Original link: http://www.ideobook.com/3249/beowulf-preface-2/
The translation and annotation of the first edition of “Beowulf” began in the autumn of 1987, was completed in the spring of 1989, and was finalized and published in January of the following year. During that time, I was very busy. While writing my doctoral dissertation, I was translating epic poems, contributing to the Kyushu Academic Journal run by Scholars in America, and writing a set of book reviews on medieval literature. The first article, “He chose the light of God”, commented on the new book (now a classic of “Beowulf”) “Beowulf and the Same Style” by Professor Robinson of the Yale English Department, dated September 1987, exactly Preparations for translation annotations. Thinking about it now, when I was young, I was really energetic. In the summer vacation of 1992, he returned to China to investigate and visit his relatives, and met with his classmates in Shanghai. An old antique hunter told me that he had twenty copies of Beowulf in stock. I asked why. He said, looking at the copyright page, only 3,000 copies of this book were printed, and now there is a serious shortage of paper, and there will be no reprinting. The price on the market will definitely rise in the future. Thirty years later, presumably the old friend’s prophecy was correct. I like the simple and elegant binding of the first edition. There is also a reason for personal preference: the book is typeset in lead type, the thickness of the strokes, the spacing of words and the density of punctuation, it looks more comfortable than the computer typesetting. This matter may not be noticed by most readers, but I am more sensitive to subtle changes in color lines. I loved drawing when I was a child and developed a habit. I can’t remember when all the books and periodicals became computer typesetting, but the Internet said it was 1993. A while ago, there was a news that Fudan was still a university. After an old professor passed away, there was no place to store the books. They were piled up at the entrance of the alley, and passers-by could take them at will, and then sold them by the catty. I estimate that in another 30 years, there will not be many printed books in the world scattered among the people. So in the end, the first edition of this book might actually have some collectible value. In this revision, the overall structure of the book remains unchanged. I thought it would be finished in two or three months, but after doing it, I realized that it was far from enough, because a lot of materials had to be reviewed (of course, reviewing books is also fun). In this way, since August last year, the translation of the epic has been revised three times from beginning to end; the annotations have been expanded four times, covering all important corrections, different readings of different texts, myths and allusions, historical background, Sharjah legends, and difficult verses. read. The five appendices (fragments of “The Bloody Battle of Fernborg”, a small dictionary of Beixue, a chronology of reconstructed major events, a list of names of people, family names and place names, and genealogy of the three royal families) have all been revised or rewritten. The bibliography has also been lengthened to facilitate retrieval by interested readers; the preface has been replaced with an article (preface) in memory of the teacher. The computer input of the first version of the text is the credit of my wife. She also put forward many revision suggestions from the perspective of ordinary readers. One of them, which has not been fully adopted, is to add a long article on epic poetry. In fact, I have already written it, but I am not very satisfied. I feel that the explanation is too detailed, like a cumbersome professional paper, so I dismantled it and put it in the commentary. Hope this makes commenting more interesting. Many modern Western thoughts and social and cultural concepts, mainstream religions and political and legal systems have their roots in the Middle Ages rather than Greece and Rome. The literary heritage of Anglo-Saxon England (449~1066) is an important tradition in the Western Middle Ages. This field is still unpopular in China, with little attention and research. There are historical reasons, so I won’t repeat them. But “Beowulf” is an exception, which is quite well-known among Generation Z (Internet Generation). I didn’t know this before, but the students told me after returning to China to serve. They’ve all seen comic strips and digital movies about a Middle-earth hero named “Beowulf,” or played video games in which he fights trolls and dragons. Today is World Book Day. Reading and writing books is my job. However, I think, if I can be “fifty winters” younger, I’m afraid I can’t help but watch anime for a day and experience video games for a while-if people have to go there to break the spell and find the treasure of the Golden Ring, Like the old Tolkien, lingering in the hearts of young people, the hometown of ancient swords and fire dragons. On April 23, 2023, “Shanghai Book Review” 2023.5.14 “Beowulf: An Epic in Old English”, translated and annotated by Feng Xiang, Beijing Sanlian, 1992.
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