Sein Volk! in allen Landen seinen Ruhm man pries
Als lange schon sein Vater von dieser Erde Leben liess.
Literary Criticism.
The translation resembles the work of Lumsden[5] and Wackerbarth[6] in affording a version of the tale easily readable. And the same criticism may be passed on the work of Hoffmann that was passed on the two Englishmen. The style and medium chosen are not well fitted to render the spirit of the poem. The Nibelungenlied is a poem of the late twelfth century. The Beowulf at latest belongs to the eighth. To choose for the translation of Beowulf, therefore, a medium surcharged with reminiscence of a time, place, and style quite different from those of the original is certainly an error. It may find an audience where another and more faithful rendering would fail; but it will never win the esteem of scholars. In his introduction Hoffmann calls attention to the lack of variety in blank verse, but surely it does not have the monotony inherent in a recurring rime and strophe.
Again, rime and strophe force upon the author the use of words and phrases needed to pad out the verse or stanza. Attention must also be called to the fact that the original seldom affords a natural pause at the exact point demanded by the use of a strophic form. See the close of the following stanzas in the Extract: I, III, IV, V. One effect of the forced pause is that there is confusion in the use of kennings, which often have to do duty as subject in one stanza and as object in another stanza.
Commonplace expressions, incident perhaps upon the use of the measure, are not unfrequent. Thus
Gesagt! gethan!
translates
ond þæt geæfndon swā (line 538).
Traces of this are also found in the extract; see beginning of last stanza.