Beowulf: A New Translation

I was first exposed to Beowulf: A New Translation via someone quoting a part that contained the phrase, “hashtag: blessed.” It's hard to imagine a worse first impression.

But I love Beowulf, and there's a somewhat common phrase about not judging books by your surface level knowledge of them. So I grabbed a copy from the library, and I'm really glad I did.

This is a superb translation. Headley's poetry is wonderfully playful, weaving together the epic with delightful verse, sublime alliteration, clever compound expressions, and sudden hard turns into modernity. Swearing, contemporary phrasing and dialogue, and even memes are peppered throughout the book.

Thankfully, it avoids overcommitting to the bit - if that's the right word - of being a story for and by 20XX dudebros. It is far too beautiful and inventive for anyone to make that mistake. The anachronisms are rarer than you'd expect (or fear); they punctuate the poem with precision timing for moments of humor or metaphor. When it's ridiculous, it's clearly with a purpose.

It's a very quotable book, which is not something that can be said of most Beowulf translations.

It has a few clunkers here and there, moments where the swerve to modern temperament ends up crashing into a brick wall. Hashtag: Blessed did not land any better in context. Some repeated words throughout the book - bro, daddy, bling - never felt right no matter how many times I read them. At times the more modern phrases (“Meanwhile, Beowulf gave zero shits.”) felt too cute, too distracting.

But these blemishes were rare, leaving a book that felt fresh and clever and brilliant.

If you're not a fan of Beowulf the poem (full disclosure that I am not, way too much meandering and masculine posturing) this won't exactly change your mind. I didn't really find it particularly feminist as advertised, aside from a few jabs at how many women in the poem go unnamed and gendering the dragon.

The modern language generally works well, though a few bits did stand out as kind of silly. Overall, it feels like a drunk guy clamouring to tell a story in a bar, which feels accurate to the original. I think I might have liked it more as an audiobook.