Beowulf trans. Seamus Heaney
I have a hard time getting through epic poems. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to read The Aenid and failed. This, however, was unexpectedly good. I basically knew the story with Grendel and his mom and gold and chain mail (the kind you wear, not the kind you post) and battles and darring do, leading to the inevitable tragedy.
But one of the most interesting parts of the book is the introduction where Heaney describes some of the underyling structure of the orignal Anglo-Saxon in which Beowulf was written. Alliteration and stresses play a big part in the verse, and he recreates that in modern English as much as possible.
The story is a good one, far better than I expected. The language isn’t nearly as flowery and the action far more direct and exciting than I expected. I’ve read no other version, so I can’t compare, but this is quite approachable and a good read.
As Heaney says, it’s somewhat of a mystery why Beowulf isn’t more widely known and read as it’s a direct ancestor of English literation compared with something like The Aenid or The Iliad and The Odyssey, which while a foundation of Western literature, is not English.
