A call to hush the hall, to quieten the mead benches, to draw a line under what has gone before. A word lost to us now; lost in respects to an easy modern substitute. Many have tried.
Listen! Lo! Hark! and so on…
But it doesn’t sound right, or read right, at least to me. It makes me think of men in tights singing “hey nony hey” or something equally fey. I think part of the problem is the medium. Now we encounter Beowulf most commonly in the written form (discounting the made for TV movies and big screen animation), and so the call for silence or attention doesn’t apply. We are reading, we are (hopefully) in wrapped attendance.
Drawing a line under what has previously gone may make more sense, and Heaney’s had a good go at it with “So.” His introduction mentions something about “so” being a common way of starting a conversation. It’s not just common to the Irish, you can hear it a lot in Britian or even here in San Francisco (a waiter once asked me – So, kiddo – what’s it gonna be?). But it is “So” followed by a comma, meaning the pause is short. Heaney has “So” forming its own sentence. “So” – then a full pause – We Gardena etc…
This is better, and makes more sense when reading, at least to me. Also, the replacement of the exclamation mark with a full pause (the period) achieves that breaking with what went before (whatever that might be), slows the reader (the pause) and adds seriousness.
“So. We Gardena etc…” Rather than “So, We Gardena etc…”
So. I am tempted. But in the end I don’t think it is needed. Rather than look for a suitable substitute or follow Heaney, I decided to ignore the word altogether. As I said in the initial post, I’m interested in a concise, austere translation. More brooding and hinting than overflowing and panegyric.
So, breaking with tradition from the start. Hwaet is out.
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