My first reading was in Michael Alexander's translation, and my second in Frederick Rebsamen's. I think Alexander is a lot easier to follow, but I prefer the phrasing in Rebsamen. Rebsamen tries to preserve the metrical qualities of the original, which makes it very well-suited to being read aloud. I think the idea that the poem was originally supposed to be recited is lost in most translations, which are usually composed with reading, rather than recitation, in mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed it just as much the second time as I did the first time. My original review is below.

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How is it that I hadn't read this till now? If I had realized Beowulf was this much fun, I would have read it years ago. It's a story of action, adventure and a kind of Nordic chivalry. Beowulf is the ultimate hero - an unstoppable beast of a man, seemingly capable of taking down any foe (at least at first). In his heroism, I cannot help but be reminded of Rama (who was literally a manifestation of a god) in The Ramayana which I was incidentally reading concurrently.

The setting is decidedly medieval. There are tribes. There are longhouses. There are parties in longhouses. It's also decidedly a fantasy story. There is a cruel, evil and ugly beast that must be defeated. There is the mother of said beast. There is a dragon. Honestly, what more could one ask of an epic poem?

I could talk about the slight Christian undertones, and their fascinating contrast with the decidedly Nordic culture presented. I could talk about Beowulf's status within a broader world canon of outsider heroes. I could talk about the cultural context, and the significance of a poem set in Denmark being preserved in Old English in the British Isles - all the while simultaneously serving as what is more or less unanimously considered to be the greatest work in the language...

... or I could dwell on the part where Beowulf hacks a dragon to death.

I can see why Tolkein was so fond of this poem.british epic medieval-period ...more7 s Douglas Summers-StayAuthor 1 book44

I've read at least four versions of Beowulf in my life (not counting John Gardner's Grendel, which is more fanfiction) but I think that Rebsamen's translation is my favorite (I'm not sure if this "updated" verse translation is the same as the one I read. The cover is different.) He keeps both the alliterative kennings and the breaks in the middle of each line, which gives it the flavor of something recited in an ancient hall.
I just finished reading it aloud as a bedtime story to my son Daniel (who is 13 now.) I read him the good parts version-- starting with Beowulf's arrival in Heorot, the story of how he fought sea monsters, the arrival of Grendel in the night, the fight with Grendel and Grendel's mother, and then the final battle with the dragon. I left out any politics and geneology.
I was struck by how dragon the dragon was. You get a lot of dragons in various cultures, but they're all partly how we tend to imagine a dragon, and partly strange. It's probably mostly the influence of Smaug and The Faerie Queen, but my idea of a dragon breathes fire, flies, has a coiling tail and nearly impenetrable armor, jealously guards a hoard of gold in a hollow hill, and is a creature of pure fury. All of that is true about this dragon. Beowulf as an old man fights it, using an iron shield because wood would burn away. He breaks his sword Naegling with his incredible strength on the bones of its neck and is wounded, and then the beast is slain by his young right-hand man. Beowulf perishes from his wounds, but not before holding the treasure which will sustain his people. It's the perfect dragonslaying tale. It's just powerful to read, especially aloud.
I also noticed this time a brief reference to the parable of life being a sparrow flying through a warm hall-- what comes before or after we can only guess.3 s Daniel92

This was a good book to read in the bed because it was very evocative so I enjoyed reading it and the steady pulse of the verse would lull me. In school we read the Heaney translation and it disappointed me after having read this.poetry2 s Arthur 262 5

Great poem, lively translation. Does a good job of feeling both ancient and alive.2 s Naomi Ruth1,617 46

I have also read the Seamus Heaney version, but I really enjoyed Frederick Rebsamen and preferred his translation a bit. (I still haven't read Tolkien's yet, but I will one day.) This was my fourth reading of Beowulf and I loved it even more this time. There is so much going on in this poem, so many layers, so many ways to read the text. I love it. It is a fascinating example of how Christian authors took indigenous culture/folklore/religious traditions and inverted them to fit the Christian ideal/model. And I know not everyone will agree with that statement, which is one of the reasons why I love this poem. There are so many views on it. One day I will play with this material and turn it into an odd sort of French stylistic play or something.
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Re-read this and am tempted to write a re-telling of Beowulf. I'm just so fascinated by the parts of the story that we don't get to see fully, or are only alluded to.adult-fiction hist-cult non-fict ...more1 Mandie33

