Anonymous/Seamus Heaney (Translator/Re-creator): Beowulf

One of the things that often disappoints me is not being able to hear, see or read great works for the first time and so have that wonderful experience of meeting something for the first time and to experience how magical/powerful/wonderful these works are. Of course getting to know them better but there is still nothing like that first eye/eye/mind-opening possibly transformative experience.

Howsoever, with this work, I could have that experience.

I have never come to terms with the real Beowulf. I did not ‘do’ it at university - and tbh if you don’t do it there as an English undergraduate, where will you do it? However reading this extraordinary work did give me that experience - and by the work I felt that I had experienced both the original AND Heaney’s version/re-creation -hence what I called him in the heading. ‘Version’ is just too inadequate.

But before general comments, three fascinating aspects/areas that greatly intrigued - with examples of why.

Firstly, Heaney uses (very sparingly) modern words and phrases which is remarkably successful. The impact is really only when they are read in context but ones I particularly noted were ‘gumption’ - although that may well be a much older term - I have not yet checked; the sound of the word does have a certain Anglo-Saxon physicality and solidity I think. The lovely phrase ‘it was mostly the beer that was doing the talking’ was also wonderfully effective.

Traditionally Anglos-Saxon compound adjectives have been regarded as one of the major stylistic tropes of this work (yes?) and I can recall using this idea when teaching poetry in prep school. Here are some of the ones that particularly caught my eye and ear:

• Word-hoard

• Bone-lappings

• Wound-slurry

• Resentful blood-sullen winter

• timbers drummed - an amazing combination!

• Helmet-shiner

• Sky-winger & sky-roamer

• Bone-house

What I do not know is how closely these are related to the original language and which are Heaney’s own. But who cares!

The other aspect that I much enjoyed was coming across words that were completely new to me as below. I am not giving the meanings though…

• Mizzle

• Hirpling

• Bawn

• Keshes

• Brehon

• Gorget - although I did have some sort of idea…

• Wean (noun)

• Graith

  And I was pleased to come across ‘boltered’ used in the way it is in Macbeth - ‘blood-boltered’. I also loved the unique way at the end the poet linked Beowulf to the gold ‘Both had reached the end of the road/ through the life they had been lent’. Wonderful.

But enough on details and on to the work as a whole. Particularly towards the end I was very moved indeed by the epic and tragic grandeur of the work - the death, funeral and mourning of Beowulf was as powerful as almost anything I have read - and the prefiguring of it by the poet in stressing its inevitability made it only more so. Transcendental in its way like the end of Wagner’s Gotterdamerung - which, in its way, it is - the end of an old order and the start of something new.

Often this technique (foreshadowing)can have the effect of diminishing the power of the actual event itself but here (and I am not sure why) it made it even more powerful.

The other matter which surprised me was how easy it was to read; the narrative drive (even though I knew the story - at least in outline) is tremendous and while crystalline is the wrong word to describe this, it is not wholly inappropriate. Perhaps a phrase like a solid clarity - the paradox of using these two words being something that does, to a degree I think, convey something of the impact. What do readers think?

The poem gave a wonderful picture of a society - a fine and admirable one in many, many respects but the a[sect that I found most interesting was the Christian perspective which is woven through the work. My knowledge of the text prior to this had only been via re-tellings for young people - particularly that of Rosemary Sutcliffe and the superb illustrated version by Charles Keeping (words Kevin Crossley-Holland) where this aspect, as I remember, was completely omitted the focus being on the fights of Beowulf…understandably?

This really has been one of the great experiences of the lock-down. I am not this has made it is worthwhile but…

The introduction by Heaney is riveting - his remarks on how he worked are of the level of fascination and perceptiveness as those of Stephen Sondheim in the two annotated volumes of his musicals. His remarks about why he began with the single word ‘So.’ are fascinating See my reviews of these elsewhere on this site…please! He also led me to read Tolkein’s famous essay on the work where he, somewhat wordily, said ‘treat it like literature and not a guide to history/society/archaeology/language development’.

So, a remarkable experience which YOU need to have! You have the time now!