Mountain Man and the Art of Writing

Beowulf, Translations, and Women

Just finishing up Reading Heaney translation of Beowulf. If you haven't read this guy yet, you really have to. The man captures the story so beautifully. I had the misfortune of recently reading the Longman English Anthology's version. It was lackluster to say the least. It was clearly an abridged version. What is fantastic about Heaney's is the Old English text appearing on the opposite page. I'm fascinated with linguistics, and as such love looking at the old language written down. Watching the difference between the beat patterns is fascinating (OE beat pattern / / ^ / /). As far as the women are represented in this epic is interesting. Think about Grendel's mother, and daughter of the Spear-Danes. Without men power figures they clearly seem to resemble the wild women/witch type figure we see in Medea. Did Classical societies (Greek and Roman) have so much contact with Germanic societies that they could cause some cross-cultural archetypes to appear? Little bit of backing up of one my personal favourites Carl Jung? I think so.

As a bit of a sidenote, here's a link to the recent Canadian Film based on Beowulf:
www.beowulfandgrendel.com
Never sure how to feel on the film industries adaptation of books. This looks brilliantly shot, and on its own is propably a fun story to watch. The lines from the movie don't really match up with text (either of the translations I've looked at). That I find sad. All in all though, it appears visually stunning. Filmed in Iceland I believe. Still don't think it could match up with a scop singing the original epic. That I would love to hear some day.

posted by Japhy Hunter (aka Daniel) @ 9:59 PM