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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Beowulf by Tolkien!

Just happened across this in the bookstore today:


Yay! I've been wishing for this since Christopher released a snippet of his father's translation 10 or 15 years ago, but I had no idea they were actually working on getting it to press. One of the advantages of avoiding news and current events: you get these kinds of surprises.

Seamus Heaney's translation was nice, but it had a Celtic lyricism that I don't think really suited the material. Tolkien, on the other hand, was not only a master of Old Aenglisc, but thoroughly devoted to the mythos of his ancestors. As well as being an absolute genius of a linguist. The snippet I'd previously read was tantalizing, in that it preserved the vigour and rhythm of the original.

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