a_note_about_the_beowulf_translation earth rim walker meadhall wrecker A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION by Dr. David Breeden The following is not a line-by-line translation of the original poem. Rather, I have attempted to recreate the poem as a contemporary poet would write it, a practice assumed in the oral tradition. Paradoxically, however, this translation is "truer" to the original than many scholarly works. For one thing, by using free verse I have not been forced into adding words or changing meaning for the sake of formal meter or rhyme. In addition, free verse has allowed me in many cases to recreate the rhythms of the original. Neither have I hesitated to allow inconsistency for the sake of clarity or fun. "Herot," for example, translates simply as "hart," but almost all readers know the great beerhall by the former name and would be disappointed with another. Some explanation has been added to the verse. Some lines have been cut. And the curious, contradictory section from line 1888 to line 2199 has been omitted. This is not an exact translation of the poem but rather a new version, close to the original but a poem in it own right. _Beowulf_ can be used as an historical text. It has much to teach us about an ancient culture. More importantly, however, it is a ripping good story. This translation attempts to tell that story. 011123 ... grr _beowulf_ 011123 ... Ahmad get a life, who cares about sum make up monster???? 020826 ... Made- up monster nobody really. but thank you for wasting the time to point that out. 020826 ... the faculty well, reading DOES help spelling. stay in school kiddo. 020826 ... oldephebe gather round lads at the curdled cheese smell of my gnarled feet...sure beowulf, which i have not read in it's entirety, and or poems like it served, and still do, as an achetypal kind of blue print for a poeple, a culture the story that contains an ethos, an epic song that holds the soul of a culture embodies in these sagas preserved by the oral tradition..that is why they are so important...if we do not know where we have been..i really do believe that we are fated to repeat the errors of past generations. Here's another thing..for a basically heterogenous country that has been herded into a kind of homogenous meta-culture of acquisition/consumerism - the subject of heroism, of nobility, of totems and talismanic representations of humanity rising and showing its best face in running the gauntlet, or rising to the flames of a crucible, are few and far between...aside from the few cinematic and mostly inaccurate explorations of heroic exploits..we can we must find ourselves again in the epics. .... because we are barren people..i believe that..and sure maybe some of my schizoid digressions are disorienting and distressing to some..but in this I'm beings sincere. The soul of the world is dying. One avenue by which I sometimes choose to try and recover myself from the depradations of the age is to turn to the great epic tapestry's of not just western but all cultures. To be inspired, to be throttled, to be taught. So..... 040324 ... oldephebe Should exaggerated and cellulitic cinema that insidiously manipulates and orchestrates our emotional responses become by some kind of intrinsic default, by some interior lapse what now constitutes for us an emotional ballast? I mean because really. Again I say the flight into exteriorization and overt self-consciousness have become part of this impediment to empathy. I want the kinds of words that like an oar lifts high into the air and plunges deep into the water and propells me through the water. I want to be lifted high into the air. I didn't want this to be some turgid and dense expedition into a faux kind of tautology. But I think this kind of choke me in the shallow water state of being feeling is an emotional emblem of experience that resonates with the nihilist and the overtly optimistic, the overt optimist maybe is even more brittle, farther out along the precipice, because the overt optimist seeks to cover the caves walls with collages while the shadows writhe beneath it. Please, if you have children introduce them to the temple, or church or holy writ, or the deep reverential communion with the natural world.. ... 040324 what's it to you? who go blather from