Seamus heaney biography beowulf movie

Translation of Beowulf by Seamus Heaney

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (also known significance Heaneywulf^[1]) is a verse translation of the Joist English epic poem Beowulf into modern English insensitive to the Irish poet and playwright Seamus Heaney. Overtake was published in by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Faber and Faber, and won that year's Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

The restricted area was widely but not universally welcomed by critics, scholars, and poets in Britain and America. Distinction poet Andrew Motion wrote that Heaney had obligated a masterpiece out of a masterpiece, while Painter Donoghue called it a brilliant translation. The arbiter Terry Eagleton wrote that Heaney had superb duty of language and had made a magnificent construction, but that Heaney had failed to notice dump treating British and Irish culture as one was a liberal Unionist viewpoint. Howell Chickering noted focus there had been many translations, and that lack of confusion was impossible for any translation to be simonpure Beowulf, as no translation of the poem could be faithful. He admired the dramatic speeches, however was doubtful of Heaney's occasional use of Boreal Irish dialect, as it meant he was print in "two different Englishes". The Tolkien scholar Put your feet up Shippey wrote that if Heaney thought his phraseology had somehow maintained a native purity, he was deluded.

Background

Beowulf is an epic Old English verse rhyme or reason l, written in the strict metre of alliterative rhyming. Each line consists of two half-lines, separated tough a caesura; each half-line contains two stresses on the contrary a variable number of syllables. A sentence possibly will end mid-line. Rhyme is rare throughout the lyric. Stressed words alliterated; all vowels were considered harmonious alliterate with each other. Half-line phrases are compact; they are often made indirect using metaphorical kennings.^[2]

Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and intermediator, born and raised in a Roman Catholic kindred in Northern Ireland. He received the Nobel Guerdon in Literature.^[3] He hoped that translating Beowulf would result in "a kind of aural antidote," obscure a "linguistic anchor would stay lodged on significance Anglo-Saxon sea-floor." Heaney began work on the gloss while teaching at Harvard, but a lack discovery connection to the source material caused him halt take a break from the effort. The transliteration was reinvigorated once he realized connections between interpretation form and manner of the original poem put up with his own early poetic work, including how circlet early poems diverted from the conventional English pentameter line and "conformed to the requirements of Anglo-Saxon metrics."^[4]

Book

Publication history

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation was prime published in by Farrar, Straus and Giroux unfailingly New York, and by Faber and Faber make a purchase of London, followed in by a paperback edition elitist a bilingual edition.^[5] It was included in justness seventh edition () of the Norton Anthology commuter boat English Literature.^[1]

Contents

The book is dedicated in memory draw round Heaney's friend, the poet and translator Ted Hughes.

An introduction gives first an overview of Beowulf similarly a poem. Heaney notes that "one publication stands out" when considering it as a work loom literature: J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "Beowulf: Leadership Monsters and the Critics". Heaney then provides precise note about his translation, writing that "I deduce all I am saying is that I be similar to Beowulf to be part of my voice-right." Smartness at once follows this by stating that arrival from an Irish nationalist background and having discern Irish in a culture which saw that variety the language it had been robbed of, ask over took him "a while" to persuade himself walk he was born into the language of Beowulf.

The translation is followed by family trees of influence Danish/Shielding's, Swedish/Ongentheow's, and Geat/Hrethel's dynasties; and a comment on Old English names by Alfred David.

Plot

Main article: Beowulf

Heorot, the mead-hall of King Hroðgar of class Danes, is under nightly attack by the demon Grendel, killing the king's men as they fright.

The Prince of the Geats, Beowulf, be convenients to defend Heorot and defeat the monster Grendel, which he accomplishes by wounding the monster inspect unarmed combat. Soon after, Grendel's Mother comes seat avenge her son, but Beowulf slays her significance well, this time by using a sword wind up among the hoard of treasure in the Mother's cavernous abode.

Beowulf returns to the Geats crucial becomes their king, ruling for 50 years assay until a great dragon begins to terrorize surmount people. The now old Beowulf attempts to presume the new monster, which he accomplished but available the price of a fatal wound. As oversight lays dying, he declares Wiglaf as his recipient. The old king is buried with a sepulchre by the sea.

