| Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition) | 
 enlarge | Creator: Seamus Heaney
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  244 reviews
Sales Rank: 6126
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 215
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0393320979
Dewey Decimal Number: 829.3
EAN: 9780393320978
ASIN: 0393320979
Publication Date: February 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: No writing or highlighting. Rough corners. We guarantee complete satisfaction and promise prompt shipping.
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Amazon.com Review
In Beowulf warriors must back up their mead-hall boasts with instant action, monsters abound, and fights are always to the death. The Anglo-Saxon epic, composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, has long been accorded its place in literature, though its hold on our imagination has been less secure. In the introduction to his translation, Seamus Heaney argues that Beowulf's role as a required text for many English students obscured its mysteries and "mythic potency." Now, thanks to the Irish poet's marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred David's watch, this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun. There are endless pleasures in Heaney's analysis, but readers should head straight for the poem and then to the prose. (Some will also take advantage of the dual-language edition and do some linguistic teasing out of their own.) The epic's outlines seem simple, depicting Beowulf's three key battles with the scaliest brutes in all of art: Grendel, Grendel's mother (who's in a suitably monstrous snit after her son's dismemberment and death), and then, 50 years later, a gold-hoarding dragon "threatening the night sky / with streamers of fire." Along the way, however, we are treated to flashes back and forward and to a world view in which a thane's allegiance to his lord and to God is absolute. In the first fight, the man from Geatland must travel to Denmark to take on the "shadow-stalker" terrorizing Heorot Hall. Here Beowulf and company set sail: Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank,
sand churned in the surf, warriors loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear
in the vessel's hold, then heaved out,
away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.
Over the waves, with the wind behind her
and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird... After a fearsome night victory over march-haunting and heath-marauding Grendel, our high-born hero is suitably strewn with gold and praise, the queen declaring: "Your sway is wide as the wind's home, / as the sea around cliffs." Few will disagree. And remember, Beowulf has two more trials to undergo. Heaney claims that when he began his translation it all too often seemed "like trying to bring down a megalith with a toy hammer." The poem's challenges are many: its strong four-stress line, heavy alliteration, and profusion of kennings could have been daunting. (The sea is, among other things, "the whale-road," the sun is "the world's candle," and Beowulf's third opponent is a "vile sky-winger." When it came to over-the-top compound phrases, the temptations must have been endless, but for the most part, Heaney smiles, he "called a sword a sword.") Yet there are few signs of effort in the poet's Englishing. Heaney varies his lines with ease, offering up stirring dialogue, action, and description while not stinting on the epic's mix of fate and fear. After Grendel's misbegotten mother comes to call, the king's evocation of her haunted home may strike dread into the hearts of men and beasts, but it's a gift to the reader: 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.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place. In Heaney's hands, the poem's apparent archaisms and Anglo-Saxon attitudes--its formality, blood-feuds, and insane courage--turn the art of an ancient island nation into world literature. --Kerry Fried
Product Description
Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the classic Northern epic of a hero's triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed in the exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels in this story to the historical curve of consciousness in the twentieth century, but the poem also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating. In his new translation, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has produced a work that is both true, line by line, to the original poem and a fundamental expression of his own creative gift. A New York Times bestseller, winner of the Whitbread Award.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 239 more reviews...
 Excellent Translation October 15, 2008
This is the only version of Beowulf I have read, so I can't compare it to other versions, but I thought it was an excellent version of the story. It was very easy to read. It flows nicely like a novel, I practically read the whole thing in one sitting. I have read elsewhere that it may not be as literal as other translations, but it wasn't a pain to get through like some literal translations I've seen of other works. I highly recommend this to anyone, especially people who have tried to read it before but were put off by hard to read literal translations.
Beowulf Review September 20, 2008
This is a great book. It is one that even after reading other translations, is good.
"fate hovered near, unknowable but certain" (line 2421) September 1, 2008
Over the years I've read several English renderings of Beowulf. But I don't think I've ever really appreciated the haunting beauty of the thing until reading Seamus Heaney's translation. In his introductory essay, Heaney says that he's always loved the Beowulf poet's "foursquareness about the utterance," the "undeluded quality" of his "sense of the world." In translating from the Anglo-Saxon, Heaney seeks to be loyal to this "attractively direct" style, and he succeeds admirably. He's especially good at capturing the original poem's directness while retaining its beauty in translating the compound words so beloved by the Anglo Saxons. Heaney's craft renders the dragon which slays Beowulf, for example, as "ground-burner," "cave-guard," and "sky-plague."
Beowulf is a rousing good story if read just for the action. But as Heaney reminds us, the three challenges of Beowulf--the battle with Grendel in dark of night, the battle with his witch mother in water running deep underground, and the battle with the dragon in the wilderness--are also archetypes of the deepest fears every human must face. They are our fate, our doom. Only time reveals what precise faces they will wear, but they are our fate, "unknowable but certain."
That's why the tale of Beowulf is both stirring and melancholy, as are all the Scandinavian sagas. We are called to great heroism, and some of us can attain it. But even the heroes, the Beowulfs, at last come to know their mortality. In one of the most poignant sections of the saga, a poem within the poem telling of the sorrow of one Hrethel over the death of his son, this theme comes through clearly.
He begins to keen
and weep for his boy, watching the raven
gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help.
The wisdom of age is worthless to him. (2446-2449)
Heaney's remarkable artistry has brought Beowulf back to us. It's a beautiful gift. After savoring it, readers may wish to consult J.R.R. Tolkien's insightful essay "Beowulf and the Monsters."
beowulf August 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Product arrived in condition described and in a timely fashion. Would purchase from the buyer again.
Sweet! August 28, 2008
I remember reading Beowulf for the first time in seventh grade. It was mandatory reading, and the translation we had was horrid. Those two factors made pretty much all the children in the class (including me) dislike the book immediately. A few years later, as I was browsing through books at the local Borders, I found Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. I am glad that I decided to give the book one more try. Seamus Heaney's translation is wonderful, and I was able to enjoy the story of Beowulf for the first time. I also enjoyed looking at the original Anglo-Saxon text as well, while I was reading. Heaney's translation is fresh, clear, and most of all epic, just like a story of this caliber is supposed to be. Great translation. Beowulf is redeemed.
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