Beowulf: An Updated Verse Translation

Irish author Seamus Heaney provides a readable poetic translation of the epic Beowulf. In the poem readers see a mingling of Christian and pagan traditions. Well-versed Biblical students may even notice parallels between Beowulf and warriors in the Bible. Although the Old English appears on facing pages, my lack of knowledge of Old English makes it impossible for me to determine Heaney's faithfulness to the originals. His introduction and acknowledgement provides some background. He admits to differing opinions with other scholars but the final product seems true to the version I remember from college days while being far more readable. Perhaps more readers will find this classic tale accessible because of Heaney's work.

I was surprised to find I enjoyed this poem despite its grim subject matter. It is a story of a heroic battle of a warrior with evil forces. Beowulf wins the first battle easily, but the second and third are harder fought. The virtues here are simple, and the evil originates almost entirely from outside the community so it is easy to choose a side. This poem reenforces the warrior's code that kept men loyal and obedient to their leaders. The accompanying photographs of landscapes and artifacts in this edition help generate the atmosphere and help add to the reader's understanding of the action and description in the poem. .

For many, Beowulf is a painful childhood memory because we were all forced to read -- or read parts of -- a translation of Old English into somewhat less old English. It was a fairly average tale made worse through unenthusiastic translation. It's oft featured in English literature curricula precisely because of its age, but that doesn't make it good poetry. A story like Beowulf was first carried forward from teller to listener long before it was ever written down. Once committed to paper though, it becomes frozen in time. Once it's frozen, it starts to lose its connection to the audience so it's only right that we entertain new translations. Seamus Heaney does a brilliant job of it, making an eminently readable epic poem, worthy of your overtaxed attention. From dragon-slaying to Scandinavian alliances, it's worth revisiting.

Excellent, excellent translation.

I'm a bit shamed to rate this below average, perceiving its value as a historical artifact, but as literature in terms of content it doesn't amount to much more than a curiosity piece. Such perfectly crafted heroes are now denigrated so the model doesn't serve, and the story reads like the tale of a hubris bubble that never gets popped. That said, I'm glad to have taken the few minutes required to breeze through a modern translation for discussion purposes. I suspect a less wooden ear than mine for poetry, and wearing more patience, may perceive greater magic in its original form.

This poem has been around for about 1200 years so you know it's got to be good.

I can't help wonder how much the original oral version changed with the telling and retelling until some anonymous monk committed the story to paper, or at least vellum. I suspect he added his own touches, converting the pagan Northmen to Christians! Also how many stories did Beowulf influence? JRR Tolkien was something of a subject matter expert on Beowulf so it probably shaped the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The mighty young hero of the Geats rescues the Danes from two hellish monsters that are slaughtering their warriors as they sleep in the royal banquet hall. Then heaped in glory and treasure he returns home to become, in his old age, king and dragon-slayer: the final glorious deed that ends his life. Raffel's translation into vivid alliterative modern English is vivid and exciting. The new afterword lauds how well this translation has stood the test of time, and how many recent adaptations of the poem have been published since then (including the icky 2007 movie). Frank also writes that this earliest epic did not enter the canon of English literature until the late nineteenth century.

Good story.

Not being a scholar on such poems as "Beowulf" and having read it for the first time, I find it was a beautifully written and in such a way as you can almost see the poetic imagery in front of your eyes. From the first words of the prologue - "Hear me!" - one may be caught in the trap of, although the poem consists of 3182 lines of verse (no fear, only 99 pages), finishing the book in one day.There is adventure, suspense, anticipation, blood, revenge, fantasy, death, mourning, villains, faith in God, glorious heroes, dreadful monsters, all elements of what makes a great story combined in one. There are moments that you can almost feel the character's emotions, for example, in Wiglaf's failed attempt to revive Beowulf from death and his resignation to the Christian God's will:"...He was sittingNear Beowulf's body, warily sprinklingWater in the dead man's face, tryingTo stir him. He could not. No one could have keptLife in their lord's body, or turnedAside the Lord's will: worldAnd men and all move as He orders,And always have, and always will."(lines 2853-2859)For those not familiar and new to reading this kind of poetry, as I am, there is provided a helpful introduction, an informative afterword, and a glossary of names and a diagram of the genealogy of characters mentioned.I encourage the reading if this classic. After reading it, you will know why it is a classic, and that for centuries.

