| What is the meaning of ferð in The Seafarer? fero ferre tuli latum translations of ferð: its transference to other tongues |
Date 975 Date 1842 1857 1898 1902 1908 1910 1911 1915 1915 1918 1920 1922 1926 1933 1934 1936 1937 1941 1943 1949 1954 1955 1960 1960 1964 1965 1966 1967 1967 1967 1970 1970 1970 1972 1975 1980 1982 1982 1983 1986 1987 1990 1991 1991 1993 1994 1998 1999 ? | Author Anonymous Translator O.S.Anderson | A. Text ll 25b-26 nænig hleomæga Translation no hospitable kinsman trösten konnte den freudenarmen None of all my kinsmen Could this There none of my kinsmen von den Verwandten kein einziger --- Not any protector Kein Freund war dort, / Der Nessuno de' miei famigliari poteva No dear friend comes With merciful Keiner von der Schutzsippe konnte I had no protecting kinsman who No protector could comfort No near kinsman .......... No friend, no shelter of love In all my wretchedness, weary and lone, None of my protecting kinsmen could Not one of my kinsmen could Not one of my kin could Then nane o my kinsfowk
ah what prince could shield No protecting kinsman could comfort No protectors Nae succoran lord No kinsman could offer comfort there, No protector No friend or brother None of protecting kinsmen No protecting kinsman was there No protecting kinsmen could comfort no protecting kinsman there My spirit was helpless to seek out its No patron had I there who might have kein naher Verwandter Nor can any kinsman comfort No kin of my hearth No protective kinsman could comfort no sheltering kinsman Not one of [my] close kinsmen no kinsmen there No shielding lord No familiar protector could bring protecting kinsmen none Ingen bror eller frände Not any protecting kinsmen No kinsman near to fend off need No kinsmen to give shelter, no kinsmen was there to comfort my soul. keiner der schützenden Verwandten nænig hleomæga | B. Text ll 36-37a monað modes lust mæla gehwylce Translation though my mind's desire exhorts me an treibt mich des Gemütes Lust zu allen For a passion of the mind every moment And all stir the heart of the wanderer Es treibt des Sinnes Begierde jegliches Mal Daily, hourly, drives me my spirit Moaneth alway my mind's lust Gar häufig heisst mich des Herzens Drang la passione che m'agita il cuore sempre My soul constantly kindles in keenest All diese Dingen At every opportunity a yearning impulse the desire of the heart always exhorts Heart's desire ever urges Often in the day My wish tells me Never a day but my heart's desire My heart's desire incessantly calls on Deep goes the mood that drives my soul Now and always Heat i my hert foriver forces Again and again the mind's desire at all times my heart's desire Exhorts the heart's lust always Maens my mind's lust aye to move afaur The time for journeys would come and My heart's longings always urge me Mind-lust maddens, moves as I breathe the desire of the heart urges always Every moment the mind's desire desire of spirit constantly urges even though the longings of my heart Every moment my spirit demands And constantly the heartfelt wishes urge Des Herzens Lust mahnt mich unablässig The mind's longing moves me oft Without cease my spirit spurs me: my mind's desire time and time again Mind's desire urges, ever and again, my heart's desire incites my spirit at all such times, the overwhelming itch And now this longing heart leads always my mind moves toward the distance the heart's desire exhorts each time I uppror är mitt hjärta Mind's desire reminds on each occasion The mood to wander mills within my mind Yet desire still makes my spirit advance, my mind moans out that I es gemahnt des Herzens Lust, der Sinn, monað modes lust mæla gehwylce | ferð soul Sinn soul soul Herz -- ? Sinn anima ? Herz soul heart soul heart ? heart heart heart hert heart heart heart hert soul man mind heart heart soul mind spirit spirit Herz soul spirit soul life spirit soul wretch? spirit heart färd spirit ? soul soul Herz |
I have lived long enough: my way of life The short answer to the question heading this page is that ferð means "journey". Strange and remarkable to say, it does not, au fond, mean "soul, life, heart, spirit, mind", or "thought". Translators who approach an appreciation of its buried meaning, in one or other of the two instances (A and B) that it occurs in the poem, are: Grein, Spaeth, Pound, Faust/Thompson, Kershaw, Bone, Kennedy, Morgan, Denny, T.Scott, Crossley-Holland, Hieatt, Rogers, Hansson. Its basic sense is more openly admitted under the B column, where the word "forth" is used 10 times, and where the image of a journey is implicit in the words "outward", "way", and håg. In Swedish Sprachgefühl I suggested that "Swedish håg often seems to connote a sense of motion." Crossley-Holland actually uses the word "journey". It is also perfectly apparent that the very closest renderings are by Grein, Fahrt (= journey), and Hansson, färd (= journey). Sw färd is quite patently the nearest possible equivalent to ferð. I'll have to check the Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic versions of färd later. It might reasonably be objected that if the Anglo-Saxon poet meant to say "forth", he would have used the identical Anglo-Saxon word forð. Quite so: ferð does not mean "forth", it