Reading Log: Beowulf

January 10, 2008

I read two different versions of Beowulf, another on my long-neglected list. The first was an old Norton critical edition with a prose translation by E. Talbot Donaldson, the second also a Norton edition, but this time a verse translation by Seamus Heaney.

The Donaldson translation is good. I’m no expert, but it felt more ‘authentic’ in the sense of the language being epic in feel, inclusion of many terms in their original form, and a sentence structure that reflected its roots. It was enjoyable and, perhaps because I was reading a lot slower than the first time, much more moving and powerful than I remember.

The Seamus Heaney translation, however, is great. Heaney just understands the music of words and performs at a level in a different category from most poets. I was intrigued at how Heaney, like Donaldson, doesn’t dumb the text down. He not only leaves in terms that will provoke most users to look closely at the footnotes, but he isn’t afraid to user Irish and Gaelic words where they make sound-sense. Again, I’m not an expert, but Heaney doesn’t seem to translate as much as breathe hot poetic breath into the story, bringing it to life in a new way. Highly recommended.

And just because I feel like it, here’s a poem of Heaney’s I just discovered, also with ancient roots. The way he overlaps multiple devices in the last two stanzas is incredible.

Anything Can Happen
After Horace, Odes, I, 34

Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses

Across a clear blue sky.. It shook the earth
and the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers

Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleading on the next.

Ground gives. The heaven’s weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.
Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.