Title: A less than heroic translation
Product review: I originally read Beowulf in an English class in 1975, and while I forget the name of the translator, I remember the magic of the language as much as the magic of the story. In the current translation, I found myself often bored and often impatient with what seemed to me to be Heaney's ostentatious and clumsy attempts to revive the sound of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It probably didn't help that he includes the original on facing pages, and while I don't know Anglo-Saxon, I at least know how to pronounce it, so the magic of the original sound was there for comparison. In any case, expecting a revival of the magic, instead I had to drag myself from page to page. Heaney is a fine poet in his own right, but in my opinion he doesn't have the sound of Beowulf right at all.
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