Beowulf

It's true what they say about Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: he turned a masterpiece into a masterpiece.

I just finished the book last night and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. To begin, it's an eminently readable story - or at least as Heaney's presented it. 

And it's exciting - quite frankly - to read the modern English alongside the old. For me, that was one of the most rewarding parts of the translation: discovering where the language we speak and read today came from. (I know it's not a direct line, but still...)

Also, I enjoyed the imagined qualities of the book: the idea of a hero battling ancient dragons, sea monsters, and spirits...all of that transported me to another time, when allegory and metaphor worked, and when authors used those sorts of tools without apologizing or masking a sense of embarrassment. 

This is a book that I'd been meaning to read for a long time, and I'm glad that I got around to it. Heaney was a talented poet indeed, and he's done justice to the work of the original poet - that individual who remains nameless, but who composed one of the first successful epics of the English language.