada;

  Mañana volverá a vivir,

  Mañana fyr no será fire sino esa suerte

  De dios domesticado y cambiante

  Que a nadie le está dado mirar sin un antiguo asombro.

  Here is the very literal translation by Harold Morland, from the University of Texas

  translation sanctioned by Borges, and now widely available:

  Before the clusters swell again on the vine

  I shall have heard the voice of the nightingale

  With its enigma, and the elegy of the warrior twelve

  That surround the tomb of their king.

  Symbols of other symbols, variations

  On the English or German future seem these words to me

  That once on a time were images

  A man made use of praising the sea or sword;

  Tomorrow they will live again,

  Tomorrow fyr will not be fire but that form

  Of a tamed and changing god

  It has been given to none to see without an ancient dread.17

  The poem and its translations offer several relevant issues for translation on the

  cultural and on the literal level. Borges refers to the voice of the ruiseñor (‘the nightingale’) as something he hears. This might have been possible in Spain, certainly in

  medieval Islamic Spain, but the nightingale is not ful y native to England. Southern

  England is the outer limit of the nightingale’s summer living, and the riddle Borges

  is referencing here is one that might well have its origins in a Latin riddle from

  the Mediterranean, but also one that has varying solutions: ‘nightingale’ but also

  16 Quoted here from Jorge Luis Borges, Obra Poética 1923–1985 (Buenos Aires, 1977), p. 149; Dreamtigers, trans. Boyer and Morland, p. 85.

  17 Dreamtigers, trans. Boyer and Morland, p. 85.

  Borges and Old English Poetry

  67

  ‘wood-dove’ since the songs are mournful, or ‘jay’, ‘jack-daw’ and possibly other

  members of the thrush family.18 That is, because he did not actual y know native

  northern European flora and fauna wel , Borges assumed that the solution of ‘night-

  ingale’ for the riddle, referring to its sweet singing voice and its effects in the courts of kings, was certain when it is not (and the solution ‘nightingale’ probably owes more

  to nineteenth-century poets and their obsession with the symbolism and wistfulness

  of the nightingale than to its OE context).19 The reference to la voz del ruiseñor del enigma, which Morland renders rather poorly as ‘I shall have heard the voice of the nightingale with its enigma’ confirms that the Old English riddle is being referenced, with its emphasis on the nightingale as having or being a secret, as offering a metaphorical and riddling approach to the world. The nightingale, as Morland probably

  did not know, was the nightingale of the Old English riddle text, which Borges did

  not know was a riddle, an enigma, whose solution is somewhat uncertain. The next

  lines of the poem and translation are more straightforward, referencing the twelve

  warriors who sang and circled Beowulf’s final tomb; for Borges they are singing an

  elegía (‘an elegy’). They rodean, which does mean ‘surround’, but it implies some movement, circling or riding round, so Morland does not quite capture the spirit

  of these far-distant warriors pacing round the tomb in doleful song. After these

  two specific references Borges turns to a more philosophical meditation on how

  these distant symbols function for him, evoking a past and also a future; Morland is

  unable to capture the future verbs because they are hard to render in English in the

  same context as the preterite tense Borges also uses. As a result, the profundity of

  the argument is lost; Borges starts with the future of these words spoken by twelve

  grieving warriors as the future of the English and the German, symbols in the future

  (presumably the present in Borges’ conception) of what were images and construc-

  tions in the past. The past creates the future, renders it whole and intelligible. Words used once by a man to praise the ocean or a sword will live again.

  The problems or challenges that are developing here are issues of equivalence,

  and they raise for translation studies scholars the question of whether the translator 18 Nightingales do spend from May to July in some
parts of southern England (as far

  north as Suffolk), although their range has become more limited. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds describes them as ‘skulking’ and quite local in their distribution in England but quite common across southern Europe: see http://www.rspb.org.uk/

  discoverandenjoynature/discoverandlearn/birdguide/name/n/nightingale/ Accessed 10 May

  2016. The modern English name comes from Old English nihtgale (‘singer in the night’) so Borges was not wrong to imagine the nightingale as a native species, but the bird is largely southern European, one of the passerine birds. In the areas of Europe where he spent

  considerable time (Spain, Italy, southern France, and even Switzerland) as a young man, the nightingale would be fairly common. The Old English Riddle 22 to which Borges refers here is a complex one; while ‘nightingale’ is a possible solution, several varieties of birds sing at night with skill and a range of tunes. For discussion of the possible birds in this riddle, see Craig Williamson, A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs (London, 1983), p. 167.

