Davesiès de Pontès' Wonky Beowulph

 

Madame Lucien Davesiès de Pontès published a French-language history of Germanic literature in 1854. It was translated into English as Poets and Poetry of Germany: Biographical and Critical Notices (Chapman and Hall, 1858). Davesiès de Pontès was a celebrated translator of German literature into French—she translated Goethe's Egmont, the Nibelungenlied and the works of Theodor Körner—and well-placed to write a complete history of German literature. But my guess is: her English wasn't so good as her German. Above is her summary of Beowulf. Evidently she has not read this poem in its original Anglo Saxon. What she has done, as per her footnote, is read John Mitchell Kemble's A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf (1837), the first version of the work in modern English. But she hasn't read it very closely, or understood it very well, because her summary garbles the original: Grendel is ‘a terrible giant’, Grendel's mother a ‘sorceress’ who lives not beneath a lake but among ‘dismal swamps’, and the story ends when Beowulph (sic: Kemble has the name as Beowulf) tracks down both mother and son and kills them both. No third act to the story, and no dragon. Kemble's translation isn't flawless, but none of these errors are in it: that's Davesiès de Pontès' carelessness.