I have read Beowulf prior to this translation, and I've read Heaney prior to this. Coming into it I loved both story and translator. This is a very readable and poetic translation. It also contains the old English on the left, if you, like me, like to compare translations with the original.

Beowulf translated by Stephen Mitchell was sent to me by Yale University Press via NetGalley. Thank you.This Beowulf by Stephen Mitchell is an very entertaining translation, The adjective that comes to my mind is "robust." The narrative is straightforward and the flashbacks and foreshadowing are not awkward and do not stop the forward movement of the story. I taught Beowulf for many years to high school students and I wish I had this version. The literature anthology I used had the Kennedy translation which I personally love for it lyric imagery. In Kennedy, the lines about Grendel approaching Heorot (lines 678-680) are "From the stretching moors, from the misty hollows, Grendel came creeping, accursed of God." The Mitchell translation renders the same lines as " Then up from the moor, in a veil of mist, Grendel came slouching. He bore God's wrath." I like the former, but I know my students would have preferred the latter.In the end, whether it be Mitchell, Seamus Heaney, Charles Kennedy or E. Donaldson, all translations of Beowulf are a good thing. I am sure the scops who entertained their listeners during the black nights in the cold north would each have put his own spin on the story. Make it beautiful or make it bloody. One thing is for sure. Beowulf can never be boring.Some very nice addition sto the Mitchell translation are the addition of maps, genealogical charts and a list of characters and place names with pronunciations.

If you ever need to read anything in translation that Heaney has done, DO IT. He keeps the feel of the original texts and is absolutely astounding at modernizing ancient texts without diverting from the original.

This is the first time I have read this epic poem but having seen the horrible 3D movie (cartoon?) beforehand, my imagination was all awry. Of note is the Christian versus pagan context that is completely missed by the movie, and also the context of the story is all over the shop. I was confused by the epic poem's plot but have since learnt that there are three seemingly disjointed stories, and there is no Angelina Jolie dragon for the two heroes to have slept with. Indeed, the movie makes Hrothgar and Beowulf look like idiots. The only part of the movie that made any sense in the context of the ancient text was the coastguard riding up to challenge Beowulf's armed warband (one of the typical "look at me I'm in 3D" shots with his spear). The rest just makes me angry at the movie! I drew some parallels with the Christian/pagan issue with my coinciding trip to Hong Kong. On a visit to Lamma Island, I asked my Chinese-speaking colleague about the Tian Hou Temple. She replied that it was something about the Queen of Heaven. I wondered whether it was Buddhist or what and looked it up when I returned to the hotel. It was interesting that Tian Hou evolved into the Empress of Heaven from a humble goddess of water and fishing. As Hong Kong originated as a fishing village, that makes sense. I have since learnt that various religious practices from Buddhism were incorporated into the worship of the polytheist local gods, and during numerous political eras, local deities were accepted and encouraged by governments over the centuries where these helped with civil stability (during the Han Dynasty, I think). Such Chinese "folk" religions are known as "Shenism". This interested me no end! Yet another thing I knew nothing about. In Beowulf, I felt the same tension between folk and formal religion, and it is clear that the text provides witness to the early days of Christianity in the region. I also felt I had seen numerous movies that draw on the different plots of the text. It is short and quick but would take several readings to better piece together the confusing plots, but others have agonised over this sufficiently for me to know my confusion was not just poor attention to detail!

Warrior Beowulf saves the Danes from the monster Grendel and then Grendel's mother and then many years later does battle against a dragon guarding a hoard of gold.I loved reading this. The poetry of the Heaney translation is very vivid and flowing, and creates a great atmosphere of fighting and carousing and boasting warriors and epic battle against mythical beasts. The story is dark and sometimes gruesome, and it is not at all hard to imagine the poem being recited around the fire by Anglo-Saxon warriors, passing round the cup of mead as the tale unfolds.I am definitely going to pick up a literal/glossed translation at some point and read it again, and try to make more sense of the original text.

