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Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition)

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"Beowulf" is justly regarded as a cornerstone of English literature, but those of us who do not read Anglo-Saxon must approach it through a translation. Certainly there is no shortage of translations; I have at least a dozen sitting on my bookshelf. However, I would eliminate half of them as adequate vehicles for really appreciating this grand poem because they are prose versions. While they may accurately convey the literal sense of the Old English words and provide a readily understood storyline, prose can never adequately render the poetic essence of the original.

Verse translation, however, is of necessity an imprecise art; poetry is too tightly bound to the language of its creator for a valid direct transposition to another tongue. Anglo-Saxon verse relied upon strong alliteration and a balance of stressed syllables rather than the use of rhyme and formally patterned meter as in later English poetry. The contemporary translator has a formidable and delicate challenge to transform "Beowulf" into a poem suited for today while remaining loyal to its ancient timbre. Although I greatly admire Ruth P.M. Lehmann's 1988 translation for its steadfast replication of the tone and cadence of the Old English original, there is truth in what another "Alliteration is a key element in Old English metrics ... but long stretches of it in Modern English will stupefy the most ardent reader". At times the beat and alliteration of Lehmann's verse threatens to overwhelm the present-day listener, becoming a deadening drumbeat. Yet, if the translator strays too far from the Anglo-Saxon structure in attempting to create something palatable for present taste, then the result inevitably lacks the bardic flavor at the heart of the poem.

Achieving a fitting balance between the vibrant aural core of the original and the requirements of a contemporary reader is a matter of subtle artistry. It may be that Seamus Heaney is an ideal poet to meet that challenge in this era. He has produced here a work which, in its four-beat line and tempered alliteration, keeps faith with its source, yet avoids excessive archaisms which would alienate a Y2K ear. Still, Heaney allows the voice of the past to emerge here and there to keep us fixed in time, resulting in a blend of contemporary language seasoned with ancient echoes. Beowulf the warrior, virtually a caricature of exaggerated, implausible heroism in some translations, is rescued in this new version to stand revealed as someone credibly human. Heaney's translation is eminently readable, but does not sacrifice the poem's true soul.

The Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition is a markedly handsome volume, a bilingual presentation with the Anglo-Saxon original and Heaney's translation on facing pages. The US publication was delayed a few months, and I would not be surprised to learn that release was intentionally held until after announcement of the Whitbread Award in the UK. Heaney's "Beowulf" beat the latest "Harry Potter" novel for that prestigious honor by a single vote, proving the adolescent wizard to be as formidable an opponent as a grim monster from a mere.

To anybody who has been promising him- or herself to get around to reading this classic poem "one of these days" but has been deterred by vague memories of awkward verse from "Beowulf" may finally be here. Seamus Heaney's translation reads as smoothly as any prose, yet the poetry can always be heard, whispering in your ear.

After reading Tolkien's "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" as well as his epic fantasy, my own path was set: I became an English medievalist and, in fact, as a senior graduate student, taught Beowulf under the direction of William Alfred of Harvard before graduating and going on to become a writer of fantasy and science fiction.

I've tried to do my own alliterative translations: Mr. Heaney's translation comes as a delight for a number of reasons. Chief among them is this: he's the best poet to tackle BEOWULF since the original -scop-. Even 20 years after my grad school days, I read Old English. Heaney has produced a translation that is profoundly moving. If he sometimes diverges from the four-stress alliterative pattern, with the third stress being the main one, it's by design -- and he's explained it. He spares us the most convoluted kennings, but gives us, instead, the tautness, the spaces between the words, the pauses for thought, tension, and what Tolkien and Auden referred to as the Northern Thing -- the austere combination of faith and darkness that is Wyrd. It's a solid translation and a fine poem in Heaney's hands.

And it consoles me for not having a full translation by Tolkien and that John Gardner never lived to translate BEOWULF as he had hoped.

It is also delightful to consider that, for the first time since the death of T.S. Eliot, poetry is going to the top of the best-seller lists.

Mr. Heaney, although he is not a ring-giver, rings true, and has given us a great gift.

I don't have the academic background to compare Heaney's translation with the many that have come before; the only time I had read the poem previously was back in college, and all I remembered was Beowulf tearing Grendel's arm off. So, as someone coming to the poem blissfully ignorant, I'm happy to report that Heaney does a spectacular job. Someone smart once said that the only way to judge a translation is on the translation's own merits; that's lucky for me as I'm a dunce with Old English. I looked over the facing pages (the Old English pages, in my edition), and sometimes read them aloud to get a feel for their cadence and sound, but I trusted in Heaney to tell me the story, and what a story he tells.

I've always admired the tough beauty of his poetry; his lines tend to stomp about, a brawl of consonants, irredeemably masucline. What better interpreter, than, for the hypermacho world of Beowulf, where the men gnaw on bones and gulp down their mead and stagger off to fight monsters and get eviscerated. I'm not mocking the saga-- it's awfully good fun, and I'm pleased to see it's selling so well. Heaney's favorite themes, violence and memory, lurk in the heart of Beowulf.

Very nice to see a Nobel laureate refusing to rest on his laurels.

In this translation of Beowulf, the story is the star. I've read other translated editions, but gotten so bogged down in the attempts at exact translation (those tiresome hyphenations!) that I never noticed Beowulf himself. Here, we see him develop as a character: first a young hero, then a king, then a seasoned ruler with one last fight to face.

And everything means something. Heaney mentions in his introduction that he wanted every word to have weight; he's succeeded.

The introduction alone, incidentally, is worth the price of the book. Reading how Heaney sees poetry and the English language is a privilege; he's one of our best living poets. Also, though I don't read Old English, I did appreciate the bilingual edition, just for reference's sake.

I highly recommend this edition. Whether the reader is new to the poem or not, it's fresh and meaningful here.

I have to be honest that my first encounter with "Beowulf" was not an enjoyable one. Lacking a translation by a master poet like Seamus Heaney, I read the old Burton Raffel translation which, though venerable, lacked a sense of the poem that Beowulf is.

When I found that Heaney was developing a new translation of Beowulf, I became eager to revisit the poem a second time. What he has produced is no less than a treasure, not only for its poetry, but for the strong sense of history that permeates the book.

Heaney has been well-recognized for his own poetry and has produced here a dynamic translation of an ancient poem that still has relevance for crusaders and defenders today. To be sure, the Anglo-Saxon world he and the un-named ancient poet portray is vastly different from the one we know. There are very few women; the brave men who populate the story are slain bloodily by dark monsters and dragons. Gold and chain mail glisten and clank. Heaney brings all of these sights and sounds to life in the cadence of the poem; guttural, with two sub-lines per line. I found myself trying to make sense of the Anglo-Saxon just as much as I read the modern English translation. This was initially frustrating owing to the lack of a pronounciation guide, but I actually found understanding the Saxon alphabet and figuring out what I could of the grammar to be a challenge.

This leads me to the second joy of this translation, which is the sense of history that it is filled with. Heany writes of his own Irish-Gaelic background and how it informed his use of language in translating the poem. Beowulf is an ancient text that survived for hundreds of years in the oral bardic tradition, then in a single copy at the British Museum. What we have left to us is a living relic of language and sound. That the English language itself has changed so much since Beowulf was written is at once amazing and frightening. What will our heirs be reading in a thousand years? What will they sound like? What can we offer to them?

In any case, Seamus Heaney has given us a treasure.

"Beowulf" is, first and foremost, a good story clad in well-crafted language. But the distance between that language and modern English is far too great for most readers to bridge, and translators tend to opt for either the all-too-pedestrian literal or the all-too-precious literary. Heaney has created a translation that not only preserves the "feel" of the original as well as its meaning, but is also a "good read" -- it sounds utterly effortless, and that's REALLY hard to achieve (I speak from experience, having spent an entire semester of graduate school translating the original Anglo-Saxon). The poem is a compelling tale of heroism and the marvelous, and Heaney has made it fresh and exciting again.
I was especially struck by how the hero Beowulf "grows up" in the course of the poem: at the beginning he's a young man (albeit with exceptional wisdom and good sense) whose main concern is his heroic reputation; in the final episode, he's a mature, conscientious ruler who takes on the dragon out of a sense of responsibility to use his gifts for his people's benefit, even if the encounter proves fatal to him. Most translations don't convey this progression, but Heaney's language brings it out beautifully.
The introduction is admirable too -- beautifully written, with just enough historical background to clarify the poem's context without overwhelming the reader. Heaney's story of how he chose the "tone" of his translation is charming, and his discussion of the continuity between Anglo-Saxon and English dialects is fascinating: clearly, here's a man who LOVES language and wants to share his delight in it with his readers.
The book is a pleasure to handle, too, attractively printed and formatted. My only quibble is with the cover image: it's striking, but the poem alludes about a zillion times to Beowulf's "helmet," and, given the number of historical "re-enactors" around nowadays, it wouldn't have been impossible for the photographer to come up with a reasonably authentic helmet (that cheesy chain mail wouldn't have stood up to Grendel's dam, let alone a dragon!).

This is the perfect chance to share a true story, reflecting on one word of Heaney's great translation.

Picture a balmy summer lunchtime in Oxford. JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis are enjoying a pub lunch, along with some undergraduate students. Warm English ale mellows out the brains, and the throng ambles back peacefully to listen to Tolkien's lecture on Beowulf. Undergrads pile into the room, JRR enters, standing behind one of those old, tall, wooden desks with a heavy, slanting flap lid. Undergrads, still mellow, continue light-hearted conversation, not caring about too much, or respect for lecturer. JRR opens his copy of Beowulf. Noise continues. JRR opens desk lid, and as he declaims the first word, "HWAET!", he slams the lid with a huge crash.

