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, PH.D.
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.
Lawrence Mason.
YALE UNIVERSITY,
_July 17, 1913._
TABLE OF CONTENTS
With Specification of the Biblical Chapters and Verses
represented in each Section of the Poem
PAGE
PREFACE III (135)
TABLE OF CONTENTS VI (138)
GENESIS A:
Section I[2] 1 (141)