Showing posts with label epic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epic. Show all posts

wyrd

I started reading  Beowulf again. This time, a translation by Seamus Heaney. AMAZING. So many translations to choose from, so many people are critics of the epic and ignore the translation, or are ignorant of the origins of this masterpiece. I am thoroughly enjoying Beowulf, partly due to it being something I decided to read again rather than be assigned, and partly due to the wonderful translation. If you have any desire to read this ancient poem, I would strongly recommend this version.

On a side note, reading Heaney's introduction to his translation of Beowulf also gave me a quite a bit more appreciation for Katharine Kerr's incredibly detailed Deverry series (fifteen books of interwoven lives and stories). Sometimes we just enjoy a work of art for it's beauty, not being able to fathom the effort and immensity of what the artist did to give us the final version. When we get a hint, it's a glimmer of something incomprehensible in our peripheral vision, so easily dismissed    ---  unless we have been there too, and recognize it in ourself as well.