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.


Reawakening the sense of wonder   June 28, 2000
 60 out of 66 found this review helpful

"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!).


At Last! A Geat Hero for the Great Masses.   March 3, 2000
 53 out of 59 found this review helpful

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!


From a Beowulf Epic novice...   March 7, 2000
 49 out of 54 found this review helpful

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.


If you have to read Beowulf, read this translation   November 17, 2000
 41 out of 45 found this review helpful

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.