Author: Friedrich A. Kittler File Type: pdf

Author: Seamus Heaney File Type: pdf A faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right. *New York Times Book Review*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 heros 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.Amazon.com ReviewIn 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 Beowulfs role as a required text for many English students obscured its mysteries and mythic potency. Now, thanks to the Irish poets marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred Davids watch, this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun. There are endless pleasures in Heaneys 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 epics outlines seem simple, depicting Beowulfs three key battles with the scaliest brutes in all of art Grendel, Grendels mother (whos in a suitably monstrous snit after her sons 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 thanes 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 blockquoteMen climbed eagerly up the gangplank,sand churned in the surf, warriors loadeda cargo of weapons, shining war-gearin the vessels hold, then heaved out,away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.Over the waves, with the wind behind herand foam at her neck, she flew like a bird... blockquoteAfter 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 winds 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 poems 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 worlds candle, and Beowulfs 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 poets Englishing. Heaney varies his lines with ease, offering up stirring dialogue, action, and description while not stinting on the epics mix of fate and fear. After Grendels misbegotten mother comes to call, the kings evocation of her haunted home may strike dread into the hearts of men and beasts, but its a gift to the reader blockquoteA few miles from herea frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watchabove a mere the overhanging bankis a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.At night there, something uncanny happensthe water burns. And the mere bottomhas never been sounded by the sons of men.On its bank, the heather-stepper haltsthe hart in flight from pursuing houndswill turn to face them with firm-set hornsand die in the wood rather than divebeneath its surface. That is no good place. blockquoteIn Heaneys hands, the poems 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 FriedFrom Publishers WeeklyWhen the great monster Grendel comes to Denmark and dashes its warriors hopes, installing himself in their great hall and eating alive the valiant lords, the hero Beowulf arrives from over the ocean to wrestle the beast. He saves the Danes, who sing of his triumphs, but soon the monsters mother turns up to take him hostage having killed her, our hero goes home to the land of the Geats, acquires the kingship, and fights to the death an enormous dragon. Thats the plot of this narrative poem, composed more than a millennium ago in the Germanic language that gave birth (eventually) to our version of English. Long a thing for professors to gloss, the poem includes battles, aggressive boasts, glorious funerals, frightening creatures and a much-studied alliterative meter earlier versions in current vernacular have pleased lay readers and helped hard-pressed students. Nobel laureate Heaney has brought forth a finely wrought, controversial (for having won a prize over a childrens book) modern English version, one which retains, even recommends, the archaic strengths of its warrior world, where The Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. Well-known digressionsAa detailed dirge, the tale-within-a-tale of Hengest, homesick and helpless in ancient FrieslandAfind their ways into Heaneys English, which holds to the spirit (not always the letter) of the en face Anglo-Saxon, fusing swift story and seamless description, numinous adjectives and earthy nouns in one swift scene of difficult swimming, Shoulder to shoulder, we struggled on for five nights, until the long flow and pitch of the waves, the perishing cold drove us apart. The deep boiled up and its wallowing sent the sea-brutes wild. Heaneys evocative introduction voices his long-felt attraction to the poems melancholy fortitude, describing the decades his rendering took and the use he discovered for dialect terms. It extends in dramatic fashion Heaneys long-term archeological delvings, his dig into the origins of his beloved, conflictedAby politics and placeAEnglish language. (Feb.) 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.