teach Beowulf in my honors class, and it's a tale I've always loved, There's something about the raw power, the direct yet engaging storyline, the rhythm and tone of the story that draws the reader or, ideally, the listener into another world.
The social conventions, alien in many ways to our modern mindset, show a world both brutal and honorable, where death and heroism go sidebyside, where every act has consequence and there is no expectation of joy and happinessthese things have to be wrested from existence and are of short duration.
And the interplay of the original Pagan story and the Christian elements brought in by our monastic narrator show the tension of a people wrestling with their old beliefs and how to reconcile them with the new.
The startling use of language and poetic diction make this a masterpiece of English literature,
I've read a dozen translations and even done my own crude one each of them has different aspects to recommend it, Heaney's strength is in his poetic voicehe's done an amazing job of preserving the rhythms and alliterations so crucial to the format of the original verse and updated it without being so modern as to lose the flavor of the original.
He uses some archaic terms and those of his Celtic ancestors, which work well and do not mar the understanding of readers new to the text.
Best of all, this is a parallel translation, with the original Old English on the verso pages,
My only quibbles have to do with some of Heaney's word choices, There are debates within the literary community about the nature of the monsters and the heroes in the poem, and Heaney takes a pretty hard line, translating some phrases and terms in ways that make his choices seem unavoidable but which are not always supported in the original.
Innocent phrases like "wight" and "spirit" are sometimes glossed as "demon" or "specter," and we lose the sense of some of the wonderful Old English kennings, like the description of Grendel as a mearcstapa, "walker on the borders.
"
Overall, a really fine translation, And since it's been immortalized in The Norton Anthology and all Norton's student editions, it will be the version most everyone knows for the foreseeable future.
I've just finished reading Beowulf for the third time! But lo, this reading was in the bold and exciting sitelinkBeowulf: a New Verse Translation by sitelinkSeamus Heaney! And what a difference a day makes Heaney is unstoppable! Rather, he makes Beowulf unstoppable.
Unstoppable in his ability to pound you in the face with his manliness and leave you bleedingbutstrangelydesiringmore,
As I said, I've read the epic AngloSaxon poem several times now, but usually, I'm trudging through to get to the "good parts" i.
e. , Beowulf's three notable feats, but this time, I was taken aback! The whole durned thing was the good parts! What luck! I read it over the space of three days and boy is my voice tired I have a distinct inability when it comes to facing these sorts of tales I have to read aloud.
And with an accent. And with bluster.
One of the coolest things spicing up this reading besides Heaney's great translation was the juxtaposition of the Old English to the translation, As you may know, the only surviving copy of anything close to an original Beowulf is written in Old English or AngloSaxon from 'tween ADand.
Now Old English isn't just archaic some King James English with lotsa thees, thous, and forsooths, as many people seem to think, It's the illegitimate birth father of Middle English which I believe came about sometime after ADwhich in turn spawned Modern English, Modern English includes the English used in both Shakespeare and the King James Bible as well as the haphazard trash we sprechen today, In truth, Old English is nearly indecipherable, Below, I've included the first three lines of Beowulf, which are not only a great example of what I'm talking about, but strangely fitting for who I am:
Hwæt wê Gârdena in geârdagum
Þêodcyninga Þrym gefrûnon,
hû ðâ æÞelingas ellen fremedon.
Fun, no Well, . . so you know, that translates as:
So, The SpearDanes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness,
We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns,
Hoorah! Hoorah for the SpearDanes! And, . . ahem. . who cares if by the time Beowulf comes around their busy getting their butts eaten off by Grendel, Hoorah for the SpearDanes! Hoorah for Gârdena and doesn't that sound like a wonderful name for a city,
In any case, it was fun to look over at the AngloSaxon to see if I could decipher any of it, Alas, my attention was so rapt upon the tale that I didn't take as much time to peruse the original as I would have liked, But since I bought it, I should be afforded plenty of time for such trivialities, I doubt I would have liked this so much had The Lord of Rings not been such an essential part of me so early on.
Books are the one and only thing that has been mine and my own since the beginning, and the rings, the dragons, the songs of days long lost and the coming of the end have filled the place of me that religion never could.
While there is much to critique, it has sunk so deeply into my resonance that the best I can do is hope that everyone has such a refuge in their heritage as I do in English.
Beowulf played the strings of Tolkien, Tolkien played the strings of me, and the most I can do is seek out the same in worlds beyond the same old, same old.
Beyond my nostalgic tone, there is the text itself with its strong rhythm, unusual selfreflexivity, and a future that looks back onto the crossroads with relief and a yearning.
They are old, these crossroads, traversing a time when bloodshed belonged to a single self and the conquering strain had not yet set the tone for my postcolonial times.
It is a time popularly known as the Dark Ages, a naming that shows how little use there is in generic categorizations that ignore both the frame of reference and the multifarious qualities of "Dark.
