Name: Beowulf
ISBN: 9780393320978

Beowulf

Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in Beowulf and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader.

What Hacker News says

starkparkerNov 2023

I'd also vouch for his translation of Beowulf, which is one of the modern great translations of a work. The Translations of Seamus Heaney book also provides some fantastic context for how his translation work and own writings informed each other.

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qohenNov 2023

YouTube has Heaney reading his Beowulf translation (in 2 parts[0][1]) -- given that Beowulf was an oral epic, you may want to check it out.

If you want your own copy, Audible has it[2] -- it's about $15 (but they also have a free trial and occasionally Amazon offers a free download from them) -- note that according to some comments, even though it's over 2 hours, it's abridged.

And, of course, there's the printed version[3] -- it's actually bilingual. $12.76 in print, $1.99 on Kindle.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaB0trCztM0

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsxxg5P-DnY

[2] https://www.audible.com/pd/Beowulf-Audiobook/B002V5CVPY

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-New-Verse-Translation-Bilingu...

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adamseaSep 2020

> Fagles is my favorite of the two, because he gave me more of what I wanted: high diction and mythic tone.

Fair :). Lol I’ve been constantly re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the same reason :). And I’ve read (Fagles, I think) The Iliad for the same reasons.

You may have already, but if not check out the Seamus Heaney translation of ‘Beowulf.’

He doesn’t do “high diction” or “mythic tone”, but, imho, he’s managed to give the story a quite “epic tone” in a very contemporary and earthy fashion.

It’s also a short / fun / fast read.

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numlockedAug 2020

I’m no scholar, but have a distinct memory of reading the Heaney translation of Beowulf perhaps 20 years ago (it was new at the time). I don’t recall any of the language per se, but have the distinct memory of thinking “this is extremely badass”. It seems completely reasonable that a more vernacular translation would be in some meaningful way more accurate (if not precise). This article brought back some of the adrenaline, and I expect that when I read this version, it will be exactly as I remember it.

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DC-3Aug 2020

I'm also a huge fan of Heaney's Beowulf. While Headley chooses to vernacularise the language in the extreme, Heaney took a more sensitive approach, preserving kennings and searching for Ulster dialect cognates to Old English words to use in their stead, and always being careful to shun the aloof Latinate for the earthy Germanic. The consequence of his success is that the text seems to have sprung forth from the bloodied earth, the capricious sea, and the smoke-clogged longhouses of the tale.

So while I am always happy to see new editions of Beowulf, I can't help but feel that Headley's will feel a little trivial by way of its own unselfconcious anachronism. A wergeld seems an absurd concept when cast in the language of the iPhone, but when depicted in language that is sympathetic to its context it feels deeply natural - of the earth, even - a rightful price to pay as atonement for the shedding of blood, in an age when the sword was as fair and just as the High Court is today.

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madhadronDec 2019

I'm going to suggest some alternate translations for some of these where it really matters.

Virgil's Aeneid, the best I know if is CS Lewis's partial translation. I'm unaware of a complete translation that has any of the magic of the original.

Dante's Divine Comedy, read the Clive James translation. This is the first one that captures some of the luminous quality of the Tuscan.

Beowulf, get Seamus Heaney's translation.

I don't read Spanish and cannot offer any insights on Cervantes, but maybe someone else can chime in. Likewise, do some research on translations of the Buddhist writings in volume 45.

One volume a week of this material is steep. A lot of this has its own pace and forcing your way through it faster loses the reason to bother. Milton's Paradise Lost, for example, is an awesome poem, but it implies a cadence, and it's a much slower cadence than modern readers are used to for nontechnical prose.

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