I’m not writing this post simply as an excuse to sex up the blog with a gratuitous photo of Angelina Jolie.

As I was saying: you probably know that Beowulf didn’t start life as a movie script, but as an Old English epic poem that was written at some point between 800 and 1010 AD. It’s more than 3000 lines long, and starts like this:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra

ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning!

Yes, that is English - just not as we know it. What I’m interested in is that first word: Hwæt. It literally means ‘what’, and the anonymous poet uses it as a way of demanding the attention of his audience (although Beowulf has come down to use as a written text, it was created in an age when poetry was usually read aloud, as a performance).

Different translators have translated it in different ways. Seamus Heaney, in his rather good 2000 version, rendered it as:

So.

…which gives a nice sense of foreboding and grimness, well suited to the brutal massacre that opens the story. Me, I prefer the choice of the majority of modern translators:

Listen!

Isn’t that a great way of starting a piece of writing? Instead of meandering about with introductions and exposition, the poet jumps right in, making a demand of his audience. The pace doesn’t slacken, either: like any modern writer of Hollywood blockbusters, the Beowulf poet gets on with the action right away, knowing that although he’s won his audience’s attention he has to work hard to keep it.

I’m not suggesting that you should begin everything you write just like that (’Listen! The CEO would really grateful if you could get your report to him by Thursday…’), but the opening of Beowulf contains a lesson for all writers: don’t mess about, get your reader’s attention quickly and get on with delivering the message.