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Summary: Best of the Beowulfs
Review: Alan Sullivan and Tim Murphy's new translation of Beowulf is by far the best of the four translations I've read. (The others are the versions by Heaney, Rebsamen and Gummere, as well as selections from various others over the years.) If you're a general reader who's only likely to read one Beowulf, this is the one. And if you're a teacher who's deciding which translation to assign, I urge you to compare several passages at random from Sullivan and Murphy's version with the same passages from other versions. I'm confident you'll choose Sullivan and Murphy as well. (The wealth of literary and historical background material compiled by Sarah Anderson of Princeton is another reason why this edition is perfect for classroom use, but I'll focus here on the poem itself.) There are several reasons why Sullivan and Murphy succeed so well. First, although the Old English of Beowulf is vastly different from modern English, Sullivan and Murphy have done a good job of approximating the sound of the original for the modern ear. They use a four-stress line (with a pause, or "caesura," between the second and third stresses) like the original. They also use strong alliteration like the original. (Typically in Old English verse, the third stressed syllable in a line begins with the same sound as one or both of the first two stressed syllables in that line. Sullivan and Murphy relax that pattern a bit, to avoid the stilted word choices that characterize some translations. But the strong alliteration can clearly be heard throughout their translation.) By contrast, though Heaney also uses a four-stress line, he greatly mutes the alliteration and the mid-line pause so that they often are scarcely noticeable. When faced with a choice, Sullivan and Murphy also show a much stronger tendency to use the blunt, forceful words descended from Old English (as opposed to Latin-based words that arrived in English long after Beowulf). That seems appropriate for this particular poem. While Sullivan and Murphy do a better job of capturing the music of the original, their version also reads much better and forcefully as modern English. Heaney's language sometimes sounds like comic book prose--very understandable, but not very memorable. Sullivan and Murphy are clear and understandable, too; but they're much better at catching the modern ear with just the right word or phrase. And they do so with greater economy. Because they have not bound themselves to winding up with the exact same number of lines as the original, as Heaney and some other tranlators have done, Sullivan and Murphy's version is a bit shorter, without losing any content. It's certainly not my intent to minimize the achievement of other Beowulf translators, Heaney especially. He took a 1,200-year-old poem, brought it to a wide audience, and (with the help of the many teachers who assigned it) made it a best-seller. That's quite an accomplishment! And I enjoyed reading it. But I didn't feel the need to take the trip more than once. Sullivan and Murphy have made the voyage much more memorable, and well worth repeating!
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Summary: The Tradition Lives
Review: This newest translation of Beowulf is spectacularly vivid, passionate, accurate, and alive. I've read the Heaney version (along with 7 or 8 others), but this is the one I prefer. If you doubt the power of the verse, you need only listen to Timothy Murphy recite aloud what he and Alan Sullivan have done (and Sullivan is responsible for probably 90% of the text). In other words, there is nothing dry or dusty about this enterprise. The scrupulous adherence to a diction probably 70% Germanic in its origin saves this version from the longeurs of polysyllabic Latinate terms and helps turn this work from verse into exciting poetry.
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