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An Anglo-Saxon Page-Turner

There’s nothing like a page-turner. It gets the adrenaline going. It takes me on a journey and makes me forget about a lot of things, like meals, chores, and appointments, etc.. For once, there is no lingering on a sentence or trying to make sense of what is on the page. I am suddenly a reader who understands every word I read and that makes me feel good. Furthermore, it is POETRY! How can that be possible? Poetry, a page-turner?

It is entirely possible when reading Seamus Heaney’s translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. It is like a Dan Brown novel, action packed with the hero slaying a menacing troll, the hero slaying the troll’s mother, the hero battling with a dragon, etc.. The story unfolds, line by line, quickly and seamlessly. But is that why I read poetry?

In the original Old English text, each line has a clear pause in the middle. This text is placed side by side with Heaney’s translation so the archaic structure is apparent. Heaney mostly ignored the pause except for an occasional song or poem within the poem. He tells the story in poetic prose and indeed has created a page-turner. But the value of Beowulf is in the movement of the poem—the rhythms, and how stories were told in the 7th Century. The plot is only a story. The movement is life.

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4 thoughts on “An Anglo-Saxon Page-Turner”

  1. I’m glad you enjoy the Heaney version, but remember that, in its original form, “Beowulf” didn’t have pages: most people couldn’t read and didn’t have any problem with that. “Beowulf” existed as recitation. What about Benjamin Bagby’s performance of the poem? How does that differ from the experience of reading Heaney? In its original form, the poem was an ear bender, not a page turner. What has Heaney done to the poem? I agree that “the movement is life,” but I think that the movement of the poem–its life–changes in Heaney’s version.

  2. Another take on page turning: the Beowulf manuscript sits under glass in the manuscript room at the British Library (along with the Shakespeare signatures and some of Joyce’s Finnegans notebooks and Mrs. Dalloway and on and on…). Every five days or so they turn the exhibited Beowulf page. I remember going there when the Library was still house in the Brit Muse. Went with my friend Jessica. Jess can read old English. It was amazing to hear her from that ancient manuscript. And it was Jessica that pointed out to me that the first three Alien movies are based on Beowulf. Action packed!

  3. Bagby’s performance is electrifying and mesmerizing and I imagine not far from what it was like in the Anglo-Saxon time. Heaney’s version is modernized to the point that much is lost, except the story line. If we don’t have the original text in front of us, we might consider it a pretty good story. But I question its authenticity when I see a definite structure in the original that is not present in the translation. He has changed the movement (maybe to suit the modern reader), but what I want to see is the movement during the Anglo-Saxon time, so that I may experience that life.

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