Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney / Digest read

Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

(Faber and Faber, £14.99), digested in the style of the original 

Fri 4 Feb ‘00 14.39 GMT

Hrothgar, son of Halfdene, was favoured in war,
and ordered men to build a great mead hall.
It was named Heorot, but a grim demon, Grendel was his name, a descendent of Cain,
a God-cursed brute, struck the hall again and again, grabbed men and butchered their corpses.
One day from across the sea, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, came from the land of the Geats, owing allegiance to Lord Hygelac, to help fight this grim demon.
Unferth, son of Ecglaf, being contrary said:
"Are you the Beowulf who took on Breca
in a swimming match on the open sea,
risking the water just to prove you could win?"
Beowulf, Ecgtheow's son, replied, "Friend,
you're letting the beer do the talking.
The truth is this, I'm a strong swimmer,
and although it wore me out I landed safe.
I cannot recall any fight you entered, Unferth,
son of Ecglaf, that bears comparison,
not that I'm boasting."
God-cursed Grendel came, but Beowulf was granted the power of winning, and Grendel gave a God-cursed scream. No one regretted
his fatal departure. Grendel's mother,
monstrous hell-bride, came for revenge.
Alas, Aeschere, Yremenlaf's elder brother and Hrothgar's soul-mate, was killed.
Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, promised to
avenge the death. The hero went to the lairs
of water-monsters, observed that swamp-thing from hell, a lifeless corpse.
Beowulf cut the corpse's head off.
Hrothgar, elated, praised the Geat:
"Oh flower of warriors, do not give way to pride.
Choose eternal rewards." And so, the grey-haired Dane, the high-born king, kissed Beowulf,
gave him gifts, and Beowulf, glorious
in his gold regalia, journeyed home.
Fifty years passed, as time does. The wide
kingdom, reverted to Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow.
He ruled well, until the treasure of a dragon,
was disturbed. The dragon, was angry, was destructive. Beowulf spoke, boasted
for the last time: "I risked my life often
when I was young. Now I am old."
Time had not taught the son of Ecgtheow.
Beowulf fought and fate denied him
glory in battle. The glittering sword,
infallible before that day, failed him.
Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, went to his aid.
The king dealt the dragon a deadly blow,
but poison suppurated inside him, killed him.
In his final breath, he gave to Wiglaf,
the last of the Waegmundings, his helmet.
With no heir, the son of Ecgtheow, by the son
of Weohstan, was cremated, as ordered.

And if you really are pressed: The digested read, digested 
Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, helps Hrothgar, son of Halfdene, against Grendel, a God-cursed brute. Beowulf gets old, gets killed. Wiglaf, son of Weohstan, cremates him, as ordered.

THE GUARDIAN

DIGEST READ / KISS
Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013 by Michel Houellebecq

The Poems of TS Eliot / The Annotated Texts, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue 

The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4 1928-1929 (ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden)

Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4 1928-1929 (ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden) – digested read

John Crace reduces the latest sheaf of correspondence from the literary giant and stationery lover to a manageable 500 words

John Crace
Sun 6 Jan ‘13 18.30 GMT

TS Eliot by Matt Blease

Dear Mrs Woolf,

Thank you for sending me your new short story. I read it with great interest, but feel it is, perhaps, too frivolous for inclusion in The Monthly Criterion. Have you thought about sending it to Grazia? Yours, etc.

Dear Messrs Methuen,

I note with alarm that the paper for the new setting of The Sacred Wood is below the standard I expect. Please correct soonest. Yours, etc.

Dear Master,

I trust that nothing will interfere with my stay at New College on the 9th proxima and that I will be accorded the same suite of rooms as previously. Does five guineas sound reasonable for my expenses? Yours, etc.

My dearest Ottoline,

I'm so grateful that Valerie managed to find room for a few of my maddest letters. La – la – la. Otherwise no one would have any idea how much of a saint Tom was to put up with me for so long before having me committed to an asylum. Such a wonderful Christian man! Anyone else might have been tempted to have an affair by my madness. The cat stood on the mat. Much love, Vivienne.

My darling Emily,

(Regrettably, all the correspondence between TS Eliot and Emily Hale has been embargoed until 2020, so readers will just have to take the chaste nature of their relationship on trust – Eds. PS. I've always hated that bitch – Valerie)

Dear Cummings,

Thank you for sending me your new ditty. Unfortunately it is not quite suitable for The Monthly Criterion. Have you thought about taking remedial lessons in grammar and punctuation? Yours, etc.