This translation of Beowulf is excellent. It captures the spirit of the poetry without becoming too dense to read. I had read excerpts of the story for various classes and never enjoyed it. It is definitely something that you have to read the entire thing to find interesting.

Very fun telling.

I find it easier to listen to than read. That is how these stories were shared originally.

Man, I dug this! I wasn't sure if I would; I'd heard from one or two people who had to read it in school and had a hard time getting through it, but I really really enjoyed this. In form it's very much an epic, which I hadn't realized (and therefore surprised me when the infamous Grendel is slain, oh, only 1/4 of the way through), with the hero being very much in the style of a Hercules or Gilgamesh. Something about the telling reminded me of the Mabinogion, and Heaney's translation is both lyrical and exciting.

Like many, I have not touched this work since my class on British Literature in high school. I have learned a lot since then, and my capacity for processing great literature has only increased. This book, perhaps the first great work in the English language (Old English, that is), has remained the same. Today, I read it in one afternoon and loved every minute of it. Raffel’s translation brings out the drama of the tale while maintaining the simple, Old-English style.The setting portrays a far different world than modern life. We are taken back to the world of kingdoms – of a mythical people known as the Geats. These ancients, presumably living sometime in the early middle ages, approach life in fear of the unknown, symbolized by monsters. They are motivated by riches and social standing. They are governed by kings. Indeed, according to the storyteller, good kings take care of their people, and good soldiers act in courage. (Some things never change.)The plot is simple enough. An ancient knight ends up preserving civilized kingdoms from attacks by three great monsters. He is rewarded with riches, fame, and power. Interestingly, the country of England was not once mentioned in the telling; The Danes, the Fracks, and the Swedes, however, are. The protagonist Beowulf ends up becoming a king and dying nobly.This lively tale helps readers get in touch with an earlier culture yet preserves an element of humanity that should not be forgotten. Indeed, this poem portrays human nature in an elegant and noble light. No matter our era or station, we all want to be celebrated, and we all want to be known as courageous. In this tale, perhaps unlike most of medieval and modern life, good overcomes evil. In showing the effects of Christianity, reverence towards the Deity is displayed. We do not yet have the nuance of Reformation theology nor of Shakespeare’s (or even Chaucer’s) England.This story helped me get in touch with my inner boy who likes adventure. If Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn does that for American youth, perhaps Beowulf does that in the English (or even European) setting. The afterword makes this book sound utterly foreign to contemporary life. I did not find that to be the case. Perhaps the afterword should have been written by someone who has once been a young male child. Reading it as an adult decades after high school, I can easily see why it achieved the status of a classic. I can only hope my poetry reflects a tinge of the liveliness of this anonymous tale.

Incredible, Epic. I would love to have a time machine and go back to the first time this was told in a mead hall with the outer dark and cold winds pushing on the back of the speaker.

"Burton Raffel translation"

This translation is wonderful. I had tried reading a different translation in school, before this was published, and couldn't get through it. Heaney was very open about not being too slavishly literal in his translation and the result is something that's very readable, tautly paced and full of evocative turns of phrase.

The actual story recounted is much less interesting than its telling. It's about the most macho character in a very macho world, who takes on other peoples' battles to prove himself, and where everything is valued in strength and/or gold. I found myself sympathising more with the second "monster" (a bereaved mother out to avenge her son) than the "hero". And the narrator seems very confused about whether the characters being described were Christians or not - they're explicitly described as pagans but then they keep referencing a distinctly monotheist God as if that was the only way the narrator knew to render humility. But it's still an interesting window into a period of history we don't exactly have copious written records from.

Unusually for an Important Work Of Literature, the introduction is really worth reading, I suppose because Heaney wrote it himself. I read it after the poem, which I think was the right way round.

Yes, a classic, I know. And not bad. But not my favorite, nor one of the best, I think. Still, recommended.

