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1 Hawthorne Classics- Medieval and Renaissance General

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

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Beowulf: A New Verse Translation Cover

ISBN13: 9780393320978
ISBN10: 0393320979
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

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Staff Pick

"I resignedly picked it up at last on the tail end of a history binge, telling myself, 'Okay, I'm finally going to slog through it. Just get it over with.' And I discovered all my trepidation had been for naught. This isn't an 'accessible for a scholarly book' type of read; it is just plain a good book....The work itself reads like a pint of fine winter ale, complex and intoxicating, the end arriving quick and unwelcome."
Recommended by Doug, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The national bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Award. 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.

Review:

"Heaney has turned to Beowulf, and the result is magnificent, breathtaking....Heaney has created something imperishable and great that is stainless — stainless, because its force as poetry makes it untouchable by the claw of literalism: it lives singly, as an English language poem." James Wood, The Guardian

Review:

"Reads very well and comes to life...[It] will have a permanent place among Beowulf translations." Fred Robinson, Yale University

Review:

"Heaney's introduction does everything it should to dust down and exhibit the poem, exploring its origins, investigating its form and establishing its structure....Heaney has caught the balance of these things brilliantly; he has made a masterpiece out of a masterpiece." Andrew Motion, Financial Times

Review:

"The translation itself rides boldly through the reefs of scholarship....Beowulf, an elegy for heroism and a critique of feud and fratricide, is alive and well." Michael Alexander, The Observer

Review:

"Anglo-Saxon verse is celebrated for its alliterative riffs, its ringing and singing, and...Heaney does it full justice....Beneath the battledress, Beowulf is a peacemaker, a man who eases trouble. This fine translation is worth our trouble too." Blake Morrison, The Independent

Review:

"Heaney's excellent translation has the virtue of being both direct and sophisticated, making previous versions look slightly flowery and antique by comparison. His intelligence, fine ear and obvious love of the poem bring Beowulf alive as melancholy masterpiece, a complex Christian-pagan lament about duty, glory, loss and transience....Heaney has done it (and us) a great service." Claire Harman, Evening Standard

Review:

"Within Heaney's writing, the civic and the chthonic have always slogged it out, and this magnificent translation is no exception.... [This translation] is a marvelously sturdy, intricate reinvention, which betrays its author's poetic dabs less in its earthiness than in its airiness. It is the canny colloquialisms ('in fine fettle,' 'under a cloud,' 'blather,' 'big talk,' 'gave as good as I got') which are most Heaneyesque, not the smell of the soil.... This poet is so superbly in command that he can risk threadbare, throwaway, matter-of-fact phrases like 'of no small importance' or 'the best part of a day.' He has a casual way with the alliterative patters of the original, which helps to strip its craft of portentous self-consciousness and frees up its syntax to move more nimbly.... Heaney [is] an artist so exquisitely gifted and imaginatively capacious that only a work of such mighty scale would answer to his abilities." Terry Eagleton, London Review of Books

Review:

"[At the task of] bringing the personality of the BEOWULF-poet up from the ocean bottom...Heaney is inspired. His inspiration arises, as he explains in his introduction (itself a profound essay on the poem, and an immediate classic), from a kind of miraculous chiasmus, where the extreme of the known met and crossed the extreme of the unknown....[C]ertain poems create a kind of acoustics within which their translator can better hear his own language, the language for him most saturated with tragedy. Heaney has done just that in this brilliant millennial BEOWULF, just in time for the next century's atrocities." Dan Chiasson, Boston Book Review

Review:

"This translation does something other than bring [Beowulf] up into our time. It transports us to his and lets us wander there;after which home will never seem entirely the same.... Mr. Heaney's translation beats with a recurring pulse, from homely and concrete to elevated and back again." Richard Eder, New York Times

Review:

"There is one thing that Heaney's BEOWULF does better than any translation of the poem that I know....[T]he voice of the old Beowulf seems not so much translated by Heaney into Modern English as ventriloquized into it....In [the book's] thrilling passages, it reads better than any other translation that we have; and in its dullest passages, it is no worse than many others." Nicholas Howe, New Republic

Synopsis:

"A faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right." --New York Times Book Review
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About the Author

Seamus Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995; he teaches regularly at Harvard University and lives in Dublin.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
Christopher McLaughlin, June 9, 2012 (view all comments by Christopher McLaughlin)
For most of us, Beowulf was compulsory classroom reading - not a curl-up-on-the-couch Saturday afternoon pleasure. I read this translation from Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney a decade after my classroom experience. I couldn't have been more surprised, educated, and entertained. For amateur philologists, the parallel use of Old English and Modern English with helpful margin notes is a treat. Whether you want to read this cornerstone of English-language literature for the first time, or reread it for a fresh perspective, I would highly recommend this translation.
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Annamarie, March 9, 2011 (view all comments by Annamarie)
Actually, I did not read it: I listened to the audio book, and I recommend you do the same.

First off, Heaney reads it himself, and his voice is beautiful. Second, as with other alliterative medieval poems such as Sir Gawain (there's an audiobook read by Terry Jones), the alliteration and the special rhythm have much more impact when you listen to it. It's like listening to the most beautiful music, or being transported back in time. It was meant to be heard, and Heaney's translation, and reading, more than do it justice.
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Yonathan, March 18, 2009 (view all comments by Yonathan)
In this translation of Beowulf, the story is the star. I've read other translated editions, but gotten so bogged down in the attempts at exact translation (those tiresome hyphenations!) that I never noticed Beowulf himself. Here, we see him develop as a character: first a young hero, then a king, then a seasoned ruler with one last fight to face.
And everything means something. Heaney mentions in his introduction that he wanted every word to have weight; he's succeeded.

