This got me thinking about Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. People had STRONG feelings about it when it was published a couple years ago. A lot of folks felt it was a violation, corruption, debasement of a national epic. She basically un-academicizes the text, and brings it back to the pop-culture level of language. It’s juicy and gritty again, if also silly. It is in tone maybe a bit closer to the original than the elevated, beautiful, more literally translated versions from Heaney, Kirtlan & Porter, Tolkien, or Burton. The New Yorker has a good piece on it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/a-beowulf-for-our-moment
This got me thinking about Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. People had STRONG feelings about it when it was published a couple years ago. A lot of folks felt it was a violation, corruption, debasement of a national epic. She basically un-academicizes the text, and brings it back to the pop-culture level of language. It’s juicy and gritty again, if also silly. It is in tone maybe a bit closer to the original than the elevated, beautiful, more literally translated versions from Heaney, Kirtlan & Porter, Tolkien, or Burton. The New Yorker has a good piece on it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/a-beowulf-for-our-moment