I had this book on my shelves for 20 years before reading it. I really shouldn't have left it that long. Heaney's translation brings the old poem to life, blowing off the cobwebs of nearly two hundred years of it being studied rather than read. His translation was contentious, especially with Angl0-Saxon purists, but I have no complaints to make; he manages to make the old words meaningful, and evokes marvellously the atmosphere of a society that was long gone even when the poem was written.Of course one cannot discuss Beowulf without mentioning Tolkien; as Heaney acknowledges, he was the first to treat the poem as literature rather than merely an ancient artefact. Every Tolkien fan should read this; they will understand him much better, and they will find therein the originals of many scenes and phrases in his works.

A beautiful translation.

I had to read Beowulf in high school my senior year (we did a bit on the middle ages and its literature). I think I wouldn't have liked this as much as I did if it hadn't been for my instructor. She made the story come to life and provided our class with all sorts of history of the UK (pre-UK) and its countries and people. It was reminiscent in many ways to Odysseus and I enjoyed it overall.

Maybe Heaney's translation is better, but this slim volume has lots of good supporting information, including a chronology, maps, early critical reactions, notes, a genealogy of the major characters, and a bibliography.

(Original Review, 2001-02-20)If you are familiar with the Hindu myth-kitty though, you may also find parallels between “Beowulf” and the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. When Jambavan spends a lot of time telling Hanuman about how great he is, to induce him to jump to Lanka in search of Sita, or Arjun surveys the array of warriors against him, described in some detail, leading to the Bhagavad Gita, or the Pandavas' "advisor" at Draupadi's swayamvar asks the unknown Karna to declare his lineage and rank.In Beowulf, where the eponymous protagonist has to be introduced by his history in order to be considered worthy of being received in Hrothgar's halls, and able to, perhaps, take his chances against Grendel. Thorsten Verblen's, in his model of conspicuous consumption, suggested that in societies, or social conditions, that were not stable a man could only gain status by his reputation and by what he carried with him: his arms, his abilities and his history. It is a theory that applies to the bling culture of hip-hop, where alas, lives can be dramatically shortened, as much as to the Bronze Age and Iron Age world's of chiefdoms and agriculturists versus nomads. Women were acquired by raids, but there was enough spare, or surplus, labour available for ancillary crafts to develop: goldsmithery, ironmongery and the like. In such conditions, a man meeting a stranger or a putative enemy, would be likely to show off his armour and then show off further by talking about who he was, both his history and his lineage. Like Buffaloes sizing each other up before fighting, it may have been a way of reducing the number of fights that had to occur.Let us not forget the fate of Patroclus, who deliberately rode around in Achilles' bling and therefore got caught in a drive-by assassination. Had he been in a Prius instead of his black, silver-wheeled, borrowed SUV, he might have lived...It reminds me of the peaceful moment of the Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharata just before the great battle of Kurukshetra, though of course Arjuna and Krishna are on the same side.Celtic kingdoms, Saxon kingdoms, Anglo-Norman kingdoms, were ALL European kingdoms. There was no hard border between mainland Britain and the rest of Europe. Kings ruled territories on both sides of the channel in joint jurisdictions. Laws and customs, language, arts and religion were common, in overlapping webs. The Celtic (that is British, or Welsh) and the Saes/Saxon peoples were not 'barbaric'. They were civilised, literate cultures, with highly organised governments, law codes, religion and arts.The group which was 'barbaric' was the 'Normans'. These were a rabble of raiders, adventurers, thieves and pirates, drawn together to loot other peoples. They were illiterate, depending on the monks of those they conquered to keep their records. Their law codes were truly barbaric, vastly inferior to the British and the Saxons, who operated on a system of compensation payments (fines). It was the Normans who imposed amputation, tortures, and increased executions. They were supreme in violence only, inheriting the worst of Viking culture without its balancing qualities, as the Normans were the misfits and rejects. What they were also good at was propaganda. Their bards sang wholly fabricated histories claiming an honourable ancestry for a united people that didn't exist. There were no 'Normans' until the bards constructed the myth of them as the raiders conquests grew successful.This is the 'people' who spawned the British ruling class. The British ruling class keeps books that trace their genealogy proudly 'back to the Conquest'. They were violent thugs, the vermin of Europe, who grabbed and stole, then dressed it all up in myths of propaganda. They haven't changed. Just like the rest of Europe, namely in Portugal...I wonder what the Britons thought about the invading Anglo-Saxons. Were they any better? The difference is, we have very few records to tell us what they thought. The invaders came in sufficient numbers that over a period of centuries their language replaced the native language, and so over time the Brits ended up with a weird sense that the Anglo-Saxon invaders were "Britons", but later Norman invaders were "them", because there weren't enough of them to replace the language of the Anglo-Saxon invaders (although enough to give us 1/3 of the English vocabulary).What did the Britons think about the Saxons (who didn't invade, but simply switch roles from mercenaries to usurpers...)? Actually we know exactly what the British thought of the Saes - they loathed them. See “Armes Prydain” and other works of the time. There was no worse insult than to be called a Saes - Saxon. The native British were culturally superior if only because settlers come as younger sons, or people who are unsuccessful at home, less educated, less cultured. You don't invade and crush natives by singing pretty songs. Compare “Beowulf” with the “Mabinogi” and the gulf is huge - like comparing drinking songs with Shakespeare.It's also inaccurate that the Saes replaced the British. Genetics say otherwise and the story is mixed. In some places it was violent takeover. In others it was trade, marriage, settlement. Coexistence is now the new historical understanding. Brits were mainly herders so held to the high ground and you can still see their place names across 'England' today in higher areas. The Saes were grain farmers who lived on lowland clays so their names survive there. The Saes were not as educated as the Brits. Alfred imported monks from the Cymru (Wales) led by Asser, to teach his people to read and write. Alfred was a visionary, like the later Guillaum le Batard of Normandy. But their peoples were less savoury, especially the Normans who practised genocide to terrify the natives. The whole of Yorkshire was depopulated, half of Pembrokeshire, and a large area of the Scots border. Massacres, or else driven out into destitution. On the second the British ruling class has not changed, still driving people into poverty and homelessness, just like the rest of Europe, namely in Portugal...The English called themselves English from at least the sixth or seventh century on. It was the Normans and their successors who coined the term Anglo Saxon to describe them. All part of the attempt to legitimise their conquest and pretend that they were the rightful rulers of the kingdom and its confiscated estates; and that English history started with them. That's why they promoted the Arthurian myth and tried to pretend they were its heirs - in order to try to write the English out of the story. And why they immediately knocked down the English Abbeys and cathedrals and rebuilt them in their own style.

