Tolkien and Beowulf

[Corbier]

Tolkien being academic again. His translation of Beowulf will get published 90 years after the professor did all the hard work

JRR Tolkien translation of Beowulf to be published after 90-year wait | Books | theguardian.com

 

[Corbier]

 

[Corbier]

There's even a website: J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf

 

[Nerds_feather]

Hard to imagine it's better than the Seamus Heaney one.

 

[Extollager]

I'm excited to see "Sellic Spell" coming into print at last. It's one of a very few things that haven't appeared yet, along with "The Bovadium Fragment(s)."

 

[Corbier]

Hard to imagine it's better than the Seamus Heaney one.

Why do you think that? And why does one need to be better in the first place? Perhaps there are simply different approaches and shouldn't the rwo be compared at all.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Why do you think that? And why does one need to be better in the first place? Perhaps there are simply different approaches and shouldn't the rwo be compared at all.

I tend to think translations fall into two categories: those that attempt to be as faithful to the letter as possible and those that attempt to be as faithful to the spirit of the original as possible. I've read two of the former and one of the latter (Heaney), which was, in my eyes, brilliant and definitive. AFAIC, I don't see much more ground to cover.

Mind you, that's just my personal opinion. Of course I'll be curious to see how the Tolkein translation is reviewed.

 

[Corbier]

I do agree with the "literal" versus "the spirit". Though as I've done a minor in translation sciences, I'm of the opinion translation is impossible to begin with

Anyway, I've read "Finn and Hengest" and there Tolkien is often bold but interesting. If he's done that with Beowulf, I'm more than happy.

 

[Corbier]

From JRR Tolkien's translation of Beowulf: bring on the monsters | Books | The Guardian :

It will be fascinating to see how [Tolkien] exercised his literary, historical and linguistic expertise on the poem, and to compare it with more purely literary translations such as Seamus Heaney's as well as the academic ones.

 

[River Boy]

Really looking forward to this - definitely one of Tolkien's favourite works if not his chief obsession besides his own Legendarium, probably why he was too much of a perfectionist to publish it.

 

[Extollager]

Some background that might be of interest:

Wormtalk and Slugspeak: Tolkien's Beowulf: The Real Story