Beowulf

[Yurii]

Have any of you read the epic Beowulf? I've just started it (The Seamus Heaney version). I'm looking forward to reading John Gardner's 'Grendel' once I'm done. Just wondering what your thoughts are on this Anglo-Saxon poem.

[PeterL]

Have any of you read the epic Beowulf? I've just started it (The Seamus Heaney version). I'm looking forward to reading John Gardner's 'Grendel' once I'm done. Just wondering what your thoughts are on this Anglo-Saxon poem.

I have red it in several translations, and I think that Heaney's is the worst that I have read. Others are truer to the original and caught the spirit of it better.

[Charles Darnay]

^Heaney just wanted to do his own thing. I liked his translation for what it was - but yes, it is not all that true to the original as far as I understand.

[PeterL]

^Heaney just wanted to do his own thing. I liked his translation for what it was - but yes, it is not all that true to the original as far as I understand.

Yes, that is a good way to put it: he did his own thing, but as I wrote earlier, I didn't like it.

[Nick Capozzoli]

If you are looking for a modern English version that catches the original, I recommend Raymond Oliver's "Beowulf: A Likeness." Besides the superb translation of the text, this "coffee table" book has really fine photographs and commentary. Heaney's version is also fine, but it's more in line with what Robert Lowell called an "Imitation," which is to say that it's more of a poetic "interpretation" than a close translation...kind of like Pound's "Seafarer."

[Lokasenna]

We actually had a discussion about the relative merits of different translations on an older thread:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?70848-Best-Beowulf-Translation&highlight=Beowulf

I have very... strident... views on the quality of Heaney's translation, and with good reason.

[cacian]

I am reading and acquainting myself with Bewoulf at the moment. Lot to read and get used to.
I have few questions whilst i am on it:

1) Beowulf could it be interpreted as be a wolf? playing on the notion of an early evolution idea.
2) "The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother: why does this title/expression remind me of The Jewish Question?
and
3) Why is Beowul titless? ie with no known author/narrator.
I feel Beowulf presents itself as a narrative event almost as a predictative text not of a past but a far away future I would compare to something something like Star Wars. It reminds of the French writer guy de maupassant and ''The Horla'' here is a snapshot:


"The Horla" ("Le Horla") is an 1887 short horror story written in the style of a journal by French writer Guy de Maupassant.
American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, in his survey "Supernatural Horror in Literature", provides an interpretation of the story:
Relating the advent in France of an invisible being who lives on water and milk, sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extra-terrestrial organisms arrived on earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind, this tense narrative is perhaps without peer in its particular department.
The story has been cited as an inspiration for Lovecraft's own "The Call of Cthulhu", which also features an extraterrestrial being who influences minds and who is destined to conquer humanity.[1]

and also has that feel of Nostrodamus in it almost biblical. Beowulf has a lot of biblical images style in it.It could almost be another copy of a pagan bible.
Also the sword/knife that killed Grendel's mother reminds of Morte of D'Arthur and the Lady of the Lake. Merlin type again and of course the Quest of the Holy Grail.

4)Beowulf was written in England, but is set in Scandinavia. How does one know it is written in England if it is set in Saxony.

[cacian]

The opening passage translated by
TRANSLATED BY FRANCES B. GRUMMERE
I quote:

''LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!''

The 'we have heard' could it mean that whoever wrote it was not sure anything was won. The expression 'I have heard'' could be interpreted as a sweeping generational? In other words what is written is not proved an d it is pure speculations.

Then 'WE' who is we? and does that mean there is more then one speaker?

''To him an heir was afterward born,
a son in his halls, whom heaven sent
to favor the folk, feeling their woe
that erst they had lacked an earl for leader
so long a while; the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world’s renown.''

The ''heir'' is that another spelling for 'her'? Heir as in an heir to a throne?
Could the son and heir be referring to Jesus and the Virgin Mary?
''To him an heir?''
There is no D in ''an'' liek this: ''To him and heir''.
Is that a play on word to say this:
To him an heir as in to him an heir on the throne? rather then ''To him and her'' suggesting that his son has no mother? Which in this case could be referred to ''Jesus and The Virgin Mary'. Being the virgin as we know in real a virgin life does not child an impossibility.
Is this playing on the notion the child is born from son to son and not a mother. I sense a feeling of pure misogynistic attitude. Mother being unimportant undeniably.

Just a few thoughts while I study the texts.