" True, there is neither Emperor nor Empire, but in its place is loyalty, blood, and a breed of mythos that has lost none of its awful potency in the age of climate change and drones.
Others have likely spoken about the lack of women, and it bears mentioning how few of them were worthy of a name in the family trees of the appendix.
While good to keep an eye on during general reading, this text is an old and singular survivor of burning and religious condemnation, and what merits it would not have had it been written today will be granted.
Much like my recently read 'Oroonoko,' it is a window to the past, and while much referred in academia
to the detriment of less European texts, it also sparks a wondering thought: what else was going on in the world back then What other voices have made their long and torturous way to the present conscious, and how many have yet to be given their due
My modern age has given me much in terms of technology, but still it malingers in Eurocentric repetition.
I doubt I shall live to see the day when Beowulf is joined by twenty or more of its polytongued siblings in halls that give each the credit they're due, but I can begin making my own way towards those waiting, not so foreign strings.
There are different ways to translate, and it comes down to what you want to get across, Most creative authors have such a strong voice and sense of story that they will overwhelm the original author, As Bentley wrote of Pope's Iliad: "It is a pretty poem, Mr, Pope, but you must not call it Homer",
Sometimes this sort of indirect translation is useful in itself, such as during the transition of the Renaissance from Italy to Britain, Many of the British poets rewrote Italian sonnets into English, and though the line of descent was unquestionable, the progeny was it's own work, Another example might be the digestion of Wuxia and Anime into films such as Tarantino's or The Matrix though Tarantino's sense of propriety is often suspect.
However, in these cases, we can hardly call the new work a translation of the old, You are not experiencing the old work but the inspiration it has wrought, Beowulf is just this sort of translation, capturing the excitement and passion of the story, but obliterating the details which make the work interesting to students of history or literary theory.
Heaney's translation is a fun, rollicking epic, able to draw in even uninitiated students, which is no doubt why it is now included in Norton.
Unfortunately, it is not a particularly useful tool for teaching the importance of the original work, Heaney severs many connections to the unique world of Beowulf,
As the only surviving epic from its time, place, and tradition, Beowulf is a unique vision into a preChristian culture outside of the Mediterranean.
Though the poem shows Christian revisions, these stand out in stark contrast to the rest of the work, and can usually be easily excised, unlike many pervasive Christian impositions on the 'pagan' cultures.
Heaney is not a philologist nor a historian, but a popular poet, He doesn't have the background for conscientious translation, and the clearest sign that his translation is haphazard is the fact that there are no footnotes explaining the difficult decisions that most translators have to make in every line.
Heaney also loses much of the alliteration and appositives that marked the artistry of the original,
A Beowulf that can exist without context is a Beowulf that has well and truly been separated from its past, Perhaps his translation is suitable for an introduction to the work, but a good professor should be able to teach the original without much difficulty,
Then again, perhaps the inclusion of this version in college classes has to do with the fact that college is no longer the path for scholars, but has been given the same equality treatment as art and poetry.
College is now meant for your average, halfliterate frat boy who only wants a BA so he can be a midlevel retail manager,
Heaney's translation certainly suits for them, since it is the easiest version of the story this side of a digital Angelina, It's fun and exciting, certainly worth a read, but doesn't stand up as a translation, sitelinkBeowulf is thought to have been written around the yearAD, give or take a century, And the author is the extremely famous, very popular and world renowned writer, . . Unknown. Got you there, didn't I LOL Probably not, . . if you're on Goodreads and studied American or English literature, you probably already knew this is one of the most famous works without an author,
It was first really published in thes, using the Old English version where many have translated it, but there are still some blurry parts of the story.
Essentially, a monster named Grendel hunts and kills the people of a town and many warriors have died fighting against it, Beowulf tackles the monster and its mother, and well, . . you're gonna have to read it to find out, Or if you can't get yourself there, watch the Star Trek or Simpsons episode which does a nice little rendition,
Here's the reasons why you should take a look at the story:
Many famous writers and editors have attempted to translate the story into more modern English, Tolkien is a famous example, Each reader has his/her own interpretation, So pick one whose style you like and go to that version,
. It's a translated book other than the famous Greek literature we read in high school, it's one of the earliest translated forms of literature, Makes it worth taking a gander,
. It's a really great story, Monster terrorizes people. Someone strong steps up to fight it, There is a victory of sorts, Momma wants revenge. So how many books have you read that have just copied, . . I mean borrowed that entire plot
There is a lot of beauty in the prose and the verse, and when you hear the words describe the creatures, it's a bit like fantasy.
Here's why you may not like it:
It's long.
. It's hard to understand at some points,
. It'syears old and you just like modern stories,
My advice pick a passage or two, read forminutes and decide if it's something you want to read more of, But you should always give a chance to some part of our early heritage and culture, Right
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews, . . here's the scoop: I read A LOT, I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT, First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at sitelink com, where you'll also find TV amp Film reviews, the revealing and introspectiveDaily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world.
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