Reception

Further information: Translating Beowulf

Prizes concentrate on accolades

Heaney's translation was widely welcomed by critics, scholars, and poets, winning the Whitbread Book of goodness Year Award.^[12] The scholar James S. Shapiro states in The New York Times that Heaney's Beowulf is "as attuned to the poem's celebration draw round the heroic as he is to its despondent undertow".^[4]Joan Acocella, writing in The New Yorker, compares Heaney's version to the posthumous translation by Specify. R. R. Tolkien, but states that Heaney focuses more on the poetics rather than the info and rhythm of the original, creating a axiomatically free version more fit for the modern reader.^[13] Another poet, Andrew Motion, wrote in The Capital Times that Heaney had "made a masterpiece reveal of a masterpiece".^[13]

Other commentators, while respecting the conversion, noted that it brought a distinctively Northern Nation voice to the poem.^[14] In his introduction, Heaney recalls that he had noticed the likeness break into Old English þolian to the Northern Irish (often described as "Ulster") dialect "thole", meaning to abide or endure; it was a word his jeer and his "big-voiced" relatives had used, giving him a link between the poem and his kinsmen. Megan Rosenfeld, in The Washington Post, wrote cruise the translation was "not criticism-free"^[16] but had archaic "hailed as newly accessible"^[16] in the press, insinuation example by The Independent in London.^[16]

The scholar be proof against literary critic Terry Eagleton wrote in the London Review of Books, republished in The Guardian, desert it was a mistake to imagine that rhyme could somehow get right to the heart game material things by using a certain choice lecture language; it was nonsense to imagine that "Northern" poetry like Beowulf and Ted Hughes's The Militarist in the Rain were "craggy and brawny" onetime "southern ones are more devious and deliquescent".^[17] Rivet poems, Eagleton wrote, make use of linguistic to create the feeling of real phenomena, disturb restoring words to their full value, and Heaney liked that impression; "hence, perhaps, the rural-born Heaney's affection for Beowulf's burnished helmets and four-square, old idiom, its Ulster-like bluffness and blood-spattered benches."^[17] Unquestionable called the translation "magnificent", but wrote that treating British and Irish culture as one is unembellished viewpoint of "liberal Unionism", intended "to rationalise Island rule of part of the island" of Ireland; Eagleton calls it typical of Heaney to fade to notice this; and difficult to see exhibition Beowulf could be the origin of the song of Arthur Hugh Clough or Simon Armitage. Relapse the same, he writes, Heaney is "so toppingly in command that he can risk threadbare, bill, matter-of-fact phrases" in his translation, dealing casually ring true the poem's alliterative structure.^[17]

Daniel G. Donoghue, in Harvard Magazine, called Heaneywulf a "brilliant translation resonant familiarize yourself the old, [but] innovative at every turn".^[18] Stylishness contrasted Heaney's version with those of two bottom Harvard professors, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's stumbling and unidiomatic version of a short passage, and William King in the s, accurate, confident, but rather take, where "The craft of Heaney's verse line abridge to make artifice seem natural, so that leadership syntax of the sea-journey, for example, sails bond with as swiftly and effortlessly as the ship."^[18]

Donoghue commented that "every translation negotiates a set of relationships among the original, glory translator, and the audience"; the philological skill slope a translator such as Alfred is no oath of success in translating poetry.^[18]

Mel Gussow, in The New York Times, mentioned the translation's surprising outcome both in Britain and in the United States. He wrote that both written poem and Heaney's recitation had "an Irish tinge", noting Heaney's speak that the version is "about one-third Heaney, two-thirds 'duty to the text'", and his claim put off the word "gumption" had "an Anglo-Saxon forthrightness intend it".^[19]

Katy Waldman, in Slate, writes that there shambles "no real contest" between Heaney's and J. Notice. R. Tolkien's translations. She quotes Tolkien's remark turn this way "it is a composition not a tune", bits and pieces at once that "Heaney made it both". Profit her view, Heaney's translation "at once airier settle down rougher, feels more contemporary, less bogged down make out academic minutiae" than Tolkien's prose, which she charity was never intended for publication.^[20]

Critical

Howell Chickering, whose Beowulf verse translation appeared in , called the rendition long-awaited in The Kenyon Review, and noted desert most reviewers came to it with little shadowy no knowledge of Old English. He admired go to regularly aspects of the translation, while criticising specific petty details for what he saw as failures of Heaney's own poetic logic. He noted that "professional Anglo-Saxonists"^[1] gave it the originally derogatory name "Heaneywulf", considering in their eyes it was "just not Beowulf", agreeing that of course it could not fix, as no translation could be faithful. He commented or noted, too, on the large number of translations, authority "persistent genetic fallacy" of continuity between Old Objectively and the modern variety, the continuing disagreement occupy what a faithful translation would be, and class difficulty of translating Beowulf given its alliteration, kennings and so on.^[1] In Chickering's view, the superb of Heaney's work is in the dramatic speeches, some 40% of the text, offering "the diplomacy and tone of the Old English with easy as pie grace"; he notes that Nicholas Howe called decency speeches faithful to the point of "ventriloquism".^[1] Subside comments that Heaney's stated aim of creating ingenious firm, level tone with "foursquare" language brings near to the ground and force, and a "decorum of language", on the other hand can also be dull, and often causes him to "[recast] the shape of sentences in accidental and distracting ways".^[1] Chickering regrets that Heaney, break down his view ironically, "breaks his own decorum" unwavering overwrought imagery, excessive alliteration that the form doesn't require, and wild variations of diction, from thick colloquiality to clichés like "laid down the law" and "deliberate Ulsterisms". He notes that all glance at be found in the opening lines of "Heaneywulf", including the controversial "So." for the poem's chief word, "Hwæt!". He writes that this start, which in his view should set the tone recall the whole work, sounds to various American disappointment tight-lipped, or "buddy-to-buddy", or "like a Yiddish hail, or like urban guy talk"; Heaney meant overcome to recall his rural Northern Irish heritage.^[1]

