by its persistence.[1] One can easily get rid of it, or suppress it to the vanishing point, by a prose translation; but that is not only to renounce real knowledge of the poetical ways of the epic, but to get an utterly false idea of it.
Other features of the style of the epic call for little or no comment. Litotes, or emphasis by understatement,—as when the best of warriors is called “not the worst,”—is a prime favorite with the poet of Beowulf; it can be found on almost every page. The simile occurs a few times, to be sure, but it is an exotic; and any long simile may be set down as copied from learned sources.
V
No greater mistake exists than to suppose that the rhythm and style of these early English poems cannot be rendered adequately in modern English speech. It is not a question of classical hexameters, but of English verse old and new. As a practical problem solvitur ambulando; one can point to the fact that all the accredited German translations of Beowulf and Finnsburg, with one exception, have been made in the verse of the original;[2] and this exception is a failure just so far as it fails to give account of verse and style. As a matter of theory nothing is more absurd than to contend that the old system of verse was an art suddenly and utterly lost in the abyss of the Norman Conquest. To be sure, its exact prosody could not survive changes in linguistic structure; compromises with
- ↑ Now and then it is puzzling, as when it seems to make two persons out of one: see B., 688 f.; 1866 f.; 2129 f.
- ↑ Heyne’s is in blank verse. The latest of the German translations, that of Professor Gering, gives the four-stress verse with admirable effect, retains the rime, and in itself refutes the charge of the prosemen.
