"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.
Fascinating!
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