Customer Reviews

Beowulf and Judith

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For the first time, we now have uniquely available, in "Beowulf and Judith: Two Heroes" by Richard M. Trask, a translation of ancient Old English poetry that is comprehensively faithful to the original form of the poems. Trask captures the subtle texture, rhythm, idiom, essence, and sense of these two great epic poems, preeminently "Beowulf." The other attempts at providing accurate and effective translations of the great Dark Age poetry of England have fallen short from both a technical and esthetic standpoint. Translations that have tried to mimic the structure of Old English poetry typically sound awkward and unnatural to the frame of Modern English. Those that don't bother about the niceties of form inevitably lose much of the flavor and style of the originals. The popular and praised version of Seamus Heaney, as a recent example, violates at liberty the rhythmic patterns and alliterative rules of Old English poetry, adhering to them when convenient and ignoring them otherwise. Heaney's result is no doubt poetic, but Trask does a better job at recreating the original.

It is a simple matter to illustrate Trask's breakthrough accomplishment, by taking a sample passage prominently quoted in a review of Heaney's work and comparing it against Trask's version.

Heaney's "Beowulf," lines 1361b to 1367 of the original (as numbered in modern editions of the Old English text):

A few miles from here
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens;
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.


Trask's "Beowulf," lines 1361b to 1367:

Only a short way
in mile-measure the mere awaits;
above it hang hoarfrosted copses,
the water is shrouded by wood, root-gnarled.
There every night are seen awful spectacles,
fire in the water. No fellow who lives
old among neighbors knows of its depth.

In Heaney, lines 1363, 1365, 1366 violate (though Trask never does) the Old English rules of alliteration, explored in detail in Trask's introductory material. Heaney's lines 1364 and 1365 violate the rhythmic strictures of Old English poetry (classically analyzed by Sievers), which are everywhere scrupulously adhered to by Trask.

Beyond these technical matters, the images and epithets chosen--retained or created--by Trask more accurately capture the content and force of the original than do Heaney's. Trask's "in mile-measure" (line 1362) is a modern poetic-compound equivalent of the Old English `milgemearces' versus Heaney's prosaic "a few miles from here." And "wood, root-gnarled" (Trask, 1364) is a closer, concentrated equivalent to Old English `wudu wyrtum faest' than is Heaney's loose paraphrase, "a maze of tree-roots." Compare, also, the generalized phrase "something uncanny happens" (Heaney, 1365), far afield from the Old English compound noun and visual verb `nithwundor seon' which Trask neatly approximates in sensory terms: "are seen awful spectacles."

Trask's version overall, in an engaging natural way, reads a good deal more like Old English itself. It is more like Old English poetry, notably more like the true "Beowulf," than are other translations new or old. In Trask's book, both Beowulf and Judith not only survive but thrive now more than ever before.

Karen S. Holbrook, Ph.D.