‘Beowulf’ Is Slaying Them Again--on the Bestseller Lists

Somehow, “Beowulf,” the age-old epic tale of a Scandinavian prince who slayed dragons, monsters and many a high school student’s attention span, is soaring up bestseller lists from Los Angeles to New York.

So far, there have been nine printings from its New York publisher, Farrar Straus & Giroux, for a total of about 120,000 books--a surprisingly large number for a work of poetry. Two weeks ago it debuted at the bottom of the Los Angeles Times’ Southern California bestseller list; this week it soared to second place. And while it hasn’t been tapped for Oprah’s Book Club--yet, “Beowulf” is the selection for the NPR Book Club for April.

“This is beyond anybody’s expectations. It’s just amazing,” said Anne Coyle, a spokeswoman for Farrar Straus & Giroux, known for its highbrow literature and poetry. “I’ve even heard rumors of a movie.”

Long a torturous staple of high school literature classes, the heroic tale’s newfound popularity can be credited to a modern English translation by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. When the translation appeared in Britain earlier this year, the Irish poet was praised for taming the cumbersome and esoteric language of the original text. It became a sensation that, to everyone’s surprise, survived the trip across the Atlantic.

“I read it in high school and like everyone else nearly died and swore I’d never go near it again,” said Mark Shikuma, assistant manager at West Hollywood’s Book Soup, which has sold dozens of Heaney’s translation. “It’s a breath of fresh of air. It’s very interesting to get an Irish poet’s look at an Anglo-Saxon tale.”

Heaney’s effort joins more than 60 other English translations of the poem, which was written sometime between the 7th and early 11th centuries. The 3,182-line work is commonly celebrated as the first large-scale poem composed in the vernacular--Old English at the time--rather than Latin, the language of society.

“Beowulf’s” blend of history and fantasy help explain its lasting appeal, despite some dense translations that prompted Woody Allen to offer this bit of academic advice: “Don’t take any course where they make you read ‘Beowulf.’ ”

The story centers on Beowulf, who saves the Danes from the horrible monster Grendel--”a kind of dog-breath in the dark,” according to Heaney’s version. Later, he must slay Grendel’s mother and, 50 years later, he battles a dragon.

There is only one surviving copy of the the Old English manuscript, which is stored under glass in the British Museum in London. The poem was written on parchment, the tanned hide of a sheep, and some of its pages still bear the singe marks of a disastrous fire in 1731.

“It remains, in effect, the aircraft carrier of the Anglo-Saxon literature,” said Paul E. Szarmach, director of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University. “This is a classic tale of humankind’s confrontation with the other.”

But Szarmach added he is unlikely to use the Heaney translation in his classes. Szarmach believes there’s too much Heaney and too little Beowulf.

In interviews since the book’s publication, Heaney has admitted as much. He assesses his translation is really one-third him and two-thirds duty to the original work.

“I came to the task of translating ‘Beowulf’ with a prejudice in favor of forthright delivery,” Heaney writes in his book’s preface. “I remembered the voice of the poem as being attractively direct, even though the diction was ornate and the narrative method at times oblique.”

But Szarmach still applauds Heaney for raising public awareness about the Anglo-Saxon masterpiece.

“It’s extremely difficult to translate, and anybody that can translate as smoothly and easily [as Heaney has done] has to be congratulated,” said Szarmach, an English professor who has taught a number of courses on “Beowulf.” “We appreciate him getting people interested in the field.”

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Tale of ‘Beowulf’--as Told Then . . . and Now

Translation by E. Talbot Donaldson, 1966, W.W. Norton & Co.

“[Grendel] stepped closer, then felt with his arm for the brave-hearted man on the bed, reached out towards him, the foe with his hand; at once in fierce response Beowulf seized it and sat up, leaning on his own arm. Straightway the fosterer of crimes knew that he had not encountered on middle-earth, anywhere in this world, a harder hand-grip from another man. In mind he became frightened, in his spirit: not for that might he escape the sooner. His heart was eager to get away, he would flee to his hiding-place, seek his rabble of devils. What he met there was not such as he had ever before met in the days of his life.”

Translation by Seamus Heaney, 2000, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

“Venturing closer, [Grendel’s] talon was raised to attack Beowulf where he lay on the bed; he was bearing in with open claw when the alert hero’s comeback and armlock forestalled him utterly. The captain of evil discovered himself in a handgrip harder than anything he had ever encountered in any man on the face of the earth. Every bone in his body quailed and recoiled, but he could not escape. He was desperate to flee to his den and hide with the devil’s litter, for in all his days he had never been clamped or cornered like this.”