Dear Leonard,

It was a rare honour to meet someone, such as yourself, with more money than sense. As you know, The Monthly Criterion is struggling financially and with your help we could re-establish the magazine on a quarterly footing. Thank you also for your offer to publish an edition of my poems in Latin. Once I have fulfilled my contractual obligations to Faber, of which I am now a director, I shall be happy to accept. In the meantime, I submit my invoice for 300 guineas. Yours, etc.

Dear Faber,

I note that 12 paper-clips are missing from the office inventory and that my papers had not been placed perpendicular to the inkwell on my desk. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. Yours, etc.

Dear Aldington,

Thank you for sending me your latest verses. If they can be called that. I confess that I found them disappointing in the extreme – an opinion that I must make clear has nothing to do with your outspoken assertions that Vivienne is not really that mad. Have you tried The People's Friend? Yours, etc.

Dear Prince de Rohan,

Thank you for your appreciation of the German translation of my essay on Machiavelli. So often, one feels one is putting pearls before swine. Vivienne is doing as well as can be expected and I get enormous comfort from my faith. Yours, etc.

Dear Auden,

Advertisement

I am sorry I kept you waiting in the Faber ante-chamber for several hours. I had a very important meeting with my secretary. Do call the office to arrange another appointment some time next year. Yours, etc.

Dear Faber,

The paper-clips are still missing. Yours, etc.

Dear Spender,

Thank you for your invitation to speak at the Oxford Poetry Society. Regrettably, I must decline as I am exhausted. Having read a few lines of your latest work, dare I suggest that poetry is not your forte? I submit my invoice for 15 guineas for the expenses that would have accrued, had I accepted. Yours, etc.

Digested read, digested: A publisher's thank-you for being kept afloat by Cats.

THE GUARDIAN

DIGEST READ / KISS

Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013 by Michel Houellebecq

The Poems of TS Eliot / The Annotated Texts, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue 

The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4 1928-1929 (ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden)

Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013 by Michel Houellebecq – digested read

‘The first time I made love / Was on a Greek beach. At sunset / The girl ran off / Saying I was a useless shag’

Unreconciled / Poems 1991-2013 by Michel Houellebecq / Review 

John Crace

Sunday 22 January 2017 17.00 GMT

Vacations

I went on holiday with my 10-year-old son
We stayed in a shitty hostel in the Alps.
It rained almost every day
And neither of us could think of anything much to say.
We stuck it out for a week and then
Decided to cut our losses and go home.
It was the best time we ever had together.

Love, Love

In a porn cinema, wheezing pensioners
Discrete, secrete, excrete.
This is as close to love
As any of us are likely to get.

Consumption

I could hear stumps rubbing
The amputated man next door.
Upstairs the blood of disembowelled neighbours
Runs through runnels down the corridor.
The concierge grumbles and watches TV.

It would all have been different
If I had bought some furniture.
Maybe tomorrow. I add washing up liquid
To the list of things I’m not going to buy.
I know I’m human because I want to die.

Jim

My dad was a solitary and barbarous cunt
He always treated me like a rat you hunt.
The thought that I might outlive him
Caused him pain in his last days.
He bathed in his urine, incontinent
In both body and thought.
And then he died. Good riddance.

Absence of Limited Duration

If I write something down does it make it more real? If I write in what appears to be prose does it still count as poetry. To be honest, I’m not at all sure what I’m doing here. None of us is really. It’s all a bit of a waste of time. Filling in the long blanks before we die.

I pick up a book and wonder if I would have been able to solve Maxwell’s equations if I had been Maxwell. I suppose the answer must be yes because Maxwell was Maxwell and he did solve the equations. This ought to give me hope but somehow it makes me feel even more inadequate.

Variation 49: The Final Journey

The first time I made love
Was on a Greek beach. At sunset.
It sounds romantic but it wasn’t really.
My premature ejaculation rather spoiled things
And the girl, whose name I never knew,
Ran off, saying I was a useless shag.

When I got back to France I went to the hospital
Because I thought I had got a sexually transmitted disease.
I like hospitals. The stench, the terror, the tears.
It’s where life begins and ends.
On that occasion it turned out I didn’t have syphilis.
But sooner or later I will get a fatal disease.
Cancer probably. And then I won’t have to leave hospital. Good.

New Order

It was a starless night, the way I like it.
I had run out of butter so I went to the shops.
On my way I saw a Muslim standing alone on the pavement.
I asked him if he would blow me up in a suicide attack.
He stared blankly at me. There was no kindness in his eyes.
When I finally got to the Monoprix
I remembered it had shut down
Several months ago.

The Immaterials

The subtle, interstitial presence of God
Has long since disappeared.
With any luck, I will too.
And so will you.
We will be forgotten
At the bottom of a dark ocean
Our bodies gutted by fish.

