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    Genesis A Translated from the Old English
    Genesis A Translated from the Old English
    Genesis A Translated from the Old English
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    Genesis A Translated from the Old English

    By Albert S. (Albert Stanburrough) Cook and Lawrence Mason

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    Genesis A Translated from the Old English

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      Book preview

      Genesis A Translated from the Old English - Albert S. (Albert Stanburrough) Cook

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Genesis A, by Anonymous

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Genesis A

      Translated from the Old English

      Author: Anonymous

      Release Date: April 13, 2005 [EBook #15612]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENESIS A ***

      Produced by David Starner, Jason Isbell and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team.

      Transcribers Note: Typographic errors in the original have been retained. In the table of contents there are two sets of page numbers. The first appears to be the page numbers from the original MS. The second set in parentheses are the page numbers from this facsimile. As the body of the text is referred to by line numbers, that section has not been rewrapped.

      YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH

      ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR

      XLVIII

      GENESIS A

      TRANSLATED FROM THE OLD ENGLISH

      BY

      LAWRENCE MASON, PHD.

      INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN YALE COLLEGE

      NEW YORK

      HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

      1915

      PREFACE

      The purpose of the translator in offering to the public this version of the Genesis is to aid in forwarding—be it by but one jot or tittle—the general knowledge and appreciation of Old English literature. Professed students in this department will always have an incentive to master the language; but to the public at large the strangeness of this medium will prove an insurmountable barrier, and the general reader must therefore either remain in ignorance of our older literary monuments or else employ translations. The present contribution[1] to the growing body of such translations possesses, perhaps, more than a single interest or appeal, in that it renders accessible not only a poem of considerable intrinsic worth, a poem associated with the earliest of the great names in English literary history, and a forerunner and possible source of Paradise Lost, but also an important example of a literary genre once immensely popular, though now quite fallen into abeyance—namely, the lengthy versified Scriptural paraphrase. For some idea of the prominent part played by this form, even so late as the seventeenth century, the reader is referred to any comprehensive manual of English literature.

      In this translation, prose has been employed instead of verse, for two reasons. In the first place, no metrical form has yet been found which, in the writer's judgment, at all adequately represents in modern English the effect of the Old English alliterative verse, or stave-rime. And in the second place, to the writer's thinking, no one but a poet should attempt to write verse: and on that principle, translations would be few and far between, unless prose were used.

      But even granting the value of the Genesis as a fit subject for translation, and the necessity for the employment of prose, the reader may still quarrel with the particular kind of prose hereinbelow essayed; so a brief explanation and, it is hoped, vindication of the theory of translation here followed would seem desirable, inasmuch as considerable divergence is intended from the methods adopted by the various translators of the Beowulf, for example. First, Biblical phraseology has been eschewed, partly because in a modern writer it savors of affectation, but chiefly because his Bible was the point of departure for the Old English author, and to return now in the translation to our Bible would be a stultification of his purposes by a sort of argumentum in circulo. Secondly, archaisms, poetic diction, and unusual constructions (the translation English anathematized by the Rhetorics) have been so far as possible avoided, contrary to the practice of most translators from Old English poetry, because it is felt strongly that such usages will not produce upon modern readers the effect that this poetry produced originally upon the readers or hearers for whom it was intended. For this poetry could not have seemed alien or exotic to its original public: either through familiar poetic convention, or owing to the staccato and ejaculatory character of ordinary spoken language at the time, this spasmodic, apostrophic poetry must have seemed natural and beautiful, in the seventh or eighth century. But—

      Why take the style of those heroic times?

      For nature brings not back the mastodon,

      Nor we those times.

      To translate is to modernize. This rendering, therefore, is not an artificial, pseudo-antique hybrid, but frankly endeavors to convey its original to modern readers in idiomatic modern literary English, devoid of any conscious mannerisms whatsoever. The writer has aimed at the utmost literal fidelity consistent with the observance of all the usages of current standard English; he has not attempted, however, to convert the explosive appositions, with prevailing asyndeton and excessive synonymy, of his original into the easy, flowing sentences more familiar to modern eyes and ears, for the change would sacrifice altogether too much of the distinctive character and flavor of Old English poetry.

      The text upon which this work is based is that of the Grein-Wülker Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie, 1894, save for a few minor changes in punctuation and the few departures recorded in the Notes. Grein's translation of the poem into modern German stave-rime, 1857, has been frequently consulted, but the writer's real indebtedness to it is felt to be slight. He takes great pleasure, finally, in acknowledging his deep sense of obligation, on many grounds, to the general editor of this series, Professor Albert S. Cook; the work was undertaken at his suggestion, and he has been most kind in giving advice and criticism.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      With Specification of the Biblical Chapters and Verses represented in each Section of the Poem

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