The introduction alone, incidentally, is worth the price of the book. Reading how Heaney sees poetry and the English language is a privilege; he's one of our best living poets. Also, though I don't read Old English, I did appreciate the bilingual edition, just for reference's sake.

I highly recommend this edition. Whether the reader is new to the poem or not, it's fresh and meaningful here.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780393320978
Author:
Heaney, Seamus
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Location:
New York
Subject:
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Subject:
Heroes
Subject:
Monsters
Subject:
Dragons
Subject:
Ancient, Classical & Medieval
Subject:
Epic poetry, English
Subject:
Classics-Medieval and Renaissance General
Subject:
Anthologies-United Kingdom Poetry
Copyright:
2001
Edition Description:
Bilingual Edition
Series Volume:
#1334
Publication Date:
20010231
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
256
Dimensions:
8.30x6.12x.69 in. .60 lbs.
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Related Subjects


Fiction and Poetry » Anthologies » United Kingdom » Poetry
Fiction and Poetry » Classics » Beowulf
Fiction and Poetry » Classics » Medieval and Nordic
Fiction and Poetry » Classics » Medieval and Renaissance
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » Sale Books
Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » A to Z

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$8.95 In Stock
Product details 256 pages W. W. Norton & Company - English 9780393320978 Reviews:
"Staff Pick" by ,

"I resignedly picked it up at last on the tail end of a history binge, telling myself, 'Okay, I'm finally going to slog through it. Just get it over with.' And I discovered all my trepidation had been for naught. This isn't an 'accessible for a scholarly book' type of read; it is just plain a good book....The work itself reads like a pint of fine winter ale, complex and intoxicating, the end arriving quick and unwelcome."

by Doug
"Review" by , "Heaney has turned to Beowulf, and the result is magnificent, breathtaking....Heaney has created something imperishable and great that is stainless — stainless, because its force as poetry makes it untouchable by the claw of literalism: it lives singly, as an English language poem."
"Review" by , "Reads very well and comes to life...[It] will have a permanent place among Beowulf translations."
"Review" by , "Heaney's introduction does everything it should to dust down and exhibit the poem, exploring its origins, investigating its form and establishing its structure....Heaney has caught the balance of these things brilliantly; he has made a masterpiece out of a masterpiece."
"Review" by , "The translation itself rides boldly through the reefs of scholarship....Beowulf, an elegy for heroism and a critique of feud and fratricide, is alive and well."
"Review" by , "Anglo-Saxon verse is celebrated for its alliterative riffs, its ringing and singing, and...Heaney does it full justice....Beneath the battledress, Beowulf is a peacemaker, a man who eases trouble. This fine translation is worth our trouble too."
"Review" by , "Heaney's excellent translation has the virtue of being both direct and sophisticated, making previous versions look slightly flowery and antique by comparison. His intelligence, fine ear and obvious love of the poem bring Beowulf alive as melancholy masterpiece, a complex Christian-pagan lament about duty, glory, loss and transience....Heaney has done it (and us) a great service."
"Review" by , "Within Heaney's writing, the civic and the chthonic have always slogged it out, and this magnificent translation is no exception.... [This translation] is a marvelously sturdy, intricate reinvention, which betrays its author's poetic dabs less in its earthiness than in its airiness. It is the canny colloquialisms ('in fine fettle,' 'under a cloud,' 'blather,' 'big talk,' 'gave as good as I got') which are most Heaneyesque, not the smell of the soil.... This poet is so superbly in command that he can risk threadbare, throwaway, matter-of-fact phrases like 'of no small importance' or 'the best part of a day.' He has a casual way with the alliterative patters of the original, which helps to strip its craft of portentous self-consciousness and frees up its syntax to move more nimbly.... Heaney [is] an artist so exquisitely gifted and imaginatively capacious that only a work of such mighty scale would answer to his abilities."
"Review" by , "[At the task of] bringing the personality of the BEOWULF-poet up from the ocean bottom...Heaney is inspired. His inspiration arises, as he explains in his introduction (itself a profound essay on the poem, and an immediate classic), from a kind of miraculous chiasmus, where the extreme of the known met and crossed the extreme of the unknown....[C]ertain poems create a kind of acoustics within which their translator can better hear his own language, the language for him most saturated with tragedy. Heaney has done just that in this brilliant millennial BEOWULF, just in time for the next century's atrocities."
"Review" by , "This translation does something other than bring [Beowulf] up into our time. It transports us to his and lets us wander there;after which home will never seem entirely the same.... Mr. Heaney's translation beats with a recurring pulse, from homely and concrete to elevated and back again."
"Review" by , "There is one thing that Heaney's BEOWULF does better than any translation of the poem that I know....[T]he voice of the old Beowulf seems not so much translated by Heaney into Modern English as ventriloquized into it....In [the book's] thrilling passages, it reads better than any other translation that we have; and in its dullest passages, it is no worse than many others."
"Synopsis" by , "A faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right." --New York Times Book Review
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