Well what education is complte without this defining moment in spoken word becoming written word. The legend of Beofwulf has certainly attracted a lot of interest as it has of late been resurrected in CGi splendour and we even have a movie extolling Grendel's side of things.
Its a super poem, its dark and its tense and the laguage is full of strange evocative words.
Essentially its a tale of bravery and loyalty; but also about customers and ancestral heritage. It draws the reader along extollnig the age old themes of good and evil, but perhaps more topically Christian and Pagan.
A searchable version can be found here containing both ancient and modern translation.
http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~be... literature1 Marieu16

I have always been thrilled by ancient stories that hold key facts to the kingdoms they have come to representate. I highly recomeng everyone, even when they do not old traditions to at least consider reading this book :D1 Jay Wright1,640 3

This is a relative short book, but a long poem. It is highly important historically. Tolkien was hooked to it. The when and where is the subject of historical argument. All in all, it is highly remarkable. I was not disappointed. 1 Andy4 3

A wonderful epic poem, full of adventure, guns, blood, etc.1 Alexa Cascade81 17

A verse translation that does justice to the original. Beautiful and powerful.own-and-read poetic-inspiration1 Tina430 5

This translation was accessible and enjoyable, without being too modern.poetry1 Jenna Williams6

This is a good version. One of my all time best books.1 Susanna55

Recommended version by my literature teacher.classics1 Steve914 9

The third translation of this work I have read in the last few months. First published in 1991, with an updated edition in 2004. By U of AZ prof Rebsamen (who, it appears, at 97 is still alive).
This is the most Old English style translation I have read yet. There are no Notes, so I do suggest reading a more modern, and annotated, edition before approaching this, to get the gist of what is happening.
A handful of times he does interject into the text his own commentary. There, for about a page, he explains what is about to occur, and give its background. This is helpful, and even after having read 2 heavily annotated translations of this work, his commentary brought up some new insights (the gold the dragon has guarded for centuries - its curse and its later use).
But mostly I highly recommend this because it makes the most effort to sound Old English. The sentence structure, the lack of commas, the double consonants in a line, the hyphenated words (he came up with some real doozies!). I swear there were some added lines in here as well, that helpfully filled out scenes. And the battle scenes between Beowulf and the monsters were the most exciting I have read to date.
His Bibliography informed me of the two standard texts of this poem (something I did not get from the other 2 translations!), the Mitchell/Robinson and the Klaeber - too bad both are academic texts with high price points, even as used copies.
Read it to get a feel for what it must sound when read in its original Old English (I took a class in OE back in the mid '90's - no way do I remember enough of that to read the original today!).
5 out of 5.1 Tim Koh (on hiatus)152 76

Fair warning, this is the third translation of Beowulf I have read. The first was of course Seamus Heaney's awesome 1999 translation which all turn-of-the-millenium English majors have cut their teeth on by way of the Norton, and, weirdly enough, J. R. R. Tolkien's somewhat cluttered prose translation when he was in his early thirties and locked away for almost a hundred years before excavated and edited by his son, repackaged for general readership in 2014. Of course, to my mind, the Heaney translation reigns supreme, and still remains, I think, the gateway drug to anyone curious about this Old English poem.

I do appreciate the attention Rebsamen pays to prosody, versification, and structure. He also makes far more use of alliteration than, say, Heaney does. However, I do feel that in his project to better mimic Old English verse, we have lost some of the poetry in the process. Thus seems to be continual pains of translating poetry whose verse forms cannot be easily (or healthily) replicated in English: something's gotta give.