The poemBeowulf is a tough sell. Not only has it traditionally been used by English departments around the world to break the spirit of newly-recruited undergraduates (who thought they had signed up for three years of Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, only to find themselves out on the parade-ground practicing their Old English sound-shifts for month after month...), but also, when you get down to it, it turns out to be a poem about a macho muscle-man who spends his time - when not quaffing mead - either ripping monsters limb from limb or swimming long distances in full armour. Told completely straight, without any discernible trace of irony. Well, not exactly my cup of tea...Skimming through the introduction of the Bolton & Wrenn critical text, it turns out that we know surprisingly little about what must be one of the most-studied poems in the canon. It has survived in only one manuscript, the famous "British Museum Cotton Vitellius A XV" (bizarrely, the emperor Vitellius comes into it because it's his bust that stands on top of that particular bookcase). In fact, there are very few Old English texts that survive as multiple copies, so this uniqueness isn't unusual in itself. The manuscript seems to have been written around the year 1000, and textual evidence suggests that it's at least the third generation of copies since the poem was first written down. When and where that was is hotly disputed, but Mercia in the second half of the 8th century is a strong possibility. The action of the poem is set in a pre-Christian past in Denmark and Southern Sweden (with some mention of actual historical figures from the time), whilst the poet is obviously from a Christian background and refers quite freely to the Old Testament. What I found most surprising was to discover that the poem was not conspicuously a "classic" in its own time: we don't have any other contemporary references to it (apart from the "Finnesburg fragment", a single page of MS that seems to come from a different version of part of the same story), and as far as anyone can tell it fell completely off the radar of English literature between the end of the Old English period and the time around 650 years later when the first modern scholars became interested in Old English manuscripts and discovered this poem, bound in with a prose translation of St Augustine. So Beowulf is only part of the history of English literature with hindsight.The Heaney translationSeamus Heaney, of course, saw it as rather more than a philological crossword puzzle or a Boys' Own adventure story, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered with it. He points us in particular at the last part of the poem, where the elderly (70+) hero decides that he owes it to his people to take on one last dragon, even though it will certainly cost him his life. And indeed, the anonymous poet deals with the complex emotions involved here a little less brusquely than he does elsewhere - but this isn't Shakespearean drama, and we shouldn't expect it to be.What Heaney is really interested in, I think, is the poetical challenge of finding something in modern English that has the same magically seductive sound quality as Old English alliterative verse (which always sounds magnificent, even if you haven't a clue what it means...). And, of course, being Seamus Heaney, he decides to imagine the voices of the poem as if they came from the Northern Ireland farmers of his own sound-world, puts these into a slightly looser form of the Old English two-stress half-lines, and succeeds brilliantly. This translation is a poem that you just have to read aloud, even if there's no way that you can find any sympathy for Beowulf as a character.