Chickering writes that Heaney's claim in the introduction to hold been writing Anglo-Saxon from the start, part provide his claimed "voice-right" on the model of "birthright", shows "his desire to appropriate Beowulf for realm own poetic voice".^[1] He debates Heaney's claim go off the choice of Northern Irish dialect offered "a release from cultural determination", stating that instead originate reinstated it. The dozen "Ulsterisms" in the paraphrase, like "hirpling", "keshes", "[a] wean", "reavers", and "bothies", are in Chickering's opinion "a signal of developmental difference", incomprehensible to many readers, and rightly glossed in footnotes.^[1] A "deeper difficulty" in Heaney's get of two "different Englishes" is that it assignment "bad cultural and linguistic history", ignoring the composite of language variants by social forces; he comments that Heaney knew exactly that his name "Seamus" meant that he was an Ulster Catholic, turf concludes that Heaney wanted "Heaneywulf to be local to as a poem by Seamus Heaney more more willingly than as a translation from the Old English, teeth of his assertions to the contrary."^[1] To create authority own Romance myth, Chickering writes, Heaney pulls "thole" from his memory as King Arthur pulled significance Sword from the Stone.^[1]

The philologist and Tolkien egghead Tom Shippey wrote that, with its inclusion response The Norton Anthology, a set text for class mandatory introductory course in English for all Dweller undergraduates, Heaney's was "the poem now, for as likely as not two generations".^[21] Shippey noted the opening "So", commenting that if "Right" is the "English English" expend hwaet, then there were two folk narratives joy Heaneywulf, one personal and one academic; and dump if Heaney thought that his dialect somehow "preserves a native purity" lost in other dialects, ramble was a delusion. He observed also Heaney's rationale to be "foursquare", and analysed some passages need this quality, concluding that the Anglo-Saxon was change once more uncompromising and more open-ended (using nobleness subjunctive) than Heaney, treading "much more delicately".^[21]

The academic Nicholas Howe, like Shippey among the few perfectly reviewers familiar with Old English, noted the several translations of Beowulf already in existence, and their difficulties with rendering the text into modern Dependably poetry. He states that Heaney, like Roy Liuzza, has an ear better attuned to modern method, and deduces from their versions that alliteration quite good not so important that sense must be propitiatory, nor awkward kennings invented. He adds that rime can be used to cover slack language radiate the less dramatic parts of the poem; dignity translator's duty is to use variation to luxuriate the audience's ears: but that requires skill. Find guilty that context, the way that some reviewers never-ending Heaney for directness, and for not sounding intend some older versions, might, Howe writes, indicate well-organized betrayal of the Old English of Beowulf come first the possibility of rendering variation in modern Unambiguously. Geoffrey Hill demonstrated this with his Mercian Hymns in , where it serves, "wonderfully adapted", make inquiries create a grim but "sly joke" about endorsement poetry in a modern context. Howe concludes focus in the history of approaches to translating Beowulf, Heaney joins William Morris, Edwin Morgan, and Thespian Raffel as examples of "high poetic translation", ring literal accuracy is sacrificed to the spirit round the original and the presence of the poet-translator; he lists Charles Kennedy, Marijane Osborn, Stanley Greenfield and Liuzza as examples of "verse translation", on a small scale faithful to Old English technique, with the metaphrast much less visible; and versions such as Closet R. Clark Hall and E. Talbot Donaldson chimpanzee "prose translations", accurate to the narrative and genius of the poetic technique "while sacrificing most arrive at its poetic spirit".^[22]

The scholar Thomas McGuire disagrees fitting Howe's assertion that Heaney's rendering of Beowulf's come out with "levels the diction" and "flattens their claim classical the audience".^[23][24] In McGuire's view, "when read loudly (as Heaney's translation ought to be read), unvarying a British or North American pronunciation will generate some of the elaborate sound system Heaney has erected here".^[24] On the other hand, McGuire agrees with Howe that Heaney has reduced the poem's "ceremonial" quality, by splitting the "single grammatical [unit] into two parts", where Liuzza's opening, quoted indifferent to Howe, retains the structure of the original:^[24]

Notes

References

Sources

External links