In some says, I think this is an important translation because I felt the verse move me in some new ways, and I genuinely gleaned new insights from this translation. For example, Rebsamen makes two references to Hrothgar as a "hoard-guardian" through one of his translated kennings, which I think very neatly anticipates the arrival of the dragon in the poem's third act; that Hrothgar might be seen as a guardian of treasure is new to me, since I had always interpreted him as a giver of treasure.

These thoughts aside, I failed to be fully swept away by the story since I was entranced by the singsong nature of the verse: many a time I felt my eyes were glazing over the immense use of alliteration and assonance, and became almost hypnotic. This might not be a bad thing, since it probably better figures into how the original poetry read. Even so, I wonder if this is a difficult translation to pick up if one lacks the proper context of plot ahead of time. Rebsamen tries his best, giving us random paragraphs spliced before difficult sections of the poem (minstrel songs of Sigemund, the Frisian slaughter, and other asides), though these tend to interrupt the flow of one's reading. I recall in the Heaney version he simply italicised the asides, which, to my mind, is a better means of dealing with these portions.

Finally, in receiving this text first and foremost as a poem of immense fortitude and beauty, I hungered for more, well, poetry and verve to the storytelling. Rarely was I struck by the strength of a particular line, and rarely was I fully absorbed in the truly stunning pieces of action. One line in particular stood out to me, when Beowulf was leaving the Danes, which reads, "That young sea-warrior was so strongly beloved."

All in all, a fair translation and I think a good one to read if you've already got the Heaney one under your belt.
Julie Blood1 reviewRead

Beowulf is SUCH a great book guys! It starts off with this mean monster guy, Grendel, who's jealous of the king and his men. What a drama queen, right? So anyway, Grendel goes to Hrothgar's hall and KILLS his men! What a jerk! So now Hrothgar's all alone and he's , SUPER depressed.
The next scene starts off in another kingdom and the passage describes a man named Beowulf. He's pretty much a bad-a**. He fights monsters and dragons and sea creatures, and wins EVERY TIME. So when Beowulf hears about Hrothgar's monster problem, he's , "Guys, we have GOT to help him."
So Beowulf and his men go to Hrothgar's castle and tell him that Beowulf is going to take care of his monster problem.
That night, Beowulf stays awake in the hall and waits for Grendel to come out of hiding and try to eat some more Danes. Well he's screwed because after he eats the first guy, he gets attacked by Beowulf and totally loses.
Beowulf returns to the castle and tells Hrothgar that he killed Grendel.
So they party and everything's fine for a while, but Grendel's MOM was PISSED about Beowulf beating up her son. So she decides to come and get Beowulf and try to kill him, but he totally steals some enchanted sword and cuts off her and Grendel's head.

So Hrothgar thanks Beowulf and they become allies.
Then he goes back to his land and gets in a fight with a dragon and it's really sad because all of his men leave him to DIE! How mean right? All but one of them leave but in the end, Beowulf dies.. I'ts not a terrible death though because he's such a hero..

So yeah, I think that all of you should read it because this epic is just , such an interesting story. Thanks guys! Wayne184 1 follower

I recently read Rebsamen's updated translation of Beowulf and it was *excellent*. I'm pretty sure my friend Jenny recommended this translation and I'm really glad she recommended it. I've read Beowulf a couple times before but never got too excited about it. This translation handled the excitement of the story really well. This version made me see why so many people love this book.

Be sure to read the introduction. It talks about this the translation and the poetry and it really helped with reading and making sense of the poem. Rebsamen tried to do the alliteration between half-lines, as was done in the original version.

I have a formatting complaint about the book. I read the version formatted for the iOS Kindle app. It did not have any spacing between the half-lines, and it would have been very helpful if there was some separation. I had to mentally work out the separation for each line. It got to be mostly automatic, but even then it made the reading a little rougher than it had to be.

Despite that problem, this was a superb Beowulf and I'm really glad to have read it. I highly recommend this.

