'WIFE'S LAMENT': A TRANSLATION AND AN OVERVIEW OF INTERPRETATIVE POSSIBILITIES

The paper offers a translation of the Old English elegy 'The Wife's Lament' or 'The Wife's Complaint' into Serbian, as well as the explanations of translation solutions based on different interpretations of the poem, which arose from grammatical ambiguities of the Old English language and the composition of the elegy. Given the inevitable speculation that the interpretation of such a poem entails, the paper also attempts to move away from the speculation about the concrete events in the poem and focuses on the stylistic and formal aspects of the elegy and the atmosphere it produces, as well as the ideological significance of revisiting a piece of literature such as 'The Wife's Lament' in contemporary literary research. This elegy is a rare example of Old English poetry in which a female voice speaks of human suffering and the transience of earthly things, which raises the question of a 'female' standpoint as well as the sexuality and spiritual nature of women, which certain critics see as extremely important and insufficiently emphasized in the overall study of the Old English literature. Regardless of the number of possible translations and thus more interpretive options, the touching lyricism that permeates 'The Wife's Lament' is a strong critique of a heroic society in which a deprived woman manages to articulate her rebellion as a muffled voice of an antihero and outcast from a warrior community. In such circumstances, the essentially passive Anglo-Saxon woman in captivity affirms her own personality, thoughts and feelings with her uninhibited speech.