  19 It is possible that Borges knew the early Middle English poem The Owl and the

  Nightingale, probably in the edition by E. G. Stanley (London, 1960); the nightingale in the debate does seem inclined to appeal to Rome and to declare victory for the argument that joy and delight are of more significance to humanity than utility and solemnity. Borges would have enjoyed the quirkiness of the text. Here, though, it is clearly the Old English riddle that he has in mind.

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  is more interested in the source or the target text.20 Intriguingly, for Borges it was the source, and for his translator Morland it was the target. The result is something

  rather complicated. How they mediated the issues of equivalence demonstrates

  how very different their two approaches were. The next line is the reason I chose

  this poem for consideration, since it brings into focus the issue of translation and

  comprehension from Old to Modern English, and from English to Spanish – and,

  of equivalence. Borges explicitly chooses to quote Old English fyr, and then give its Modern English etymon fire. Morland has to leave it as it is, but he thereby demonstrates the real problems of translation. Although an English speaker would find

  fyr defamiliarising and foreign, that person would find fire easy, whereas a Spanish speaker –Borges’ apparent original audience – would find fyr incomprehensible, and fire a foreign word, something that evokes the foreign experience that Borges is creating in the text. Short of shifting into Celtic or Norse or British, all a difficult reach, Morland cannot recreate the frisson that Borges intended. He can but provide a Modern English equivalent, the same word, for the Modern English word Borges

  used. What is lost, from the point of view of the original poet, is the entire point.

  Borges found his engagement with Old English a profound truth of his life. In his

  autobiography, Borges states that he would often find himself accosted by a colleague

  wondering why he would write a poem such as this one, and he would attempt to

  explain that el anglosajón es para mí una experiencia tan íntima como mirar una

  puesta de sol or enamorarse (‘for me, Anglo-Saxon is an experience as personal as watching a sunset or falling in love’).21 His final col aborations concerned this

  personal experience, made yet more poignant and personal by being a project with

  the last woman in his life, his secretary and later wife, María Kodama.

  Borges and Old English in 1978

  The Breve Antología (Brief Anthology) has a short prologue written on 9 June 1978

  and translations: the passage of Scyld Scefing’s burial from Beowulf, The Fight at Finnsburg, Deor, The Seafarer, The Grave, a short passage from the beginning of

  ‘The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan’, and a good piece from the Prose Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn. Each of the seven pieces has a short contextual note after the translation. Borges and Kodama conclude the prologue as follows:

  Este fragmentario volumen no pretende ser otra cosa que una antología preliminar,

  un pregusto para el estudio. Ha sido traducido directamente del anglosajón, idioma

  de consonantes ásperas y de vocales abiertas que acaso está más cerca del alemán o

  20 See Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translations Studies and Beyond (Amsterdam, 1995), and the papers for the 1960s and 1970s in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Venuti, pp. 121–211.

  A helpful recent analysis is ‘Theories about the Product’, chapter 2 in Jenny Williams, Theories of Translation (New York, 2013), pp. 31–61.

  21 Jorge Luis Borges, Autobiografía (Buenos Aires, 1999), pp. 134–5. The autobiography was written and first published in col aboration with Norman Thomas di Giovanni in The Aleph and Other Stories 1933–1969 (New York, 1970); this line rings better in Spanish, the evidence for which is that it seems to be a very popular tweet.

  Borges and Old English Poetry

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  del holandés que del inglés actual. Ojalá en nuestra prosa castel ana, que trata de ser literal, resuene al cabo de los siglos su rumor de viejas espadas.22

  (This fragmentary collection does not hope to be anything more than a preliminary

  anthology, an appetizer for the study. It has been translated directly from the Old

  English, a language of harsh consonants and open vowels which may well be closer

  today to German or Dutch than to English. We can but hope that our Castilian Spanish

  prose, which tries to be literal, rings across the length of the centuries its whisper of ancient swords.)