(Important caveat: I am not a scholar for this type of literature. I can't talk intelligently about this translation versus that translation, or how poetry works in Old English versus Middle High Saxonish English. My thoughts on this book are the thoughts of a layman.)
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In my view, the unknown author of Beowulf can be fully forgiven for his references to Christianity's monotheistic God entirely in virtue of the awesome manliness that is on full display in this powerful epic poem. That manliness which is honored through the deeds of our hero Beowulf reminds one of the manliness that is celebrated in the Homeric world, the manliness of Achilles and possibly even the manliness of Odysseus (though I suspect to a lesser extent—after all, the greatest part of Odyssean manliness is rooted in his wisdom). Far from being the manliness of mere brutality and might, Beowulf's manliness combines the important features of courage, bodily strength and even cunning that rightly should be celebrated perhaps even most importantly now as we live in the Nietzschean world, a world in which the recovery of Greek culture—and Greek manliness—is such a centrally important task at hand.lit-classics own-mine Tony ChandlerAuthor 17 books8

I have read this book three times over the years, and each time it is just as exciting and fun as the first time. First, this is a very readable translation and I quote from the Introduction by the author -- "the only translation I am aware that attempts throughout to imitate the OLD ENGLISH poetic form as closely as practical in Modern English"

The author succeeds wonderfully. This book is a wonderful mixture of poetry, adventure, heroes, monsters, legends and dragons.

It is a fairly short book and a fast read. And one enjoyed best in the evening when the darkness fills the world so that Grendel and Beowulf come alive once more... Neil253 9

Rebsamen's translation is in the Tolkien tradition, taking Beowful first and foremost as poetry/verse, and the lyrical nature comes through powerfully in this volume. The rhythms of phrase and pause quickly accustom the reader to the rise and fall of action, and carry the tone of the poem so that it is not hard to hear a rough voice, chanting out the well worn tale in a long house, before a spitting fire.

It is fun returning to these works that I read so long ago, reading them in the context of a much greater literate experience. It is hard to think any high schooler can really grasp the classics in any meaningful way. Simon282 3

I've skirted around the Beowulf poem for several years - read about it, analysis of it, films based on it, but hadn't got around to checking the original poem until now. My Old English isn't really that good, so plumped for a modern translation. The author does a nice job of explaining some of the context at the beginning and some inserts, and also some changes that he's made to compensate from old to modern English. Also some good advice on how to approach the text, such as to read passages aloud which gives a feel for the rhythm of the poem and allows you to appreciate the story rather than skimming. Bonnie3

Frederick Rebsamen's is, hands down, my favorite translation of Beowulf. I didn't find it less accessible than translations with a more modernized flow to the language at all. But based on what I know of the style and feel of Anglo-Saxon sagas, he seems to have made a real effort to remain true to the original pacing and style of the language. Loved it. Matthew167 3

The beauty of the poetry of this book is undeniable but the language, though translated into English, was sometimes difficult to follow. I also felt I got bogged down at times with long passages about subject that seemed off topic. I really did enjoy this book though I struggle to understand it in greater depth. Grace162 2

“A good wine-lord needs words of praise
love from his people when he leaves this earth
when his breath is borne from his body at last.”

I really enjoyed this translation much more than the Seamus Heaney that I studied in school. This translation seems more alive, more a great bard is telling me the tale of Beowulf and his great deeds. Dianne107

This is the only translation of Beowulf I have read. Although it was slow going, I read it aloud to my 12-year-old daughter, and we both understood it and found it to be entirely enjoyable all around. We would stop after every so many lines, and recap to each other what had taken place. I was impressed at her comprehension, so I'd have to say the translation is well done. Lindsey842 3

This is a nice translation for its musical quality. Lines are divided visually to show anglo-saxon line and the alliteration is on point. The musical quality doesn't make this the easiest for understanding the story since there are lots of syntactical changes and elision. Amanda105

This was great for me to finally read since it goes hand-in-hand with the books I have been reading for Great Books 3. David Ducrest11 19 Read

When possible go with verse. Literal translations are worthless if you do not have an understanding of this living cryptograph. This poem is a puzzle. You are supposed to solve it. Christopher615

Ain't no use of alliteration Anglo-Saxon use of alliteration. And it has monsters. Matthew Kim60 1 follower

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