Beowulf
- 中文名:
- 贝奥武夫
- 作者:
- 谢默斯·希尼 Seamus Heaney
- 类型:
- 小说经典
- 可下载格式:
- PDF
- 解压密码:
- www.qcenglish.com [点击复制]
- 收藏和分享贝奥武夫:
- 贝奥武夫(Beowulf)简介:
- In Beowulf warriors must back up their mead-hall boasts with instant action, monsters abound, and fights are always to the death. The Anglo-Saxon epic, composed between the 7th and 10th centuries, has long been accorded its place in literature, though its hold on our imagination has been less secure. In the introduction to his translation, Seamus Heaney argues that Beowulf's role as a required text for many English students obscured its mysteries and "mythic potency." Now, thanks to the Irish poet's marvelous recreation (in both senses of the word) under Alfred David's watch, this dark, doom-ridden work gets its day in the sun.
There are endless pleasures in Heaney's analysis, but readers should head straight for the poem and then to the prose. (Some will also take advantage of the dual-language edition and do some linguistic teasing out of their own.) The epic's outlines seem simple, depicting Beowulf's three key battles with the scaliest brutes in all of art: Grendel, Grendel's mother (who's in a suitably monstrous snit after her son's dismemberment and death), and then, 50 years later, a gold-hoarding dragon "threatening the night sky / with streamers of fire." Along the way, however, we are treated to flashes back and forward and to a world view in which a thane's allegiance to his lord and to God is absolute. In the first fight, the man from Geatland must travel to Denmark to take on the "shadow-stalker" terrorizing Heorot Hall. Here Beowulf and company set sail:
Men climbed eagerly up the gangplank,
sand churned in the surf, warriors loaded
a cargo of weapons, shining war-gear
in the vessel's hold, then heaved out,
away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.
Over the waves, with the wind behind her
and foam at her neck, she flew like a bird...
After a fearsome night victory over march-haunting and heath-marauding Grendel, our high-born hero is suitably strewn with gold and praise, the queen declaring: "Your sway is wide as the wind's home, / as the sea around cliffs." Few will disagree. And remember, Beowulf has two more trials to undergo.
Heaney claims that when he began his translation it all too often seemed "like trying to bring down a megalith with a toy hammer." The poem's challenges are many: its strong four-stress line, heavy alliteration, and profusion of kennings could have been daunting. (The sea is, among other things, "the whale-road," the sun is "the world's candle," and Beowulf's third opponent is a "vile sky-winger." When it came to over-the-top compound phrases, the temptations must have been endless, but for the most part, Heaney smiles, he "called a sword a sword.") Yet there are few signs of effort in the poet's Englishing. Heaney varies his lines with ease, offering up stirring dialogue, action, and description while not stinting on the epic's mix of fate and fear. After Grendel's misbegotten mother comes to call, the king's evocation of her haunted home may strike dread into the hearts of men and beasts, but it's a gift to the reader:
A few miles from here
a frost-stiffened wood waits and keeps watch
above a mere; the overhanging bank
is a maze of tree-roots mirrored in its surface.
At night there, something uncanny happens:
the water burns. And the mere bottom
has never been sounded by the sons of men.
On its bank, the heather-stepper halts:
the hart in flight from pursuing hounds
will turn to face them with firm-set horns
and die in the wood rather than dive
beneath its surface. That is no good place.
In Heaney's hands, the poem's apparent archaisms and Anglo-Saxon attitudes--its formality, blood-feuds, and insane courage--turn the art of an ancient island nation into world literature.
推荐书籍
-
麦琪的礼物
小说经典
The Gift of the Magi
O. Henry
欧·亨利
-
小兄弟
小说经典
Little Brother
Cory Doctorow
科利·多克托罗
-
双城记
小说经典
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
查尔斯·狄更斯
-
太阳照常升起
小说经典
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
欧内斯特·海明威
-
嘉莉妹妹
小说经典
Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser
西奥多·德莱塞
-
歌德诗集
小说经典
The Poems of Goethe
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
歌德
排行书籍
-
了不起的盖茨比
小说经典
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德
-
麦田里的守望者
小说经典
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
J·D·塞林格
-
老人与海
小说经典
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
欧内斯特·海明威
-
傲慢与偏见
小说经典
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
简·奥斯丁
-
国富论
经济学
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith
亚当·斯密
-
乱世佳人
小说经典
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
玛格丽特·米切尔
-
哈利·波特与魔法石
儿童读物
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
J.K. Rowling
J.K.罗琳
-
百年孤独
小说经典
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
加西亚·马尔克斯
-
失落的秘符
神秘惊悚
The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown
丹·布朗
-
英语语法手册
英语语法
English Grammar In Use
Raymond Murphy
雷蒙德·墨菲
-
秘密
励志成功
The Secret
Rhonda Byrne
朗达·拜恩
-
世界是平的
经济学
The World is Flat
Thomas Friedman
托马斯·弗里德曼
-
权力的游戏(冰与火之歌第一部)
科幻魔幻
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)
George R.R. Martin
乔治·R·R·马丁
-
万物简史
自然科学总论
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
比尔·布莱森
-
谁动了我的奶酪
处事哲学
Who Moved My Cheese
Spencer Johnson
斯宾塞·约翰逊