Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

Here's another one I can add to the "books I never read in school but should have" pile. I would've enjoyed reading this book in a classroom setting. Particularly in college. Beowulf was a wonderful experience made even more enjoyable by Seamus Heaney's mastery of the English language.

Beowulf is a 3,182 line epic poem written "sometime towards the end of the first millennium A.D." It is the story of Beowulf, a hero called upon to rid a city from a monster named Grendel who is descended from Cain of biblical reference. The poem follows Beowulf through his battles, ceremonies, and his remaining days.

The translation here is phenomenal and I enjoyed Heaney's use of language as much as I enjoyed the story. This passage for example, painted a delightfully creepy image for me of the place leading to where Grendel's mother lived:

A few miles from here
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.

This version was nice because it also included the entire text written in it's original old-English. Not that I could read or understand any of it, but it was nice to be able to make out the couple of word origins that I could. It also has little notes in the margin to explain some things that may not always be so obvious to the reader. Very pleasurable experience here.

What made me even more excited was that as I was reading this, I continually reminded myself that Neil Gaiman has written a screenplay for Beowulf. No word on when and if the film will be filmed and/or released, but no doubt that would be an amazing thing.

I'm glad that I read this one and am looking forward to Grendel by John Gardner next which is the story through the monster's eyes. Should be interesting!

A Day Of Reading and Reflection

I've felt very "blah" today. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not the greatest either. It made for some good reading as I'm nearly done Beowulf in preparation for reading Grendel for the Banned Book Challenge. Beowulf's great and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend Seamus Heaney's translation of it. Full review coming later.

The Once Upon a Time Challenge is officially completed, though I still plan on fitting in a reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream and maybe John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things if there's time. I'll miss this challenge a lot. I read fantasy throughout the year, so it's not the genre I'll miss, but it's the amount of discussion on fantasy literature that I'll miss. Though I know there are so many great fantasy bloggers out there ;)

So aside from reading, today's been a day of self reflection. Where I am now, where I've been in the past, where I'm going in the future. I'm happy with where I am now. I don't think I was fully aware of that because I never really took the time to just sit and think on it, but I am. I've achieved many of my goals but feel short changed sometimes because there's no immediate result aka I don't have a job right now. I'm surrounded by people who love me and I have a great support system in place and I appreciate that. I forget to focus on the positive sometimes and get wrapped up in the negative and sometimes take others down in that negativity. That's got to end. Negativity is hard to avoid and easy to get caught up in, but I've got to learn to fight it. No point in dwelling on things. Focus on the future. And that's what I'm doing. I've scheduled an appointment to meet with the head of the PhD program in Counseling at UNO next week. I'm really excited, though as I look at the application, I don't know how great my chances are at getting into the program. That's basically why I want to meet with her. She sounds really nice and sounded interested in meeting with me, so that should be good. Also applied for a slew of new jobs today, so keep your fingers crossed!

OK, off to finish Beowulf! Til next time....