Beowulf

A New Translation

By: Seamus Heaney

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Hardcover | 24 February 2005 | Edition Number 1

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Composed towards the end of the first millennium, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. In his new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work which is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his own creative gift.

The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed, in that exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels between this story and the history of the twentieth century, nor can Heaney's Beowulf fail to be read partly in the light of his Northern Irish upbringing. But it also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating.

Industry Reviews

Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year 1999. Heaney, who would without doubt top any popular poll of best poet currently writing in English, here heightens his stratospheric renown in a translation of the great 1st-millennium Anglo-Saxon epic, a stirring tale of heroism, honour, blood-feud, meadhall feasting, and vividly realized single combat against two monsters and a dragon. The work is remarkable for its deference to the genius of the original (even the alliteration is subdued), though Heaney, forgivably, cannot resist the very occasional attention-seeking phrase - such as 'That was one good king' (where the reader supplies the missing 'helluva'). This is a moving and laudable work, and one cannot wholly mourn its inevitable displacement on both sides of the Atlantic of an original text that so many undergraduates have studied against their will. The Introduction is a model of literary acclimatization setting new standards for the genre. (Kirkus UK)

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