Where I Read One Too Many Translations of Beowulf

Beowulf: A New Translation by Unknown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the 1957 translation by David Wright.

It's fine.

I've read about 5 versions of Beowulf this year, and I found this one comprehensible but not very enjoyable. It reads like a rough draft, with awkward sentences that individually make sense but collectively sound off. I can't quite say why it hits me I like that, but I found it hard to read in a fluent way, especially compared to some other versions.

The Rosemary Sutcliff novelization, for example, isn't as faithful to the text, but it reads like a novel. The Seamus Heaney translation, which is a line by line verse rendering of the original poem, is much more aesthetically pleasing, though it comes at a slight cost of comprehension. And the "No Fear" version of Beowulf--actually two versions--has a very clear, made for students, prose translation of the text which might actually fit into the category of "long footnotes," because I don't think you'd want to read it on its own. It's too compact, leaving out too many details. It is useful, though. What surprised me was that the "original" version of Beowulf in that book, the one considered difficult the same way Shakespeare is difficult, is actually very nice IMO. It's prose, but with a nice poetic feel, with beautiful language, leaning toward the sound of the Heaney version.

Anyway, I gave all of those 5 stars. I was hoping this would be amazing in a different way, but it's neither beautifully poetic nor radiantly clear. It's not bad; it works. And the introductory essay is very good, as are the notes and appendices in the back. It's fine. It's just not as much favorite, ya know?

I read somewhere there are hundreds of translations of Beowulf into English. I think we're good now. Should be enough for a bit.

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