The State of Me

My knees are crippled with arthritis
My stent is begging to fail
I feel a cancer growing inside my bowel
For I shit nothing but blood
Things are beginning to look up.

Digested read, digested: The end is in sight.

THE GUARDIAN

DIGEST READ / KISS
Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013 by Michel Houellebecq

The Poems of TS Eliot / The Annotated Texts, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue 

The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4 1928-1929 (ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden)

Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney

The Poems of TS Eliot: The Annotated Texts, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue – digested read

‘The Waste Land could be a forerunner to the works of Pam Ayres. Note the driving urgency of its commas’


John Crace
Sun 8 Nov ‘15 17.00 GMT

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (1)

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo (2)

I have measured out my life with coffee (3) spoons.

Commentary

1. Ralph Hodgson has suggested the J stands for Joseph, though other commentators have made a convincing case for James. The use of the initial mirrors Eliot’s own struggles over his name. In the earliest versions of the poem, Eliot first signs himself Thomas S Eliot, then T Stearns Eliot, before formalising his authorial poetic as TS Eliot.
2. Conan Doyle was adamant that Michelangelo referred to the Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. Twelve years of close textual study have led us to conclude that this is indeed the most likely explanation, but some critics have been more hesitant about jumping to conclusions. Tristram Makeanameforhimself of the University of Texas has suggested Eliot was subconsciously alluding to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
3. Much as Eliot liked to consider himself a naturalised Englishman, the use of coffee spoons betrays his American roots. A true Englishman measures his life out in tea spoons (cf Ode on an English Tea Spoon by John Keats, English poet, 1795-1821)

The Waste Land (1)

April (2) is the cruellest month, breeding 

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 

Memory and desire, stirring (3) 

Dull roots with spring rain

Commentary

1. The title of the poem has been the subject of much contention. Jessie L Watson was convinced the title alluded to his “Wasting of the Land” while Thomas Malory (1405-71) believed Eliot to have been guilty of plagiarising “the Waste Londe” from Le Morte D’Arthur. TSE was insistent on both the use of the word The and the gap between Waste and Land. In the earliest written versions of the text, TSE left 10mm between Waste and Land, suggestive to some he intended the title to be THE Waste Land.
2. According to Stephen Spender, April is not the cruellest month at all as February is far crueller. Spender believes TSE was well aware of this and that the first line was just a bit of a joke and that the whole poem should be read as a forerunner to the works of Pam Ayres. Andrew Marvell (English poet 1621-78) makes much the same case by pointing out that had TSE been using the Julian calendar, the poem would have begun in August.
3. Many modern scholars assert that the comma before the last word of each of the opening three lines, followed by a distinctive gerund, was deliberately written by TSE to create a startling, driving urgency. Analysis of the hand-written first draft shows this view to be misplaced, as the lines had so many crossings out in them that it was force majeure that created the opening effect as he had just run out of space.

The Four Quartets (1)

In my beginning is my end (2) 

We shall not cease from exploration (3) 

And the end of all our exploring

Commentary

1. This is merely circumstantial speculation. Vivienne Eliot always insisted there was a lost fifth quartet, Chipping Norton, which was TSE’s masterpiece and that Valerie had burnt it (hence the reference to Burnt Norton). CR and J McM spent many years pointlessly searching for this MS.
2. As Robert Graves observed, this is not strictly true as the poem East Coker goes on for pages and pages thereafter.
3. There is an ongoing court case between William Blake (1757-1827) and TSE over this usage. Blake believed TSE to have been trying to copy his poem, Jerusalem, in order to sell it to the English Rugby Football Union for a profit of 25/-.

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

Macavity’s (1) a Mystery cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw 

For he’s the master criminal (2) who can defy the Law.

Commentary

1. Believed to refer to Ronald Macavity, who attended Milton Academy two years behind TSE, though Elizabeth Trussell of 9, Mornington Crescent, has argued it is more likely to be Ronald’s older brother, Gerald.
2. Conan Doyle was certain TSE was referencing his character Moriarty but Valerie Eliot was adamant it referred to Andrew Lloyd Webber whose musical Cats she could not stand. As Faber and Faber would have been broke long ago without ALW and we would never have been given the money to complete this textual analysis, CR and J McM are inclined to the Doylean view.

Digested read, digested: I have measured out my life with matchsticks (1)

THE GUARDIAN

DIGEST READ / KISS
Unreconciled: Poems 1991-2013 by Michel Houellebecq

The Poems of TS Eliot / The Annotated Texts, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue 
The Letters of TS Eliot: Volume 4 1928-1929 (ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden)
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney