Beowulf [Hardcover]

Seamus Heaney (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 126 pages
• Publisher: Faber and Faber; First Edition edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 057120113X
• ISBN-13: 978-0571201136
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (290 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,567,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

516 of 536 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic translation by a master poet, February 15, 2000

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Hardcover)

"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.

222 of 231 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is What Tolkien Meant, March 6, 2000

By 

Susan Shwartz (Forest Hills, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Hardcover)

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.

249 of 261 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heaney was the right man for this job, April 27, 2000

By 

David Benioff (Otisville, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Hardcover)

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.