Beowulf - Headley and Heaney

 "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!" - This first line of Maria Dahvana Headley's new translation seems inevitably to be the first line of everyone's review.  I certainly agree with the general consensus that Headley is fresh but not flip - her lengthy introduction shares her deep knowledge of the setting, language and implications of the poem.  And she brings to her version a strong and brilliant feminist perspective that speaks powerfully to current events. For example:

I don’t know that Grendel’s mother should be perceived in binary terms – monster versus human.  My own experiences as a woman tell me it’s very possible to be mistaken as monstrous when one is only doing as men do: providing for and defending oneself.

She also sees in Beowulf broader implications for our present society

There are also stories that haven’t yet been reckoned with, stories hidden within the stories we think we know. It takes new readers, writers, and scholars to find them, people whose experience, identities, and intellects span the full spectrum of humanity, not just a slice of it. That is, in my opinion, the reason to keep analyzing texts like Beowulf.  We might, if we analyzed our own long-standing stories, use them to translate ourselves into a society in which  hero making doesn’t require monster killing, border closing, and hoard clinging, but instead requires a more challenging task: taking responsibility for one another.

Seamus Heaney's translation (from 2000) is a masterpiece: more sober and traditional, frequently powerful and moving:

It was like the misery felt by an old man

who has lived to see his son's body

swing on the gallows. He begins to keen

and weep for his boy, watching the raven 

gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. 

The wisdom of age is worthless to him.

Morning after morning, he wakes to remember

that his child is gone; he has no interest

in living on until another heir

is born in the hall....

A great pleasure to read these two translations side by side.

The Decameron

Lauren suggested we get together each week via Zoom, to read stories from the Decameron - a wonderful choice, both because of its parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic (it's an account of stories told by ten young noblewomen and men during the plague of 1348 in Italy and Europe) and because these young people escape from a place we know and love: Firenze!

The ten young Fiorentini each tell a story a day for ten days, making 100 total stories - a decameron!  We have been reading a couple stories per week and recording our observations in a Google Drive document - here we will just record our progress toward all 100 stories, but it's worth saying that the stories are generally excellent - entertaining and thought-provoking, though including a few that are strange or  forgettable. Overall, we are really enjoying them!

MARS 24/7

 Just finished re-reading Kim Stanley Robinson's masterful Mars Trilogy.  Thoroughly enjoyed it again - so much so that I wanted to review it again!  (Note original review).

Once again, perhaps to an even greater degree, I found Robinson's conception of the settlement of Mars, involving issues and conflicts surrounding conservation, development, governance, medical advances, senescence and memory to be comprehensively considered and deeply woven into the narrative. Robinson is justly honored for his rigorous accuracy in the scientific detail - which includes an overflowing vocabulary of technical terms and there are very detailed descriptions of Martian geology or the stages of ecological development from fellfields to climax forests. But these are punctuated by the actions of fascinating characters and unexpected, thrilling episodes.