Instant silence, all eyes face front, all backs straight.

"That's what that word is for," explains Tolkien. "This is oral tradition, the poet is standing in the mead hall, after dinner, the audience is in their cups. He has to get their attention. So he bangs something on the table, at the moment he starts the story."

Heaney is right, there isn't a word that sounds strong enough to compare with the original, "behold" is very cumbersome. I guess you could say "So!" with the same force and emphasis.

Try it out, when you read the story in the pub..... Seamus Heaney brings the story to life so well it deserves the live audience.

I have spent my life reading and re-reading; teaching; interpreting, walking through even re-living, the Beowulf Epic. I can say, with confidence, that at no time has a translation captured the reality of the Poem as Heaney has done with this crown-point gem. The introduction, and dealing with the story as myth in particular, is the only part for which I have any real criticism. An educator, a true educator can enrich and inspire the tritest translation of the Epic. Examining the Epic as Myth, Song Cycle, Bardic Song have fallen by the wayside it's true, but a remnant are we who live for the study of the Ancient Epic. Working in conjunction with our Arts Faculty, we enliven the discussion with paintings, sculpture, performance art, and original musical compositions at a week-long celebration that has come to be known as "Vulffest". During this time of unbrideled revelry and serious study the Epic has been examined scrupulously, over the years, under paradigmatic variations that would make philosophers from Descartes to Royce spin like gyroscopes in their respective resting-places. (Particularly inspiring was a Lesbian Marxist-Leninist Feminist deconstruction of the poem.) Indeed I have made my work nothing less than transforming Beowulf into a curriculum in and of itself, and in doing so, put it on a par with Joyce's "Ulysses". Nearing the ending of a proud career I can say Heaney understands the Saga as I have come to understand it, examines it as I do, gives life to the word play as I love to do, and has sat, hushed in the profound silences, as I have.

Seamus Heaney should be beatified along with his hero: Warrior, King and Sage. Not since John Gardner's "Grendel" (1971), (a retelling of the epic from the monster-child's point of view: with Gardner's classic internal conflict examination), have I found such refreshing work in the field.

Through the years, I have heard Beowulf called, "The Dark Tome of Perfidious Albion"; "The scourge and bane of Senior English"; and seen students bowing toward Copenhagen, chanting, "May we be worthy to see the real in the myth; the human in the monster; the monstrous in the human; and the myth in the real!" before, during and after classes.

Heaney understands that like good prose, Epic poetry accomplishes most when more is said with less: that the writer's craft is not so much what is put down, as what's taken out. I would particularly recommend the dual-language edition, for serious students. You can see Heaney's thought process from line to line: nothing short of astounding! He understands the ebullient alliteration as only a speaker of the Old English can. It is my opinion that the only possible way Heaney could have improved on his work, would have been for him to go from town to town as a traveling bard (a blind one would be preferable) touching harp strings and singing the Epic in halls filled with Thanes, Lords and their Ladies with hearth fires warming and mead bowls overflowing. While Heaney has been noted for, "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past," to quote the Swedish Academy in his 1995 Nobel Literature triumph, I see the examination of Heaney's "Beowulf" central to Literary Studies for generations to come. Kudos for a masterwork, and a plain good read!

I am preparing to take the GRE in literature, and there are always questions on Beowulf. I hadn't read it since high school, so I picked up this new translation by the Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. All I remember from my high school days is the underwater battle between Beowulf and Grendel's mom because that's the only part that made sense to me. With this new translation the story came alive for me. Those Anglo-Saxon spellings of names in previous translations really lost me. But Mr. Heaney spells the names so they sound like modern day names, and it makes the reading flow. And I love how the Anglo-Saxon is on the left page with the translation on the right page, so you can go back and forth to see which words haven't changed much in over a thousand years like gold, god, and world. Pretty cool. My husband read the poem, and he isn't even an English major! It is a wonderful translation of an epic poem, and I recommend it highly.

The little I knew of Beowulf prior to reading this translation of the epic was some mytho-poetic exposure in men's circles. I had no exposure to the epic in my educational background (sounds like this was fortuitous given the comment on prior translations).

Given this simple background, I approached the epic simply looking for a good read as well as to gain some knowledge of the ancient story first-hand. And what a read! The 3,200 hundred lines need to be read aloud, as all good poetry should. The meter of the poem flows. I found it to be far easier to read aloud then the recent translation of The Odyssey by Robert Fagles (although I loved that story-telling as well). Despite the ease and lightness of the words and text, I received a very good sense of the dark, brooding, medieval atmosphere surronding the epic; a sense that this story was told around the fires in dark huts in the cold north.

I feel blessed and more full, having read this tale.