評論
打印
"There's a marvellous section in the Beowulf poem itself-the Last Veteran it's called-the last person of his tribe, burying treasure in the hoard and saying: 'Lie there treasure, you belong to earls, the world has changed'. And he takes farewell of the treasure, and buries it in the ground. That sense of elegy-a farewell to beauty and farewell to the treasured objects-that hangs round the helmet, I think.
《貝奧武甫》中有一節特別精彩的《最后的老兵》, 部落里剩下的最后一個人將珍寶埋藏起來，說，待在這里吧珍寶，你屬于爵爺們，世界已經改變了。他向這些財寶告別，將它們掩埋起來。這是一首哀歌，向美好告別，向珍寶告別。我覺得類似這樣的哀歌一直縈繞在這頭盔周圍。
"So it belongs in the poem, but obviously it belonged within the burial chamber in Sutton Hoo. But it has entered imagination, it has left the tomb and entered the entrancement of the readers, I think, of the poem-and of the viewers of the object in the British Museum."
它屬于詩歌.同時也屬于薩頓胡的墓室。但當它進入想象世界，便離開了墓室，成為詩歌的欣賞者和大英博物館的參觀者腦內的奇觀。
The Sutton Hoo helmet belonged of course not to an imagined poetic hero, but to an actual historical ruler. The problem is we don't know which one. It's generally supposed that the man buried with such style must have been a great warrior chieftain, and because all of us want to link finds in the ground with names in the texts, for a long time the favoured candidate was Raedwald, king of the East Angles, mentioned by the Venerable Bede in his History of the Anglo-Saxons and probably the most powerful king in all England around 620.
當然，薩頓胡頭盔的主人一定不是詩歌中想象的英雄，而是現實中的某個統治者，只是我們不知道是哪位。人們普遍認為，擁有如此高規 格墓葬的人一定是位勢力很大的武士首領。而由于我們都希望能在歷史 記載中找到對應的人物，長期以來，我們都傾向于認為他有可能是東盎格魯的國王雷德沃爾德。比德在他的《英吉利教會史》中提到過他，他可能是620年左右全英格蘭最強大的國王。
But we can't be sure, and it's quite possible that we may be looking at one of Raedwald's successors or, indeed, at a leader who's left no record at all. So the helmet still floats intriguingly in an uncertain realm on the margins of history and imagination. Here's Seamus Heaney again:
但我們無法確定。很可能他只是雷德沃爾德的一位繼任者，或是一個完全沒有留下任何記錄的統洽者。頭盔依然充滿誘惑力地漂浮在歷史與想象之間。謝默斯希尼說：