There are different ways to translate, and it comes down to what you want to get across. Most creative authors have such a strong voice and sense of story that they will overwhelm the original author. As Bentley wrote of Pope's Iliad: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer".Sometimes this sort of indirect translation is useful in itself, such as during the transition of the Renaissance from Italy to Britain. Many of the British poets rewrote Italian ...more There are different ways to translate, and it comes down to what you want to get across. Most creative authors have such a strong voice and sense of story that they will overwhelm the original author. As Bentley wrote of Pope's Iliad: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer".Sometimes this sort of indirect translation is useful in itself, such as during the transition of the Renaissance from Italy to Britain. Many of the British poets rewrote Italian sonnets into English, and though the line of descent was unquestionable, the progeny was it's own work. Another example might be the digestion of Wuxia and Anime into films such as Tarantino's or The Matrix (though Tarantino's sense of propriety is often suspect).However, in these cases, we can hardly call the new work a translation of the old. You are not experiencing the old work but the inspiration it has wrought. Beowulf is just this sort of translation, capturing the excitement and passion of the story, but obliterating the details which make the work interesting to students of history or literary theory.Heaney's translation is a fun, rollicking epic, able to draw in even uninitiated students, which is no doubt why it is now included in Norton. Unfortunately, it is not a particularly useful tool for teaching the importance of the original work. Heaney severs many connections to the unique world of Beowulf.As the only surviving epic from its time, place, and tradition, Beowulf is a unique vision into a pre-Christian culture outside of the Mediterranean. Though the poem shows Christian revisions, these stand out in stark contrast to the rest of the work, and can usually be easily excised, unlike many pervasive Christian impositions on the 'pagan' cultures.Heaney is not a philologist nor a historian, but a popular poet. He doesn't have the background for conscientious translation, and the clearest sign that his translation is haphazard is the fact that there are no footnotes explaining the difficult decisions that most translators have to make in every line. Heaney also loses much of the alliteration and appositives that marked the artistry of the original.A Beowulf that can exist without context is a Beowulf that has well and truly been separated from its past. Perhaps his translation is suitable for an introduction to the work, but a good professor should be able to teach the original without much difficulty.Then again, perhaps the inclusion of this version in college classes has to do with the fact that college is no longer the path for scholars, but has been given the same equality treatment as art and poetry. College is now meant for your average, half-literate frat boy who only wants a BA so he can be a mid-level retail manager.Heaney's translation certainly suits for them, since it is the easiest version of the story this side of a digital Angelina. It's fun and exciting, certainly worth a read, but doesn't stand up as a translation.