means "journey". However, to an Anglo-American translator the phrase ferð to feran (B) is so strongly suggestive of "forth to fare", that the impetus to use "forth" is almost overpowering. Ezra Pound, for one, obeying his homophonic instincts, was thus overpowered. "To fare forth" is certainly more accurate than, for instance, "soul to go" (Thorpe), or "spirit to travel" (Whitelock). Because ferð has no close cognate in modern English a reading of "soul/spirit" is the more easily accepted. Besides which, something like "journey/voyage to fare/travel" perhaps sounds rather tautological, and sense-redundant. In Swedish, however, färd att fara is perfectly idiomatic, and also an exact rendering of the original Anglo-Saxon. Why then, in the first place, should ferð be thought to mean "spirit", "soul", and the rest? The short answer is because the dictionaries say so; and only a madman, as every scholar knows, would dare disagree with a dictionary. Bosworth-Toller doesn't admit any sense of "journey" for ferð, or ferhð, and only gives 1) "the soul, spirit, mind"; anima, mens; and 2) "life"; vita. Clark Hall has the same, but adds "intellect" and "person [Seaf 26]". Sweet ditto, plus "understanding", which is only very remotely acceptable, if at all --- in fact, ferð cannot possibly contain an intrinsic meaning of "understanding", "intellect", or "person". The long answer, it seems to me, is a good deal more complicated, since it is arguable that the practical, everyday meaning of ferð, a journey, can indeed come to be used as a base for the more abstract concept of "life", in the first place, and eventually hence possibly also "soul" or even "spirit". The root idea must be the sense of life as a voyage, an outward journey towards an unknown destination, the curriculum vitae, man's individual trek from cradle to grave, and the road taken by the Christian pilgrim, as in Bunyan. Shakespeare's "my way of life" is quoted above. "Midway upon the journey of my life" is Dante's opening line of his Inferno (Longfellow's translation). Perhaps the concept of soul is inseparable from that of life. "Behind the word soul lies the ancient notion of the soul as something fleeting or mercurial", writes John Ayto, "for its prehistoric Germanic ancestor, *saiwalo, was related to Greek aiólos "quick-moving". See Bird, Ship, Sun, Sea. The soul may be envisioned as a sparrow, a bird of passage, flying from one end of the mead-hall to the other, and the ferð, its transit, becomes a metaphorical substitute for the intangible thing itself. The conception of the soul as ferð is highly sophisticated, since a journey is in a sense nothing at all except changing scenery, a succession of events or perceptions through time, which is about as close as we can get to a mental grasp of the notion of the soul. This image of transience seems to me intellectually superior to the blurred concept of, say, an ectoplasmic bit of gossamer; ie the hreþer in its hreþerloca. Clark Hall lists thirteen compounds starting ferhð-, and six of these occur "only or mainly in poetical texts", which to me indicates the essentially metaphorical notion of the soul as a journey. This sense of thrust, of the curriculum vitae, as opposed to a sense of "intellect" or "spirit", is to my mind present in all, or nearly all, of them. One of these compounds, ferhðwerig, pops up, rather surprisingly, in an apparently literal modern English form and somewhat out of context, in Clair McPherson's rendering of line 26 above: "soul-weary". This compound seems to me vacuous, if ferhð is translated as "soul". What does "soul-weary" mean? "Way-weary", on the other hand, is a description of physical and mental exhaustion at once recalling Poe's Nicèan barks of yore, that home "The weary way-worn wanderer bore/To his own native shore". While I'm at it, I may as well examine Clark Hall's list of compounds in more detail. This is fun. ferhðbana ferhð† murderer mind, intellect, soul, spirit; life; person (Seaf 26) career bane, terminator journey or way (of life), career path, curriculum Conceded that the case is not proven. Still, there seems to be enough substance in the argument to sanction the jettisoning of "intellect, mind" and probably also "soul, spirit". "Life" has to be allowed, with a strong connotation of "course of life" rather than animus, but "person" has no place, nor has any translator used it in their renderings of The Seafarer. © Charles Harrison Wallace 2001
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf
Macbeth; V iii 22 ferhð compound
ferhðcearig
ferhð-c(le)ofa†
ferhðfrec
ferhðfriðende
ferhðgeniðla
ferhðgewit
ferhðleaw†
ferhðgrim†
ferhðloca†
ferhðlufu
ferhðsefa†
ferhðwerig†
† poetic usage Clark Hall definition
of anxious mind
breast
bold, brave
sustaining life
mortal enemy
understanding
wise, prudent
savage
breast, body
heartfelt love
mind, thought
soul-weary, sadsuggested reading
burdened, heavy laden
life coffer, vehicle?
venturesome, thrusting
sustaining, as en route
career enemy, underminer
streetwisdom, streetwise
judgement of action
ruthlessly forceful
life-locker, carriage?
lifelong love, lodestar?
train of thought
way-worn, way-wearypieces and papers
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