As part of my background research for composing an epic poem about Pyrrho, I'm reading epics from around the world. So far this year I've read both the Iliad and the Odyssey twice (in Richmond Lattimore's masterful translations), Milton's Paradise Lost, the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, and most recently Beowulf. I'm also about halfway through Virgil's Aeneid (in John Dryden's translation), after which I intend to start on Ferdowsi's great Persian epic, the Shahnameh. I'm also halfway through my friend Dave Jilk's newly published science-fiction novel in the form of an epic poem, entitled Epoch: A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga (more on that soon). And there are plenty more where these came from!
Before diving into Beowulf for the first time since high school, I decided to read Translating Beowulf by Old English scholar Hugh Magennis. There are so many translations of Beowulf from Old English into Modern English that I wanted to choose one which, roughly speaking and mutatis mutandis, is consistent with Matthew Arnold's principles for translating Homer. All indications were that the translation to read - at least for me - was made by Michael Alexander for Penguin Classics, and his version did not disappoint.
Two aspects of the poem stood out for me. First, the high heroism of the story: Beowulf himself is portrayed not only as an accomplished and courageous warrior, but also as an exceptionally wise and ethical person. Second, the artistry of the verse: different from the purely syllabic verse of Homer and Virgil, and again from the accentual-syllabic verse of Milton and other Modern English poets, but quite gorgeous in its use of half-lines, alliteration, metaphors, formulae, and kennings (striking ways of describing everyday phenomena, such as calling the sea "the whale's road"). As far as I can tell, Michael Alexander did a great job of representing these various features of the Old English poem into his verse translation, which I expect I'll read again to absorb poetic insights that I might use in my "Pyrrhiad".
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)
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