(Seamus Heaney –tr.) Beowulf ― A New Verse Translation

Wiglaf's speech in praise of Beowulf - I can't identify the artist.

Wiglaf’s speech in praise of Beowulf — I can’t iden­ti­fy the artist.

If you’re going to get any edi­tion of Beowulf, the ancient Anglo-Sax­on epic, get this one. Until now, I got along with the ser­vice­able trans­la­tion by Michael Alexan­der — noth­ing wrong with it. But this trans­la­tion by renowned Irish poet Sea­mus Heaney leaps from the page and sings. For the first time, a mod­ern read­er can expe­ri­ence the poem with the imme­di­ate plea­sure that they would get from read­ing a good-qual­i­ty con­tem­po­rary fan­tasy novel.

Take this sam­ple, cho­sen almost at ran­dom (I could have grabbed some­thing from any page).

Here’s the original:

Nis þæt feor heonon
mīl-gemearces, þæt se mere standeð
ofer þæm hon­giað hrinde bearwas;
wudu wyr­tum fæst wæter oferhelmað.
Þær mæg nih­ta gehwæm nīð-wun­dor sēon,
fyr on flōde; nō þæs frōd leofað
gume­na bear­na þæt þone grund wite.

Heaney ren­ders it:

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.

The Eng­lish of a thou­sand years ago is so extreme­ly dif­fer­ent from the mod­ern lan­guage that its ancient lit­er­a­ture is inac­ces­si­ble to us, except in trans­la­tion. Many bored stu­dents have been flogged through Beowulf as an oner­ous duty, but oth­er­wise the poem has not real­ly excit­ed the imag­i­na­tion of mod­ern read­ers. This won­der­ful trans­la­tion will change that. It has already become one of the most sur­pris­ing best­sellers on the NY Times list. I have to thank Skye Sepp for loan­ing me a copy. The paper­back, pub­lished by W.W.Norton, is hand­some. Heaney’s detailed pref­ace is illu­mi­nat­ing. I also have to thank Steve Muhlberg­er for draw­ing my atten­tion to it on his site, Muhlberger’s Ear­ly His­tory.

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