Beowulf: A Verse Translation from the Anglo-Saxon received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Andrew Carnabuci.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The name of my book is Beowulf: A Verse Translation from the Anglo-Saxon, and it was published February 15, 2021. That answer may obscure more than it reveals however. The poem itself was most likely composed in the 9th century. The original Anglo-Saxon manuscript did not have a name or title, but when Lawrence Nowell, an English antiquarian, discovered the only extant copy of the manuscript in the 16th century, he named it “Beowulf” after its hero. I have not disturbed this time-honoured convention. To the traditional title, I have appended a subtitle, which is meant to convey the additional information that my book is a work of translation (as opposed to a more free-wheeling “retelling”) and that I have translated it in traditional Old English alliterative metre.
What’s the book’s first line?
The first line is: “Hearken! We have heard of the Spear-Danes, in hoary bygone days.” What to me is more interesting, however, is the first word. The Anglo-Saxon is “hwæt,” which is a word used as an interjection, but whether it has additional substantive meaning beyond its purely grammatical function is unsettled among scholars. Many translators have struggled with “hwæt,” and their results are varied. Seamus Heany for example, gives it as “so,” arguing it is in keeping with the poem’s situation within in a tradition of oral poetry, which he felt should be delivered in colloquial language. I humbly disagree, because what is clear from the original manuscript is that the diction was, even at the time of its composition, artificially archaic, and most likely written so for heightened poetic effect. For example, many verbs are introduced by a “ge-“ prefix (e.g. “witan,” to know, becomes “gewitan”), which was an outdated practice even at the time of the poem’s likely composition in the 9th century that survived only in alliterative poetry, and was deployed for poetic effect. If we are to then understand Beowulf as a poem written in purposefully artificial diction—a point on which I agree with Tolkien—then a purposefully archaic word is called for in translation. I felt “hearken” was best precisely because most English readers will know what the word means without needing to consult a dictionary,
but at the same time it is a paradigmatic example of a word that, if used in modern conversation,
would immediately elicit the response why are you speaking in such a conspicuously old-fashioned
way? and Beowulf is precisely a poem written in a conspicuously old-fashioned way.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Pace, Goethe, but Beowulf was in fact the first bildungsroman in western literature. What you will find is the complete arc of Beowulf’s life, from his youthful zeal to sail to Denmark to do battle with Grendel, through his many trials and triumphs, and finally his spectacular fall and death. The arc of Beowulf’s rise and fall is a tragic one, and at one point before facing the dragon, Beowulf lapses into an almost proto-Shakespearean soliloquy. Since tragedy is a timeless artistic idiom that has broad appeal across many cultures and demographics, it is hard for me to imagine a reader who will not find something in Beowulf to appreciate.
Beowulf is also a wonderful poem because it works in a number of different ways, and can be enjoyed from multiple approaches and by readers in search of different things. It can be read as an adventure story, woven of the sublime yarn of myth, and can be thoroughly enjoyed for its exciting narrative alone, especially by younger readers and readers who crave “action” that does not require too much cogitation in exchange. However, below the narrative, we have a beautiful poem written in sturdy, robust, earthy Anglo-Saxon, and we may properly appreciate it in this aesthetic sense as well (if, that is, I have done my job correctly). Beowulf is also concerned with ideas, and the primary idea it is concerned with is death—its inevitability, and the appropriate response to the existential dread attendant to it. Beowulf therefore can be appreciated as a mere adventurous fairy tale by even a small child, but addresses themes that will perhaps resonate most strongly with its most elderly readers. In this sense, I think it can legitimately make a claim to near-universal relevance, if one considers the cumulative multivalence of the text.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I found my way to Anglo-Saxon literature the way I suspect many do, by way of Tolkien. I read Lord of the Rings when I was about 11 years old, and what moved me most about those books was that running beneath every victory of good over evil and every quest successfully completed were nevertheless the faint intimations of a deep, powerful, and inconsolable sadness. I was young at the time, and I had quite a happy childhood, but the fact that no moment of joy or triumph in Lord of the Rings is wholly unhaunted by some profound sorrow felt to me like perhaps the first time I had ever heard an adult speaking to me honestly and candidly about life, and how hard it can sometimes be. Years later, I discovered that this type of pervasive and heart-wrenching melancholy was not an original creation of Tolkien’s, but rather a theme he artfully borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon literature he taught for decades at Oxford. There is even a term of art for this specific species of Anglo-Saxon sadness, “ubi sunt,” which is shorthand for “ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt,” or “where are those who went before us?” It is meant as a lamentation, for a golden age irretrievably lost to the past, and to the best of my knowledge, the Anglo-Saxons were lamenting the glories of yesteryear for the entire three-quarters of a millennium that they ruled England.
Strange as that may seem to us, what adult of a certain age cannot identify with the longing for something that once was, but is no more, and can never be again (what the Portuguese call saudade )? The anonymous Anglo-Saxon poets achieved greatness by artfully expressing (better than anyone before or after) a sentiment that is the common property of all humanity, a pain that unites and defines us as humans living in an imperfect and impermanent world.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
My hope is that poetry fans will appreciate a new verse translation that attempts to preserve the original alliterative metre through the translation into modern English; students and scholars will appreciate the annotation throughout and multiple appendices for ease of reference; there are plenty of monster heads that get gruesomely chopped off for the bros; and Beowulf is a classic that approximately every single American skimmed the Cliffs Notes to in 9th grade—isn’t it time to give the real thing another try with your fully-developed adult reading skills? I’ve done my very best to ensure this poem makes a better second impression than it likely did its first.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
One of the most frequent words used to describe Beowulf is “bold.” On its face, the word is generally used as a positive descriptor, but if you buy into the premise I advanced earlier that there is an almost proto-Shakespearean tragic element to Beowulf, then boldness must also be Beowulf’s tragic flaw. In this sense, he is somewhat like Odysseus (whose brash impiety causes him all sorts of problems), or Ahab, with his monomania turned down several notches, but sharing in some of the same hubris that ends up costing both of them their lives.
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
They have made several movie versions of Beowulf, but I always pictured him as a 1980s era Kurt Russell when he is a young man in Denmark, and then as maybe a Brendan Gleeson or Brian Cox as the old king of Geatland.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
I’m a lawyer, but I swear I am the fun kind, not the kind everyone hates. When I had the opportunity to be published in a law review, I chose to write an article examining an obscure Connecticut law that authorizes people to bequeath property held in trust to their pet animals in their wills when they die, and analyzed what such a trust protector’s legal duty to the pet animal (that is now wealthy) would consist of, based on Aristotle’s theory of eudaemonia. So whatever kind of lawyer does something as odd as that for fun, I suppose that’s what I am.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
It depends, mostly on forces beyond my control. I do not literally, metaphysically believe in the Greek theory of artistic creativity coming from the Muses, but that is generally how I experience my ability to write—either the Muse is talking, and I stop what I am doing and start writing; or she is not, and no amount of staring at a blank screen will achieve anything.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
If I had written Moby-Dick, I would have been prouder of that than of being a two-term President of the United States or the first man to set foot on the moon.