Beowulf: The Fight at Finnsburh (Oxford World's Classics)

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Summary: Günlerden bir gün
Review: Ý want to read this book.

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Summary: Beowulf, a bood I had to read...
Review: Being in English class I had to read this book over the summer. So I did. I thought it would stink like Grapes of Wrath (sorry, didn't like that book.), but it didn't. So read this book, it's like reading a Rambo story.

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Summary: I love this book.
Review: I love this book. I read this book in English 4 for my senior year when we were discussing the Anglo-Saxon period.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book.
Review: I love this book. I read this book in English 4 for my senior year when we were discussing the Anglo-Saxon period.

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Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: Still One of the Better Translations
Review: I own, and have read, a couple of dozen translations of "Beowulf," and have probably read half that many more; and that is a fraction of those published. Despite suggestions on the Amazon page that this is a new, or at least recent, translation, it is not one of the latest, by a good sixty years.

I've also worked through the whole poem in Old English (Anglo-Saxon). A whole new level of experience; it was worth the effort. I could see why it is a tough work to translate, and I can understand why many want to try their hand at doing better.

The language, on the level of words and phrases, is intensely poetic, and includes terms that Modern English really should have kept, but didn't. On top of the unfamiliar grammar, the sentence structures are odd for modern readers -- they were meant, instead, for listeners. Something gets lost at every turn, and yet the feeling persists that it ought to be possible to reproduce it in a language which is, after all, a descendant of the poet's. Frankly, I don't think anyone can; but many of the efforts still accomplish something worthwhile. Kennedy's version I count among those that have accomplished a good deal, despite some self-imposed obstacles.

In theory, I favor prose translation of "Beowulf." Trying to keep to the line structures and other formal features is just too likely to get in the way of the meaning. And many moderns have trouble reading verse, anyway. Tolkien even gave some justifications for the practice, in an introduction to the Clark-Hall prose translation; and there can't have been too many readers of the poem both as competent in Old English and with such credentials as a creative writer.

But Charles W. Kennedy's version, published in 1940, which I first read in High School, when it was already almost three decades old, remains one of my favorites, despite being in an imitation of the alliterative verse of the original. Re-reading it several times, at intervals of up to ten years, with vastly greater knowledge of the original, I found that it still impressed me as much as the first time through.

Theory of translation is all very well; but the practice, the actual translator's accomplishment, is what counts. I was carried away by the sense of reading an archaic, but not too distant, poem. If you have read a translation (or even more than one) in blank verse, free verse, rhymed verse, or prose, you may find this translation an eye-opener.

And Kennedy also did very readable verse translations of Christian narrative and lyric verse, and of some of the other secular poetry; see his "Early English Christian Poetry" (1952), and "Old English Elegies" (1936; a more convenient edition of these latter is his "An Anthology of Old English Poetry," from 1960, which includes excerpts from the other two volumes as well).

Being based on Klaeber's classic edition (1922; extensively revised for the 1936 version), the textual foundation of Kennedy's "Beowulf" is a bit antiquated, especially by renewed work on the actual manuscript in the 1990s. But it was never intended to be a literal crib. (And if you try to use any verse translation as such, well, that's your problem.) The language is both noble and fluent. The differences between what Kennedy had before him in his working text and that in a recent edition will rarely make a decisive difference for an ordinary reader.

(Other very good attempts at this difficult feat of recreating alliterative measures -- which involve far more than initial sounds of words -- are Stanley B. Greenfield's 1982 "A Readable Beowulf" and Ruth P.M. Lehmann's 1988 "Beowulf: An Imitative Translation." Both of which also suffer a bit on the textual side, in the light of more recent work. Either might be acceptable to those who find Kennedy's language a little remote and formal.)

Kennedy's introduction was extremely up-to-date, reflecting work of the 1920s and 1930s; an early reference to Tolkien's 1936 lecture on "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was not only current, but put Kennedy fairly solidly on the "modern" literary-critical side, instead of with the antiquarian or mythological schools which valued the poem for what they could excavate from it. The subtitle of "The Oldest English Epic" wasn't exactly in line with Tolkien's approach; but it is hard to imagine even Oxford University Press agreeing to "An Old English Heroic-Elegiac Poem."

