Challenge #2: Poetic Compounds + a MANIFESTO

Following up on a post from last week: most translators are surely caught between two impulses: 1) representing the seductive compression of OE poetry on the one hand and 2) producing a readable, accessible text on the other.  A closely related challenge is the dilemma and (I believe) huge opportunity posed by poetic compounds. These are the hidden glory of OE poetry, in my opinion, one which dictionaries and glossaries in many of our editions tend to blunt.  I say related because compounds are another instance, an extreme one, of compression or poetic economy. They have a syntax and grammar of their own.  Most compounds consist of two nouns, though a noun-adjective or adjective-noun construction is also possible. In some ways, it might be helpful to imagine that one or the other element in a compound has something like a case function:

In some compounds, for example, the first element acts like an accusative and the second like a kind of verb (i.e., gerund), a true mini-sentence:

       lige-wyrhta (Homiletic Fragment I, l. 11b)

       lie-maker = lie-teller (Clark Hall: "liar")

       beag-gifa
       ring-giver (Clark Hall: "ring giver, lord, king, generous chief")

       mann-hata (Clark Hall: "man-hater")

Others seem to have a locative function, describing where something is:

       bold-wela
       house-wealth (Clark Hall: "wealth")

       heafod-gimm 
       head-gem (Clark Hall: "head's gem, eye")--a wonderful kenning
              as well

Yet more express relationships that are "dative"-like, implying missing prepositions:

      æsc-rof
      ash/spear-brave (Clark Hall: "brave in battle")
            spear shafts (in poetry at least) were made of ash wood,
            and spears are metonymically linked to battle.

      lust-gryn 
      pleasure-trap (Clark Hall: "snare of pleasure")

      gast-cofa
      ghost/spirit-coffer (Clark Hall: "breast")

or "genitive":

      flan-þracu
      arrow-storm (Clark Hall: "onset, attack"; DOE: "storm of arrows;
          arrow-attack")     

Then, abandoning the case paradigm, some elements can either be or have adjective force:

      fyren-lust 
      crime-desire (Clark Hall: "lust, sinful desire"; DOE: "sinful / wicked
          desire or pleasure")

      teon-word
      insult-word (Clark Hall: "reproach, abuse, calumny")
           = "insulting word"

And others, can be "redundant," where both elements mean roughly the same thing (a real challenge to a translator!)

      searo-cræftig
      cunning-clever (Clark Hall: "skillful, cunning")

      mægen-strengo
      might-strength (Clark Hall: "great might"

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I'm positive there are different ways of categorizing these relationships and it's entirely possible that some fit more than one pattern.

BUT HERE'S THE POINT...

I believe that we as readers get a jolt of pleasure out of compounds just because they require decoding. We have to run through in our minds how the elements are related, and in the process there are often alternative readings that we have to discard. Notice that Clark Hall's Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (whose definitions are listed above) has a pronounced tendency to "translate" the compounds into single nouns or to provide a translation that removes all functional ambiguity.  That's of course the job of a lexicographer, but in so doing the dictionary often cuts off readers from the cognitive pleasure of poetic compounds.

MANIFESTO...

In "Blogging the Corpus" translations, I will attempt, doggedly, to translate the compounds as compounds. Sometimes the results have something like the power of the originals, but I have to admit that sometimes they are monstrous-multisyllabic horrors:

Take for example, fyren-lustas from "Soul and Body I," l. 44. I´ve translated it as "crime-pleasures" though "sin-desires" would also work.  I have to admit that this seems sort of ugly to me, but I prefer it to Clark Hall´s "lusts, sinful desires" for the reasons outlined above.