  Translation theorists find prologues of this kind immensely useful.23 Here we have

  a clear statement by the translators that they have worked directly from the Anglo-

  Saxon. This is, incidental y, a first hint that Borges’ approach to the field was not

  thoroughly modern; by 1978 most thinkers in the field used Old English for the

  language, and Anglo-Saxon for the material culture and history. Borges and Kodama

  emphasise this point by noting that the language is closer to German or Dutch than

  it is to Modern English, which is true for the sound and pronunciation, but not

  for the lexicon and morphology. The standpoint the translators take derives from

  the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. That is, this is Borges speaking from

  the time when he first became enamoured with Old English as a young man. He

  describes his father as giving him William Morris’s Sigurd the Volsung when he was a boy, and of course his first publication in the field was a study of kennings in Old English and Old Norse in 1927 before he turned thirty, reworked twice thereafter.24

  At this point, the field was always Anglo-Saxon, and the analysis of the language also reflects linguistic thinking, especial y Germanic linguistic thinking, of that period

  (although the reference to Dutch does move towards modern philological thinking

  about Frisian as today sounding most like Old English). On the other hand, where

  Borges general y speaks of Old English as having open vowels ( vocales abiertas), the reference to the harsh consonants ( consonantes ásperas) is not his usual locution, and may reflect Kodama’s deeper study of the poetic forms of Old English and Old

  Norse – the reference indicates an understanding of the alliteration which is the

  core of the prosody. The prologue finishes with the statement that this prose trata de ser literal (‘intends to be literal’). And yet perhaps this ‘literal prose’ will evoke the rumours of ancient swords. The texts chosen, as far as Borges and Kodama are

  concerned, will provide a sense of the romanticised world of Old English texts as

  frequently referred to by Borges in poems about swords, dragons, learning Old

  Engli
sh and Beowulf.

  Borges, as the prologue suggests, would have perceived his rendering of Old

  22 ‘Breve Antología’, pp. 787–8.

  23 See the articles in Text, Extratext, Metatext and Paratext in Translation, ed. Valerie Pel att (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2013), and see André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London, 1992). The classic study for paratexts is Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge, 1997).

  24 The fullest version, as quoted from earlier, is Las Kenningar. The best bibliography for Jorge Luis Borges, along with a great deal of scholarly commentary, is to be found at http://

  www.borges.pitt.edu, the site of The Borges Center directed by Daniel Balderston. Accessed June 2016.

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  English into Castilian Spanish as transparent, straightforward and common-

  sensical. He would argue, with Walter Benjamin, that he was releasing the pure

  language – but he would not see that task as a difficult one for his own practice as a translator.25 And yet, the languages and the ideas and issues to be expressed – what

  Even-Zohar and Toury would term the polysystem of Old English literature – do

  not sit easily in modern Spanish.26 Borges’ genuine enthusiasm for this material

  and his desire to find links between Old English and Argentinian gaucho tales or

  between Old Norse and the complex stylistic excesses of gongorismo (the elaborate poetry of the Góngora school, with its extravagant imagery and far-fetched metaphors) suggest a deep connection to northern and medieval texts. They perhaps

  also suggest just how much Borges valued the northern material, since some of the

  links he makes are quite strained. Moreover, the ramifications of that connection

  include a disconnection to the literature of his own nation and language and time,

  a disjuncture rarely addressed. This most subtle of thinkers saw his own work on

  Old English, Old Norse and Old High German as transparent and straightforward,

  uncomplicated and yet powerful y important and evocative.

  The Seafarer is a very well-known Old English poem and one that Borges real y

  knew. As Hadis has noted: Otro género de la literatura anglosajona por el que Borges se sentía especialmente atraído era el género elegíaco (‘Another genre of Anglo-Saxon literature for which Borges considered himself especial y suited and which attracted