The introduction covers the usual ground; historical and supernatural elements, the use of digressions to highlight themes of honor, valor, and treachery. The Sutton Hoo ship-burial was too recent a discovery (1939) for inclusion. Some then-recent proposals of sources or parallels in the "Aeneid" come in for more attention than would later have been the case. But Kennedy is as much interested in comparing literary technique as in source-hunting, and the discussion remains interesting. However inconclusive, it is a comparison of real texts, not theoretical "Heroic Lays" which *should* have existed, and *would* have been better than what we have.

Kennedy's "Beowulf" has been reprinted in various anthologies over the years. Not long after first reading it, I found it, excerpted, in my High School English Lit. textbook. Obviously, I think was a good choice for the purpose, and keeping it available in such a form is good. But it is even better taken whole, as Kennedy first offered it.

So having it in print in paperback is great. (I eventually found a hardcover copy for myself, just about a year before the present Galaxy Book edition was released, in 1978.) And I hope that paperbacks of "Early English Christian Poetry" and the "Anthology of Old English Poetry" are re-issued someday. (If nothing else, they have less competition, even if the demand for their contents isn't nearly as high.)

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Summary: An epic Anglo-Saxon poem of ancient days
Review: I was alerted to the existence of this epic poem through an animated version of it on TV one Sunday afternoon, not the usual cartoon-like presentation but a wondrous dark expression akin to Ridley Scott direction or the animation first used in the animated version of "The Lord of the Rings". This short feature was really quite superb and it gave me the impetus to buy a copy of it in book form. Similarly, this translation by Crossley-Howard is wonderful in all its epic proportions, the Grendel, its mother and the struggle to defeat it. It is of course a heroic tale and the hero Beowulf is certainly in the classic mold after all it was poetry such as this and related tales eg The Illiad, Norse Sagas, to name just two which originated the idea of the hero in present form. It must be remembered that this is an Anglo-Saxon tale at or around the 6th Century AD and as such based in Denmark or Sweden rather than England (named after them of course). Strictly speaking it does not represent an aspect of English history rather a representation of Scandinavian life of the time. It may, as such, bear some resemblance to Norse sagas which were to yet to come some 300 or 400 years later. As a window on Anglo-Saxon life it does reveal some aspects such as the character of men and women or rather how they were supposed to be, similarly it shows that human affairs haven't really changed that much since then and the commonly held belief that ancient times were primitive in comparison to today are mistaken. All aspects of human personality are present, such as greed, corruption, anger, heroism, kindness and so on. A wonderful read if you are short on time.

Rating:
Summary: An epic Anglo-Saxon poem of ancient days
Review: I was alerted to the existence of this epic poem through an animated version of it on TV one Sunday afternoon, not the usual cartoon-like presentation but a wondrous dark expression akin to Ridley Scott or the animation first used in the animated version of "The Lord of the Rings". This short feature was really quite superb and it gave me the impetus to buy a copy of it in book form. Similarly this translation by Crossley-Howard is wonderful in all its epic proportions, the Grendel, its mother and the struggle to defeat it. It is of course a heroic tale and the hero Beowulf is certainly in the classic mold after all it was poetry such as this and related tales eg The Iliad, Norse Sagas to name just two which originated the idea of the hero in present form. It must be remembered that this is an Anglo-Saxon tale at or around the 6th Century AD and as such based in Denamrk or Sweden rather than England (named after them of course). Strictly speaking it does not represent an aspect of English history rather a representation of Scandinavian life of the time. It may as such bear some resemblance to Norse sagas which were to yet to come some 300 or 400 years later. As a window on Ango-Saxon ife it does reveal some aspects such as the character of men and women or rather how they were supposed to be, similarly it shows that human affairs haven't really changed that much since then and the commonly held belief that ancient times were primitive in compasrison to today are mistaken. All aspects of human personality are present, such as greed, corruption, anger, heroism, kindness and so on. A wonderful read given a short time available.

Rating:
Summary: Günlerden bir gün
Review: Ý want to read this book.