For some people my age, we hated annotating whole novels for English class over the summer. Writing and highlighting in our books broke our hearts. I found a solution - transparent sticky notes. I could not have been happier with my discovery but I realize I'm behind the trend by a couple years - that's fine. I haven't been an avid reader till recently.
I have been wanting to read this translated story since first learning about Beowulf in a legends and mythology class in high school. You'll notice that I'm very interested and want to reread most stories that I read in high school as I didn't quiet understand what was going on fully. Beowulf is just the beginning back down memory lane.
The Story
Starting out, I knew Beowulf was almost like an epic poem of a Anglo-Saxon legend. He bore many feats and appeared to fit in with other heroes of epic poems. It was spectacular, honestly. I only remembered half of this story from high school.
Beowulf, a warrior of the Geats, heard about a monster in the land of the Danes that raged on a dining hall made by their king. He went over, with the permission of his lord, and fought the monster - killing it. Due to this, the monster's mother wanted revenge as well as the king of Danes "formally" adopting Beowulf, allowing him to sit with his own sons.
With the monster's mother wanting revenge and doing the same thing her son did, Beowulf went out and killed that monster too. He killed these monsters with nothing but brute strength and bare hands.
Later on in his life, Beowulf had become the king of the Geats. He knew his time was up when he heard a dragon was in a rage due to a thief stealing something from his hoard. The mighty king went to confront the dragon with a squad of warriors. He both won and lost with the help of one of his warriors. Beowulf took the dragon's life and the dragon took his through poisoning him, ultimately.
Ratings - 4/5
I enjoyed Heaney's translation of the story very much - that I give a 5/5.I have many new phrases and meanings tabbed as well as some of my favorite quotes by Beowulf and others. It was easy to follow along with what was going on as well as who said what, the majoring of the time. Heaney's little notes on the right about what was happening too was great. His forward before the story really put the aspect of how a translation like this works and how he got the honor of it.
However, the 4 stars only is not his fault, just the story's fault. There was a couple times that the story repeated itself - it aggravated me to no end. And, when Beowulf died, it appeared that the people only cared about the past; the kings before Beowulf and their misdoings against the Danes and Frisians and others. It just really angered me.
Overall, I did enjoy the story just the repetition was annoying. Heaney did a wonderful job with the translation, keeping notes on the side to keep up with the story, and his own story of how this translation opportunity was given to him (as well as the historic aspects he sprinkled in there).
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